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Drive Image 2.0 and Drive Copy 2.0
by Reviewed by Tom Shouse, NOCCC, shouse@usa.net - January 04, 1999 at 00:42:22:
Prices have fallen in almost everything; computers and hard drives are no exception. I had been anxious to save my pennies for something that can handle Windows 9x, or NT 4.0, Office 97, Internet Explorer 4.0 and Visual Studio, all my graphics files, and still have room to grow. Rustling around at Fry’s one payday, the Maxtor 7.2 Gigabyte began to call to me like an ancient Greek siren crying out to a weary sailor,. “Take me home…” So I did just that. Enter PowerQuest’s Drive Image 2.0 and Drive Copy 2.0. Now I can easily transfer everything to a new hard drive. Drive Copy sells for about $29 right now, Drive Image $49 if you buy either at CompUSA in Anaheim and use your NOCCC membership discount. Even better, order from http://www.ugr.com/order/ and save another $10 (see November 1998 NOCCC Orange Bytes). What do they do? Drive Copy does simply that: copies a hard drive. First, I will talk about Drive Copy, and then explain the added features of Drive Image.Inside the boxes are the CD’s and instruction books. You will want to read the entire instruction book before you go out and buy your new hard drive. It will give you important information. Drive Copy claims to be the easiest way to copy one hard drive to another. It supports DOS and all Windows environments and OS/2. Also NetWare, UNIX and Linux, however I only tested Windows 95 SR1 and Windows NT Workstation 4.0. It copies everything, including hidden files. When you install the software, it will walk you through the next steps with the wizard. But you do have to know how to set the jumpers on your hard drives. And you will need to know how to set the BIOS options on your computer. If you don’t know, get somebody knowledgeable at NOCCC to help you out. What you will do is eventually install your new drive as drive 0 and have your existing drive as drive 1. The instruction booklet contains websites of major hard drive manufacturers and other sites that list hard drive jumper settings and important info, such as On-Track, http://www.ontrack.com and Blue Planet, http://blue-planet.com/tech/index.html.
Once you have your new hard drive connected as drive 0, and are sure the jumper settings are correct, you boot up to a special floppy you made by following instructions when you first installed the Drive Copy CD. What you are going to do is copy everything from drive 1 (your old drive) to drive 0 (your new big drive). You are not supposed to have to format your new drive, Drive Copy will take care of everything. Then you boot up with the Drive Copy disk, and it takes you from there. Just follow the prompts from the wizard. Once you are all done copying, turn off the computer. You can remove your old drive or leave it as a second drive. Then turn on the computer and set the CMOS to accept the new configuration. Now you have a new hard drive with all your information on it, and everything works just fine. The instruction booklet spells all of this out for you, and more. Once everything is done, all your information has been put on the new drive. Test everything out first, before you erase anything from the old drive.
Drive Copy will create extended partitions or delete them, much like FDISK but the graphical user interface is much easier to use. It is more like Disk Administrator in Windows NT 4.0. You can copy whole drives or selected partitions. You can resize partitions. It claims to be power fail safe: if the power goes off while running, it can recover. I didn’t switch off the power while using it to see if this is the case, needless to say. The manual that comes with Drive Copy covers many different scenarios that are quite helpful. The requirements to run Drive Copy are 386sx, 8MB of RAM, 1.44 floppy, CD-ROM, Windows 9x, and DOS 5.0. You don’t have to have a mouse. The systems I tested it on were a 233 MHz Cyrix, 64 MB RAM running Windows NT 4.0 SR3, and 75MHz Pentium with 48MB RAM running Windows 95 SR1. I didn’t have NTFS partitions to test it with, but Drive Copy can handle those as well. The program doesn’t copy empty space on the hard drive, so your new drive will be much more compact to start.
Drive Image is a different program altogether. What does it do? Well Drive Image can copy either way, from drive 0 to drive 1 or vice versa. Drive Image can make an image of your hard drive, compressed or not, on the same hard drive, a different hard drive, or a Zip or SyQuest drive. It doesn’t write to CD-R or tape, though, but can restore from CD-R. So it’s great for backing up entire drives or large partitions, as well as useful for upgrading to a new hard drive. It can copy entire hard drives or single partitions, and it can copy from either drive. Drive Image copies used sectors on the hard drive, and skips unused ones. So it is faster than sector by sector methods, and saves disk space as well. It is a DOS program that can be run from the hard drive or a diskette. Remember, Windows 95 and NT are multi-tasking, so you wouldn’t want to run a program like Drive Image from those platforms as any open files wouldn’t get copied. The recommended Hardware/Software are 486 or better with 32 Mb RAM, CD-ROM, and 5 Mb of free hard drive space. The user interface is similar to that of Drive Copy, very easy to understand, and intuitive. Drive Image isn’t intended to copy or image a hard drive that will be used on another computer with different hardware config-urations. But there is a Drive Image professional that can be purchased if you are gong to be using it to upgrade several identical computers, like whole departments at work. It works with partitions and can manipulate them easily. Then it makes image files, compressed or not, puts them where you tell it, and can restore image files and put the data where you tell it. You need to know what you are doing, and if you don’t, be sure to get help before you go changing the existing partitions on your hard drive. You could inadvertently wipe out the data on the entire drive. You may use passwords on the images you create, if you are concerned with security. You are requested to use Scandisk or Norton’s Disk Doctor before you do anything with any hard drive. The manual includes lots of pictures of various screens you will encounter.
There are additional utilities that come with Drive Image. DriveMapper is a wizard for Windows 3.x, 9x, and Windows NT. It allows you to easily alter drive letter assignments for partitions and your CD-ROM. Because some files, such as .INI, configuration and preferences fields, may keep references to the old drive letters, your system will not function properly when drive letters have changed. DriveMapper searches for these references and changes them to the new drive letter assignments. You do have to change the drive letters one at a time in the correct order. If you are running Windows NT, you are directed to use Disk Administrator rather that DriveMapper. You are cautioned not to use DriveMapper with multiple operating systems on the same computer.
MagicMover is another utility that comes with Drive Image. This program helps you move applications from one partition to another. There is a 32-bit version and a 16-bit version. With MagicMover you simply select the application to move, select the destination location, and if you want, review the operation summary that it gives you. MagicMover does the rest. It doesn’t move any application from the Windows directory, though.
In both manuals, there are lists of web sites that will prove to be very useful. There are appendixes which spell out troubleshooting actions to take in the event something goes wrong. PowerQuest also provides technical support that consists of Fax, FaxBack, BBS, telephone, email, and web site. If money were no object, I would recommend Drive Image over Drive Copy, because of the added features and extra utilities.
PowerQuest, PO Box 1911, Orem, UT 84059-1911 801) 437-8900 driveimage@powerquest.com http://www.powerquest.com
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