Sector-by-Sector Hard Drive Image Software

^^^Western Digital is/was offering for their customers a free edition of Acronis True Image. Unfortunately some features are missing in this special WD-release: you can only create full disk images (no incremental images)
and the software will only work with a WD drive present/connected to the system. Been using one of this free versions years ago (2015 / 2016): unfortunately i cant remeber anymore if this option (Sector-by-Sector) was
available.

it seems that it this is the latest release of this software:

Acronis® True Image™ WD Edition
hxxps://xxx.wdc.com/products/features/acronis.html

 

I guess that's one of the downsides of free version of Acronis courtesy WD as well as Vendor dependent to begin with.

Sector by single sector imaging is what you might say a pretty exclusive operation

 

This thread contains terminology issues. Typically a "sector by sector" image is an image of all sectors on the drive. The OP started the thread with a request to create a "sector by sector" image and most replies related to this request. However the OP subsequently stated "I really don't need to include unused sectors". So what is this thread about? A "sector by sector" image or a standard image?

 

Brian... itt seems to have morphed over to a typical "used sector" type of image. From the OP's eventual description, that seems to be what they want.

 

Brian,

To the best of my understanding both methods are sector-by-sector imaging. One is a complete/full image of HDD that targets all sectors and another only targets used sectors that contain data including boot record, partitions etc... I am not a specialist in this field and might not used the correct terminology to separate the two. There are many backup software titles out there that perform file based backups/images of HDD using VSS and other technologies. But I'm an old school and looking for a utility such as Ghost, and if I'm not mistaken, it did in fact imaged sector-by-sector whether full HDD, only one partition or used sectors only.

 

GhostR1der,

Most imaging is sector based but sector-by-sector imaging refers to imaging every sector on the drive. On looking though the replies in this thread, most folks were using that definition. I've never had a reason to use sector-by-sector imaging as standard image/restore has always worked.

Ghost 2003 did file based imaging. When you restored the image the sector weren't restored to their LBA position seen on the source drive. All sectors were restored to the start of the partition and some referred to this to a "good defrag".

The corporate versions of Ghost were slightly different...

 

Brian,

Thank you for clarifying it for me and correcting on Ghost image technology. So then I can safely use Reflect's "Intelligent Sector Backup" mode or TraByte Image for Windows to make the second image with just used sectors. Correct? Is there one you would recommend over the other?

 

GhostR1der,

Just use the one you like best. They are both fine apps.