Just thought I'd share my positive experience using Power Quest's Drive Image 4.0 in a backup situation.

My production machine is W2K SP2 on a 20GB NTFS partition on an IDE hard drive. Total space used was 4,105MB including a 768MB swap file.

DI boots from DOS (actually, Caldera DR-DOS) and creates exact images of partitions on accessible hard drives. It includes a packet writing utility so it supports CD-R drives.

It is smart enough to only back up sectors that are used. It does not back up the swap file (which is not necessary under NT/W2K). It also offers compression. It supports spanning media if the image is larger than one CD-R.

In my case it created an image of the 3,382MB of non-swap files onto 4 CD-Rs (the last one about 1/2 filled), in about 70 minutes.

I then backed up my entire system to a network drive using NTBackup (for safety during this test). This was only slightly faster, at about 50 minutes.

I then used Power Quest's PartitionMagic 6.0 to blow away the partition on the HD (gulp !)

I then booted from the DI 4.0 boot diskettes and restored from the image CDs. I answered a couple of prompts, and 35 minutes later had my system back EXACTLY as it was before.

If DI had failed, I would have had to reinstall W2K from the original CD, set up networking so I could see my backup file on the network drive, then restore from that. Never having done that, I don't know if it's as exact a restoration as the image (possible Registry issues, etc.?)

Restoring from a tape would be the same process, except the tape device may have to be configured in NTBackup before use. Another issue with tape backup is system theft; if someone stole your entire system including your tape drive, it could take a day to get another one to restore from your off-site tape(s). In contrast, any new computer you buy will have a CD-ROM drive so you can restore an image immediately. The hardware will likely be different, so you would need to boot in safe mode and set up drivers, but it's still the fastest way to get back to work.

One limitation is that your HDs must be accessible with real-mode drivers (e.g. standard IDE, SCSI, etc.) If not, DI can't see the drive to image it. One controller it won't work with is the Promise ATA/RAID controller for which there is no real-mode driver.

I got it for CAN$62 (about US$40). Cost of 4 Sony CD-Rs is about CAN$4.

Recommended. www.powerquest.com