Uh… where was I? Disk images? Remind me to create a disk image of my brain one of these days… What Do You Need from Your Disk Image?Īside from a bootable copy of your brain, there are a couple of different reasons why you might want to create a copy of a disk drive. We used to be forced to copy data over a 9600 baud serial link! Uphill! Both ways! In a snowstorm! Old guy voice: In fact, I’ve been using computers since before they even hadhard disks *waves cane*. All of them required me to work with disk images in some way. I’ve built gaming computers, office computers, media centers, and retro gaming console clones. Since then, I’ve been fascinated with every aspect of these wonderful machines.

I played my first computer game as a very young child at school. My name is Thomas, and I’ve been using computers at work and play for about 30 years.

How We Picked Hard Drive Cloning Software.What’s the Difference Between Cloning and Imaging?.Look no further than SuperDuper if you are on a Mac computer. Neither of these options has the kind of complete feature set you’ll find in purchased software, but they might be enough for your needs. If you’re looking for something simpler and (infinitely) cheaper, Macrium Reflect Free is a good option for Windows users. If the worst should happen, you’ll still be able to restore your data from your off-site disk image. There’s even an Acronis cloud storage service available that allows you to store a drive image at a separate location-definitely “best practice” from a data security perspective. True Image’s automatic backup features are extremely useful and fully customizable to match any schedule and backup style. However, you can still clone and image Linux drives. It’s not yet available for Linux unless you buy in at the enterprise level. The two versions work almost identically, so you can use the same program across all your devices. It has a great set of tools for creating disk images, cloning drives, and performing automatic backups wrapped in a modern, user-friendly interface. The best disk imaging program I’ve tested is Acronis True Image. We performed an exhaustive review of every major app available. You never know when a drive’s hardware might fail, and ransomware that encrypts your data to extort money from you is a genuine and growing problem.īut there are so many options! Where do you begin selecting a cloning and imaging app that works for you? That’s where we come in.

Even if you’re not a tech expert, creating a bootable backup copy of your hard drive is a sensible safety precaution.

Macrium reflect cloning program