Software Review of:
DriveImage 2.0
DriveCopy 2.0

Then to top it off, all of the customization and preference you have made to your old system are lost. Your backup will help some but not with everything. PowerQuest has the perfect tools for you. DriveCopy is the easy way to migrate everything from your old drive to the new drive. It will help with the partitioning of the hard disk and will even transfer the operating system. 

DriveCopy
For my system, I was going to replace my 1GB drive with a new 4GB drive. To begin the process, I inserted the CD and ran the setup program to create a bootable floppy disk. I also took a look at the jumper settings that applied to my drives to make the new one the master and my old drive the slave. The nice little viewer from Ontrack supplied with the system made this very easy. 

I then shut down my computer and opened up case. The DriveCopy manual even showed diagrams to help me connect and install the new hard disk. Once I changed the jumper settings and connected up the drive, I was ready to begin. I left the case open for now just in case I needed to get back inside but my worries were unfounded. I inserted the bootable disk and powered up my PC. DriveCopy automatically loaded upon boot up. 

Running the program was a breeze but reading the manual helped. The program is wizard driven and helped step me through process. I was able to copy from my 1 GB drive to a new 2 GB partition on my new drive. I ran in to one small hitch in the process relating to the verification of the new drive before the data was actually transferred. But a quick call to their technical support line helped fix that. They answered the call quickly and were able to step me through changing one of the options and within a few minutes I had it up and running. 

Once DriveCopy completed, it was time for the big test - boot from the new hard disk. One press of the reset button and the system was up and running. From there I reformatted my old drive and created a second partition on my new drive and now I have a 2GB, 2GB, 1GB set of drive. If I will convert from the FAT16 file format to the FAT32 supported by Win95b and Win98 I can repartition my two 2GB drives into one 4GB drive. 

DriveImage
For those people wanting something a little more, DriveImage will perform the same functions as DriveCopy and more. DriveImage will allow you to do drive to drive copying of whole drives and partitions but it will also allow you to copy them to an Image file. Why is this beneficial? This can serve several purposes. 

One is a fully functional backup. Most backup software can not backup files when they are open and many critical system files are open when your computer is running. This includes things like the system registry where everything important is kept such as all of your hardware and software configurations. Many backup utilities are helpful for restoring a few files but if your hard disk crashes, you have to reinstall your operating system, device drivers and backup software. Then you get to try and restore all of your files but key pieces of information may not be in your backup because the files were open when the backup was made. DriveImage runs from a bootable floppy and includes drivers to access many popular removable devices such as Sparq, Zip and Jaz Drives. Since your operating system is not running, all files including the registry get backed up. 

Setup for DriveImage is very similar to that for DriveCopy. It will create two disks, a boot up disk with the drivers for the removable drives and the program disks. It also installs a few neat utilities that I will discuss later. I decided to use DriveImage to replace a 1Gb drive with a 2.5GB drive. I was running Windows 98 with Fat32 installed and had a Zip drive connected to my system. I booted from the floppy disk and then loaded the program disk. 

The system is a graphical system that uses the mouse and has easy to use wizards to step you through the process. I selected the hard disk that I wanted to backup and told it what image file name to use and to put it on D: (my Zip Drive). I selected to use Low file Compression which gives about a 40% reduction in file size. 

Other options included password protection and file size control to allow people to create image files that could be stored on a Recordable CD-ROM. If you are copying to a Zip, Jaz or similar device it will automatically prompt you for a new disk as each disk is full. Three disks later my system was backed up and ready for me to remove the drive. 

After shutting down the system and replacing my old drive with the new larger drive. I rebooted the system and loaded DriveImage. Did I forget to partition and format the drive? Nope. There is no need to all that can be done from DriveImage. Once the program was loaded I selected to restore a drive from an image file and browsed to the Zip drive to select the image file. 

The wizards once again helped me step through resizing from a 1GB to a 2.5GB partition and restoring the system. Shutdown and reboot the system and I was up and running on the new larger drive. Why didn't I just use DriveCopy? My notebook computer does not support two hard disks at one time. If it did I could have used the drive to drive copy in DriveImage. 

Now for some of the neat tools I told you about. 

DriveMapper is a program that will help you when you install a larger hard disk that you have divided into multiple partitions or drives and your CD-ROM goes from Drive E: to Drive G:. Now some of your games and other programs can't find the CD-ROM that they need. DriveMapper will step through and help you locate and fix many of these automatically so that there is not need to reinstall them just to change the drive letters around. 

ImageEditor is a program that will help you to manage your image files, add comments, etc. This is where you can open an image file and restore a single file, multiple files or a whole directory. My main problem here was in version 2.0. It will not let you restore single files from compressed image files or image files that span more than one disk. No problem by going to the PowerQuest web site, I was able to download a patch to upgrade to 2.01 that allows me to restore files from spanned and compressed image files. 

I love to play around with my computer and install new software to try out. Eventually, my system gets filled with old files that don't get deleted when I uninstall them. With DriveImage, I set up my computer the way I want it make an image file then play around all I want. When I get ready, I just run DriveImage and restore my computer back to its original condition. I have created image files for my system for NT and Windows 98 that I have on CD-ROM that I can use to restore my system back to its original state in 15-30 minutes with a few clicks of the button instead of hours of intensive work. 

DriveCopy lists for $29.95 and can be bought discount for $22.15, while DriveImage lists for 69.95 and can be found discounted for $53.70. You best price will probably be at the January General Meeting when PowerQuest is the presenter. For the average person installing a new larger drive in their system DriveCopy can be a good deal. For the techie who likes to play around with their system or just the average person wanting a good backup utility to backup their system to a removable media, DriveImage is a must have.