Drive Image Upgrade

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I just got an email today from PowerQuest about the release of Drive Image 7 and I thought I’d pass it along, since there are a number of Loungers who use their product. I’m in the process of buying the upgrade ($40 US) but I don’t know if the hype THIS TIME is correct or more smoke-and-mirrors. It says that you can backup from within Windows, but it has “said” that in prior versions too. This version is specifically for XP Home and Pro and Win2000, but when you buy it, you will evidently get a copy of the version for prior OSs as well. One item I’m concerned about, since I’ve always used floppy to backup AND restore images, is that is says you will need the CD to restore an image! Well, buyer beware and read the fine print.

http://www.powerquest.com/driveimage/%5B/url%5D

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Big Al,

Thank you for the info. I have not received any notification yet, but I’ll be perusing the lounge for your opinion/review once you receive it. I would hope that those of us who have complained to PQ regarding the Win XP Pro problems would get either a free upgrade or a very sweet deal to move up(?) to the next version. Thanks for the heads up!

LMD

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Just a prelim little report, folks. After purchasing and downloading (I hope a CD is also in the mail!), I did a somewhat UNSUCCESSFUL install! I’m pretty sure the problem was one ot two things, but I can’t be sure until I do further testing. PowerQuest says on their web site that this version REQUIRES the Microsoft-Dot-Net “framework” (whatever the that means!) They provide a link to download it in case you don’t already have it installed. Well, I didn’t bother since I already have it installed because of some other software I installed recently. Also during the install of Drive Image 7, it asks if you will be saving images to a network and I answered “YES” since I DO save my images to a dedicated backup machine on my LAN.

When I got finished, re-booted and tried to run Drive Image, that sucker wouldn’t run for ! I went to Control Panel and found out that the MS-Dot-Net I had was version 1.0 and the PowerQuest site shows a link to version 1.1. I UN-INSTALLED both pieces of software, downloaded the 1.1 and THEN re-installed D.I. 7, this time saying “NO” to the question about saving to a network. Well, now the program will execute OK and I even tried running its Backup Image Browser to see if it would let me look at the files in existing images saved on my LAN. That worked OK also, but I haven’t yet tried to create an image to see if it will let me choose the machine on my LAN.

So, you can see why I don’t know which of the two topics above was the problem, if either! More later…..

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Thanks, Big Al (and loungers), for your continued assistance! In checking the Drive Image website two things struck me: 1) The minimum memory needed is 256 MB and, 2) The drive image 2002 that was certified for Windows XP that we own is no longer certified for Win XP! The supported operating systems are Windows 95c or higher, NT Workstation 4.0 (SP6a), Windows Me. Hum, no XP. It works for some but not for others. To be continued…

LMD

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BigAl, I was lucky to have had .net 1.1 already installed. Uninstalled DI 2002 then installed DI 7 with no problems. Am not backing up to a network either. Have run a backup to another local HD. Runs mucho faster than 2002. Used the Image Browser a little. Worked fine also. Have to try in on some older backups that I have on CD soon. Good luck with your further adventures.

Joe

--Joe

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Thanx guys for posting your comments and observations! I too don’t understand that stuff about DI 2002. Their web site says you will get a copy of DI 2002 when you buy version 7 but I don’t see anything in the zip download file that looks like it Also, as I mentioned earlier, their web site says you will NEED the CD for restoration or something like that, so I’m hoping that my CD will come in the mail. It does appear that version 7 does NOT support floppy use since I don’t see anything in the menu structure to support making DI 7 floppies.

Now, as for me, I still don’t know whether that MS-Dot-Net version was a problem. I suspect not. However I can safely say that after I re-installed DI 7 and chose “NO” on the network question, it sure as WILL NOT let me save an image to another machine on my LAN. I mean I tried everything I could, including mapping the destination drives. Access Denied! So, I better try again to change that NO to a YES. There ain’t no place I could find that would let me do that, so I ran SETUP again, hoping to just “repair” install. No way – running SETUP again “ass-u-mes” you want to remove the product! What a bunch of dunces. Anyways, I re-installed for the 3rd time and chose YES on the network question. When I was putting in my (administrator) user name, and password, I realized that I had put in a wrong password on the very 1st time I installed, so this time, every thing is hunky-dory.

Unlike you, Joe, I’ve only run ONE image backup and I chose the smallest partition I have. Ran like a charm, really fast and to my LAN destination. You’ve probably noticed that they changed the file naming convention, but I did a browse on both the new and an old image and both opened up correctly. So, it looks like progress, albeit with a few “bumps” in the road that I wish PowerQuest had not done. This weekend I’ll try to complete the cycle and backup all my partitions, including the boot drive. By the way, on the one image I created, I chose NO compression and I noticed that the resulting image file is EXACTLY the same size as the one from last week (it’s my web pages partition and nothing has changed)

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Big Al,

I checked PQ’s site and could not find that link to the Microsoft .Net framework 1.1 download. Could you post the link?

Thanks,

LMD

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You may not be able to get to it from PQ’s site unless you’re a registered customer with a login. Here’s the MS link:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details…&displaylang=en%5B/url%5D

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To add some more to my report so far on Version 7. I decided not to wait until Saturday, when I normally run my backup images of five partitions. I have six partitions on three drives, but one of ’em is the swap file. I did the four partitions that are non-boot first and saved the C: drive for last. As is my custom, I chose NO compression, since I don’t need it (yet). On my LAN backup machine, I have two big drives to which I alternate backup images every weekend. Everything went swell with the first four, although my initial observation about speed was incorrect. With the previous DI the speed I was getting across the network was 120-140 meg/min. With this new version, the elapsed times calculate out to 86-103 meg/min.

Now the C: drive! I started this one but had to leave the house while it was still running. When I returned about 5 hours later, it had aborted with a message of “access denied.” There was also included what looked like a memory address, and an error message number. I couldn’t find the error message number in the Help file. So, I tried again. This time, DI flew through the progress screen in a few seconds, like it was trying to resume the backup, but I got the same access denied, with a DIFFERENT error message number.

I then started the backup again and this time I changed TWO things. I changed the destination to the alternate backup drive AND told DI to use its recommended “standard” compression, even though I don’t need to compress. This time the backup finished in 33:32 on 4,185 gig. (about 125 or 130 meg/min). The bottom line is that I don’t know whassup since the first four backups went to that drive just fine. The largest of those is just UNDER 3 gig, so maybe one has to use compression when you get up to 4 gig or more, I don’t know. I do know that Windows will not let me DELETE that aborted file! FWIW and I hope Joe, Cowboy and others will continue to post your comments here, since we do have a lot of users of Drive Image in The Lounge.

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They’ve been known to “break” stuff from one version to another, Cowboy. Maybe if you delete the file first….. I know in either version 4 or 5 (can’t remember) I would have to delete the previous image before I could create a replacement two weeks later. The menu would ask me if I want to replace, but then DI would crap out and not run.

By the way, I re-tried that boot drive image that failed on me day before yesterday and I let it use “standard” compression and the thing worked like a charm. I read something in Help that said images across a network will go FASTER if you use compression (I expected the opposite to be true) and boy did it ever, as I reported in my earlier post. I still can’t figure out why I got the “Access Denied” message. I’ve tried using their browser to open ALL the images I just created and everything seems to be just fine.

If you or Joe have a partition with more than 4 gig on it, when you image the thing, try with NO compression and see if it fails on you like mine did. I’ve looked and looked through Help for any size limitations and can’t find anything. Now I’m gonna try their web site but I’m not too optimistic. The only drawback in me asking you for this test is that it gets ALL the way to the end before it aborts (about 40 minutes on my 4.1 gig)

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Well, I can’t find it right now. But I seem to recall in Version 6, there was an option to copy only the used portion of a drive, so if you only used 20 GIgs of a 60 Gig drive, only 20 Gigs were imaged. It there no place to pick that option in DI7?

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Yeah, I can’t find anything like that in DI 6 either. I think they fouled up in DI 7 but I must admit I don’t ever use the Copy function.

While I was out today I did a scheduled image job of two of my partitions and it seems to have run OK. Starting tomorrow, I’ve implemented scheduled backup jobs to image all my partitions to a drive on my LAN weekly and I’ll see how it goes.

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I saw an article at ExtremeTech “The latest downloadable version of PowerQuest’s PartitionMagic software contains product activation technology backed by digital-rights-management software” I hope that this is not extended to DriveImage7

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DI7 requires what they are calling activation. It means you have to enter the product key that they give you.

Joe

--Joe

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Cowboy, Did they change the default for smart sector copying in DI7?

Joe

--Joe

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Joe, I’ve uninstalled my version 6 so I don’t know for sure, but I “think” the default was ON. Here’s a shot from the User Guide PDF file. Don’t know what would happen, Cowboy, if you turned it OFF but it’s a good point Joe brings up.

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BigAl, I think you mean that SmartSector is enabled by default in DI6. I agree. I’m pretty sure that it is supposed to be like that in DI7. Could be that for the copy functionality that it was modified. I don’t have a drive/partition of sufficient size to play with to try various scenarios.

Joe

--Joe

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Cowboy,
Yeah, whatever they did to speed it up sure is impressive. Guess you could try to get some information out of their tech support about the differing sizes. I wouldn’t hold my breath there though.

Joe

--Joe

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Hi Joe:
I’ve had good experiences with their tech support in the past, although I’ve only used it a couple of times. When I bought version 5, I didn’t use it for about 6 months & the first time I tried, I found it didn’t span CD-Rs. I wrote them & they upgraded me to version 6 free, so I was pretty impressed. Have you had poor experiences with them?

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Yeah at work I have had bad experiences with both Powerquest & Symantec.

Joe

--Joe

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Well it is good that someone has. Maybe you used up their quota (of good experiences) before I contacted them. Guess you need to try again if the size thing is important.

Joe

--Joe

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Hi Cowboy:
Does this mean that you have now found an option in DI 7 that allows you to copy onto a smaller drive, by enabling SmartSection copying?

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Cowboy, Smart sector copying is autmatically enabled. You must disable it if you want DI to not use it.

Joe

--Joe

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Greetings, Gentlemen ~

I recently purchased DI7 and have been following this thread each day before I actually install. Let me get this straight…I have 2 data partitions – if I am to copy them w/ DI7, I won’t be able to do it unless I have yet another drive that is at least as big if not bigger than either or both of them?

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FYI. Fred Langa, in his latest newsletter, LangaList Plus, pans Partition Magic 8 & DI 7, saying they don’t live up to the previous versions. However, he gives no reasons. The newsletter is not posted on his site yet over here as of today. Just thought I’d let you know.

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Yeah Phil, I saw that newsletter in this AM’s email and was quite surprised at his 180 degree turnaround! He’s been a long-time supporter and user of Drive Image. Later in the newsletter, he’s answering a question about merging partitions and doesn’t even mention the fact that Partition Magic will do that for you, although I’ve never tried that feature myself. It’ll be interesting to see the details of his “concerns” later. As has been said in the past, as good as Fred is, you have to take his opinions with a grain of salt for he frequently pans or pushes products that I, for one, don’t agree with.

As for me, after my initial bad-mouthing (above), part of which was caused by typical user error, I’m pretty satisfied so far. Drive Image 7 DOES run within Windows (XP), it DOES (finally!) make use of my LAN for a destination machine, AND its job (imaging) scheduler DOES run like a charm, so far. Yesterday, shortly before I left the house, my first real unattended imaging backup job started. It’s making an image on a LAN drive of five partitions on this machine and it runs so quietly and in the background that you have to look in Task Manager to see the process running. It was hovering around 15-20% CPU which isn’t bad (in my opinion) for what it’s doing! I watched Task Manager for about 15 minutes before I had to leave. When I returned later in the day, the DI job log shows each of the partitions imaged in the job with a completion of 12:29 PM so I can’t tell much about the ” megabytes per minute ” of the job. As usual, I used the DI browser to look inside a couple of the images to make sure I could see individual files. Obviously, one can’t “close” this informational loop until a restore operation is done, but I am NOT an unhappy camper at this point. I hope Cowboy can find out more about that Copy function!

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Hi, Cowboy ~

Ok, at his point in the game, I am not concerned with speed. I have used DI only once a long time ago, had a bad experience, dumped it and tossed the CD. I got the new version and wish to try it.

What is the difference between Drive Image, Backup & Drive Copy? I thought it all was backup? (still working on the 90MB user’s guide download which will take a week d/l off and on)

All I want to do is have my OS, config & data available for, as I understand it, a simple putting everything back the way it was nice and tidy in the event of a crash by simply sticking a CD in and clicking. I have one 18GB partition w/ OS, one 10GB w/ data & one >1GB w/ page/swap.

Can I do this w/ DI7 or should I fuggettabouddit?

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Sheesh Bruce, you will NEVER, ever need a 90 MB user guide for this product! In the downloaded Zip file for DI 7 there are two PDF files, a quick-start and a user doc (2.3 meg) that should be all that you will ever need, other than a possible perusal of their web site looking for a technical answer that’s not in the PDFs. The words “backup” and “image” are used to refer to the same process – making a sector-by-sector image of a partition and placing that image in ONE single destination file. “Copy” means making an exact copy of an entire partition, FILE-BY-FILE so it’s ready to use with no further ado – plug in the drive and go!

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Hi, Al ~

Thanks for the note – I will nix the download on the user’s guide then.

‘Copy’ simply duplicates the files/folders while ‘Image’ creates a picture so to speak from which I can replace an exact duplicate OS/settings/data to a hosed system – correct,sir?

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Hi, Cowboy ~

Switch over to what? If your system is hosed, there would be nothing in which to switch over.

I have only 1HD and partitioned as mentioned above.

Here is my understanding: I make a copy or an image (which still isn’t clear yet), I burn it to CD (my own personalized custom recovery CD??), the system gets hosed, I stick in CD & boot, everything is like new again OS/settings/data and all – is this way over-simplified as well as wrong?

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copy or an image (which still isn’t clear yet), I burn it to CD (my own personalized custom recovery CD??), the system gets hosed, I stick in CD & boot, everything is like new again OS/settings/data and all – is this way over-simplified as well as wrong?

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If you make an IMAGE then yes this is almost correct. You stick in the CD, boot from the CD (or restore floppies), restore the image and reboot. You system will be just the way it was when you imaged it. Right down to the fragmentation level, IIRC.

You will, however, lose everything that you added to you HD from the time you created the image to the time you restore the image. Apps, data everything.

Is this getting a bit clearer now?

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Sorry Bryan. I guess we were both writing at the same time. [indent]

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…You will, however, lose everything that you added to you HD from the time you created the image…

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[/indent] And THAT’S why many of us use a “nightly backup program” to backup frequently changing files, like email, bookmarks, documents, etc. (i.e. “selected file” backup)

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No worries Al. We’re all friends here

And nightly incremental backups are a good idea to supplement the images.

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When Cowboy said switch over, he’s referring to the fact that his “copied” hard drive is sitting there, all ready to be jumpered and put into place to replace the one that got “hosed.” Your anology to a “picture” is OK when it comes to imaging as opposed to copying. An image, compressed or not, takes the contents of an entier partition and puts it into a single destination file, either on another hard drive or CD or ….. From that file, you can view and/or extract individual files if need be. If the entire drive needs to be replaced, you run DI and give it the source (i.e. your CD example) and destination (a new hard drive) and it will take all the files, every one, and put them on this new hard drive which is then ready to roll. Cowboy’s copying simply goes directly from start to end, without making the image file.

With this new version, if your system were still operational, say in my case my D: drive @#$!% out, you could run Drive Image as usual, put in a fresh hard drive in the D: position and restore an image to it. However, if (your case) your ONLY drive @#$!% out, you will boot your machine from the Drive Image CD (which you have yet to receive in the mail), tell it you want to restore an image from CD (that you burned), give it the replacement drive that you would have already put in your machine and whammo, you’re back in business in a matter of MINUTES! And I ain’t whistling Dixie on that one, baby! I’ve put MANY a machine back on its feet faster than the time it would have taken just to install the OS! Need more?

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Hi Al:
I’ve restored my system using DI, but it took more than minutes. I had my image on 4 CDs (about 20/min/CD to burn). It took about as long to restore. I never got a CD from PowerQuest, just a download. Do you have a faster way? Or do I just have a slower drive? (computer, that is)

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Phil, DI7 runs very much faster than the prior versions. To do a restore DI ships you a CD even if you D/L from their site. This is a bootable CD to use for recovery. Don’t know what the difference may be if you are backing up straight to CDs.

Joe

--Joe

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I’ve never used DI and CDs, Phil so I can’t comment, but….. At 4 CDs, say 650 meg per CD and 80 minutes, that would be something like 30-40 meg per minute. I know that’s really a SWAG, but I have no idea what the speed should be, or WILL be with version 7. As I said earlier, in that unattended five partitions run I just made, the speed is obviously impacted by the speed of my NIC, the hub downstairs that leads to the router upstairs, AND the hard drives in my backup machine. But, @ 130-140 meg per minute, I can usually restore a “typical” hard drive of 2 or 3 gig in 15-20 minutes. On occasion, at the end of a restore operation, the previous versions of Drive Image would go into some kind of “aligning” mode which would DELAY the completion. I’ve always figured that’s some kind of defrag-type operation, but it doesn’t always do it.

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Hi, Al & Bryan ~

Yes! This is becoming much clearer

Okay, so….I am thinking that I would do a freshy-fresh OS install, get all my configurations, settings, reg hacks and other customisations in place, install all my primary apps and then create an image to CD (image) using DI7. I have been backing up data manually on a regular basis to a kazillion CDs, but now I would instead implement quiet scheduled data backups (copy) using DI7 – this sound like a decent plan so far?

Now you are correct about the CD being mailed, but what is on this CD that I didn’t get from my PQ download? Can I not just boot and restore from the recovery CD image I made? (I kinda thought that was the point w/ DI.)

You know, I have had DI6 for the last year and never used the darn thing since I didn’t fully understand properly using it to my advantage, didn’t trust it and was stuck in my laborious manual backup method, but I think it is time I really utilize it. Thanks to you both for helping clear up my @#$!% confusion with DI.

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Bruce, Your backup image is not a bootable CD. The CD Powerquest mails you is bootable and setup to do a recovery.

Joe

--Joe

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Hi, Joe ~

So I would require 2 CDs to restore from a hosing? Is there a way to make it bootable from the created CD??

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Besides which, in answer to your “plan” question for the earlier post, no, you can’t RESTORE or IMAGE a system in unattended mode if you’re gonna use CDs. Obvious reasons, unless you’ve got a machine that’ll feed itself blank CDs

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Has anyone considered or attempted to copy and burn the PQRE files (PowerQuest Restore Environment) to the image to perhaps create a bootable restore CD?

Seems to me that if Symantec’s method of creating a bootable CD while it creates the image would be perfected if not included in DI.

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Not Worth The Effort, Bruce! (IMHO)

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Glad to hear that some of you have been able to get DI7 to work. I have been unable to get it to make an image for me at all, and PowerQuest’s customer service hasn’t replied to any of my queries. I’m going to have to uninstall this monster (again) and go back to 2002.

I’ve been using DriveImage since 4.0 and have never run into problems like this. I’ve wasted hours installing and uninstalling this product to no avail. After reading through this thread I thought I’d give it another go, but no luck.

Here’s what I’ve got:
Windows 2000 (SP-3), English, .Net 1.1, 768MB RAM & many many GB of free disc space on NTFS drives

I keep getting the following errors:
If I try a local drive…
Description: An error occurred creating a backup of drive E:. Error EC8F0007: Cannot create a Virtual Volume Image of E:. Error 000000AA: The requested resource is in use.
Details: Unspecified error

Description: An error occurred creating a backup of drive F:. Error EC8F0007: Cannot create a Virtual Volume Image of F:. Error 000000AA: The requested resource is in use.
Details: Unspecified error

If I try a network drive…
Description: An error occurred creating a backup of drive E:. Error E0BB0097: Volume ‘?Volume{959049d5-1944-11d5-b4f7-806d6172696f}’ cannot be locked. Error 00000005: Access is denied.
Details: 0xE0BB0097

I’ve tried making an image of every drive on my machine and get the same errors. It appears that something has control of my drives that’s interfering with DI. I turned off Norton Auto-Protect. I don’t have firewall software on this machine. From a clean boot I am still getting these errors on all drives.

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Here’s an off-the-wall question for ya, Bill. I see from your profile that you’re in Japan. Is your OS an English language version? I don’t really know why I’m asking that, except to be pulling at straws in your behalf. Now, you DID answer “yes” to the network destination question when you installed, right? (re: my initial problem, which turned out to be ME giving it the wrong password). One other Lounger had some trouble getting DI 2002 up and running on a machine that has ALL NTFS partitions, but I’m sure that has nothing to do with your problem. I don’t know what to tell you, except to hope PQ will answer you. As usual, I’m not happy with their slowness in responding……

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Thanks for jumping in guys

[indent]

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Here’s an off-the-wall question for ya, Bill. I see from your profile that you’re in Japan. Is your OS an English language version?

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[/indent]
Yes, but I got the same results on a Japanese version of Win2K as well.
[indent]

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Now, you DID answer “yes” to the network destination question when you installed, right?

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Yes. I had seen your earlier post about that.
[indent]

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Bill did you install “Microsoft Net Framework”

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[/indent]
Yes, I have .Net 1.1 installed
[indent]

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One other Question: are you on a Network?

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[/indent]
I’m on a corporate LAN with many Domains.

Well there is good news after all. I finally got mail back from PowerQuest. It only took them 10 days…
[indent]

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Bill,
Sometimes programs running in the background cause problems. If you are
running Norton SystemWorks, especially CleanSweep|NAV|Protected recycle
bin|, Diskeeper with Set It And Forget It, Front Page or any other
Utilities that restrict direct disk access you need to disable or
uninstall them.

Then run DM7 again.

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[/indent]
It was the Norton Protected Recycle Bin that seems to have been the culprit. I stopped that and was able to make my first image with DI7. Quite fast and it does run in the background nicely.

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Hmmmm….yet another example or Norton tying things up or ultimately the source of app or OS conflicts.

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I think you’ve got your required response now Al, so I’ll close this thread down.

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