PowerQuest Drive Image: Driven to Duplicate| PC Community Computer Users Group | |||
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PowerQuest Drive Image: Driven to DuplicateYes, I should have backed up my hard drive long ago. The last time was February 2001. You too? Thank goodness everything is still working. Drive Image 5.0 will back up all my partitions to CD and I can sleep peacefully knowing my data is protected. There are emergency floppies to make and use in event of a crash, a way to backup system upgrades, and a way to do this upgrade backup automatically.
I advise you in advance that the product does what it is supposed to do and that it is easy to use once you understand what the words mean. Getting to that point wasn’t easy, however. Here’s the chronology of events.
First, I updated up the system using SystemSuite 2000, which cleaned up the registry, defragged the partitions, and corrected errors. Next, I installed Drive Image. Done. To begin the backup you look for “Drive Image” but, not finding it, open QuickImage (not Drive Image as you’d expect) where you fill in a file name. I gave it the drive letter of my CDROM drive and “backup” as suggested: “I:\backup.pqi.” For “Image description” I wrote “Backup of C: drive.”
Next, select partitions to be backed up. I filled in “C:” Next, “Save.” Then message: “Make sure image filename path is available in DOS and is in 8.3 format.” I have no idea what “8.3 format” means. Click “Continue” and it asks for “Definition name.” What do you suppose that should be? No help on this. I gave it “I:drvc802.”
Next an error message “Unable to write ‘path’.” Why? I dunno. Go to the manual to look up error message. The manual says “Run Setup, click Documentation, click Error Documentation” on CD. I don’t see Documentation so I do a search of the CD for “documentation.” The word is not on the CD. The book suggests going to PowerQuest Support on the web and looking at the “Master Error List” which I did. The errors are numbered to over 10,000 and are not alphabetized. I could do a “Find” and hope for something, but f—k, I can’t even get started and it’s bedtime. Maybe a stiff drink first.
Next Day. OK, sleep has adjusted my attitude and I’m ready to try again. If I were to make a program to back up a hard drive I’d call it something like “Backitup.” Then I’d have an installation program followed by a few simple questions: What do you want to back up? Where do you want to back it up to? What do you want to call your backup?”
But it doesn’t look at first like those are the questions asked. The good news is there are only a few hurdles of understanding to get past, and then the process is simple. Here are the questions they ask and what they mean. (It took some trial and error to figure this out.)
First, I bought a program called Drive Image, but there is no file by that name to run. There are about a half dozen icons to choose from, only two seem to fit with backing up, one of these is an “editor” and the other is “Quick Image.” It turns out the latter’s the one to start the program. After filling out forms and registering, the first window opens.
There are three things to fill in: Image filename, Image description, and select partitions. Image filename means what is says, but it includes specifying the destination drive in this format: “H:\backup.pqi.” Image description is whatever you want to describe for future reference what this backup is. For me it was “Backup of C: drive August 2002.”
Select partitions is the next command. What does it mean? How? It turns out it means “Select the partitions you want to back up”. In my case it was simply C:. But you don’t just type in “C:” to select that partition, because you can’t. First you have to notice one of two buttons near the bottom of the window called “Select Partitions.” Blessedly, a window opens with a column of all your partitions. Just click on the drive of choice, in my case C:. Did that. You cannot select more than one partition. Now what? Nothing happens. So you look for a “next” button or “continue” but there is no such logical progression. As you look around you notice one button near the top of the screen, among five, called “Create Image.” Seems logical. Click it. You’re right! A small window confirms you have done everything right and advises the computer will now reboot in DOS and back up your partition. If you’re backing up to a CD just pop a CD-R or –RW in the drive, click OK, and break for dinner.
The progress screen has two progress bars, one called “Store” and the other “Copying Data.” What, I wonder, is the difference? As I watch these two bars I notice that the amounts in the two bars are always identical. So, why two bars? Odd. Redundant.
After drive C is copied to the CD and feeling inflated with enormous pride and joy for having been successful I decided to copy drive D. Returning to the opening screen I changed the Image filename and Image description to D:, properly selected drive D, and clicked the “Create Image” button. To my surprise the program said it was now creating the image of drive D but named it an image of drive C:. Now I understand you have to first select “New” or it will just add the image to the last one done.
So this is the learning curve. It took me several hours of trial, error, and much frustration to finally understand the process. Now that I’ve done that backups will be quick and easy in the future. Drive Image will also do incremental backups automatically based on the last backup performed. A comment about the book, the User Guide.
Much of this frustration could have been avoided if I knew where to look in a 100-page book and if I could interpret properly what the instructions meant. For me it was like walking into an unfamiliar Home Depot looking for one small item to be found somewhere among thousands of others. It would be so simple if you already knew where to find it. There is a “Quick Reference” guide, but there are seven processes to “quick start” and without any experience and no “Drive Image” in sight it’s puzzling to know which to choose. There was no simple guide to a successful first time.
The program allows you to schedule tasks, restore an image, resize the partitions on the new drive, create an image on a two-hard-drive system, and create, delete, or extend partitions. You can copy several partitions to a single image file, split an image into segments, add a password to an image, and compress an image file up to 50%.
Drive Image comes with a second program included called DataKeeper which is designed to backup just the changes in files on your hard drive.
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Product Information:Drive Image 5.0 MSRP $69 |
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