Customer Reviews

Drive Image 2002

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(19)

 

 

Save yourself a headache and a few dollars and buy the previous version. I used Norton Ghost for years, until I upgraded to Windows XP and just could not get it to work. So I tried Drive Image 5, and kicked myself for not having bought it sooner. What a dream it was over Norton. Mainly, I could actually backup to my secondary hard drive from the Windows desktop. With Ghost, I ALWAYS had to boot from a floppy, then wait a few minutes till a screen showed up, then start the backup process. Even though Norton advertised you could do a backup from the desktop, the 2 techs I spoke with at Symantec told me they recommended backing up from a floppy.

After I made my first backup with Drive Image 5, I tested it by restoring the drive. Bingo! What a snap! Another feature I like about Drive Image 5 is it automatically writes over the previous image I created. With Ghost, I always had to stop and manually delete the previous image.

So I was especially happy when Drive Image 6 came out. And then I was especially disappointed after I got it going. First, they did away with the ability of Drive Image to overwrite the previous image automatically. (I felt like I was back to using Ghost.) And on top of that, it was a headache to delete the previous image: I just couldn't go to Explorer and delete it. I had to go to the Powerquest site and do a search, which I found quickly, on my problem. Their suggestion worked but now I was back in the land of Ghost.

I soon sickened of Drive Image 6's "memory error" messages. I have an 80-gb drive with tons of RAM. The last message I thought I'd ever see was a memory error.

I deleted Version 6 and am sticking with 5. If they bring back the features in 5 on the following upgrade, I'll definitely look to purchase. Other than that, not a nickel.

This is a complete reversal of a previous rating I submitted several weeks ago. One of the 'improvements' I picked up along with Windows XP was a little utility called "Go Back". It's a nice utility. Do NOT have it running when you use Drive Image. With that proviso (which IS covered in the manual), the program works with Windows XP as advertised.

The usefulness of Drive Image is that I can make an image of drive C:, a partition on which I place ONLY the Windows operating system and some vital utilities. All of my programs and data files are maintained on other partitions, and the actual image of Drive C: is placed on its own partition on the hard drive, with a backup copy on a CD. This is a configuration that allows an extremely rapid imaging/restoring process. Whenever Windows bombs or needs a cleanup to the point of reinstallation being necessary, a simple restoration of the boot disk from the image and I am back online in 30 minutes or less.

To their credit, PowerQuest worked with me to try to get Drive Image functioning, but I sabotaged the effort by not disabling Go Back. If you're familiar with previous versions of Drive Image, you won't be disappointed by this newest build. Just read the fine manual!

The big reason to purchase Drive Image is supposedly the Windows interface which is user friendly and easy to use.... if it works. On machines with SCSI as well as IDE drives, the Windows interface may not work (like on my machine) and you're back to booting disks to run the program (like Ghost). And it's not easy to find this information. It took me hours to come across this on the Powerquest website. Also, for support they want a copy of a file which cannot be created in Windows XP because it wants direct disk access and Windows won't permit it. I would imagine there is some way to run it, but hey, enough is enough just to get a question answered like "why won't this program work?".

I've bought two versions of drive image and recommended it to many friends. The concept is sound, create an image of your system in case disaster strikes.

The reality is not so good. I've tried to restore a drive image only to find the image was no good and any restore was impossible!! . One friend had a similar problem and a similar result - no restore!!.

These are not fancy systems but from major manufacturers!

Drive Image does NOT verify it has created a good image, by deflault, I believe.

When you view the manufacturer's web site you probably won't see any upgrades to the software. Upgrades and corrections, don't seem to merit any attention.

This, in my experience, is "myth-ware". Meaning it could serve a very good purpose but with my limited experience, I have to question whether it servers any purpose at all?

Our IT Consulting Company bought Drive Image 2002 for a customer. Even after five hours of work we could not get rid of error 1805 when writing data to more than one CD (although we read all the recommendations what to do when this well-known error occurs).

Forget this product. Our customer gets another software and we sell Drive Image 2002 somewhere in the Internet.

10Dec2002 ..... After reading all the reviews, I decided to purchase this program. One thing that became painfully obvious upon use was, this is not for the average user. Instructions are vague, documentation is lacking detail, and customer support via eMail is not any better, (that is, if you even get a reply). My experience with Power Quest and also owning Partition Magic 8.0 , is that this company does not stand behind it's products. Simple support question that should have been covered in manual or web site help files? Get real ... Because I don*t work for Power Quest, I have no financial gain in glossing over the many errors this program contains. I'm just an end user that want's a program that works out of the box, and I*m not willing to devote the hours necessary to make deep system changes in order to compensate a programs short comings. One thing I can say positive, is that it comes in a nice box. (system: AMD 1800+, WinXP, mass RAM & HD) Bob

Drive Image 2002 fails writing to SCSI CD-RW. Destroyed many CD-R disks trying to get it to work. Error code 1805. No help from their support people. Their customer service was nice to deal with, after a long telephone wait. I got an RMA and returned the unuseable software. Too bad since I love their Partition Magic product.

I bought DI 2002 and used it successfully on Win ME for a month or so to do unattended backups (after a HD failure). Upgraded to XP, then could not get it to work through Windows-- continual "out of memory" errors on reboot. NO useful info on PQ Tech Support website for XP or running through Windows, emails to Tech Support came back with "canned" responses pointing me to older solutions on website for problems booting from floppy disks.

Finally switched to Acronis TrueImage- yes, it won't run unattended, but it has a great simple interface and is much faster than DI, and you don't have to reboot to back up.

I tried Norton Ghost 2002 and it's a nightmare. I have a Windows 2000 environment. I wanted to be able to save a image file to a network drive. Fisrt, it took me hours to make the Ghost boot disk with IBM token ring pc card driver. Then, it turned out that Ghost can't just save a image file. It can only clone a drive, which means it would use my whole 60GB disk just to back up my 6GB disk! Finally, the long-waited Drive Image 2002 is out. I just used its wizard to create a virtual boot disk with NIC driver (friendly and easy process compare to Ghost's DOS clumsy interfacy) and then went through another wizard to make back up image. In a couple hours, I've backed up my desktop and laptop hard disks to my server. No sweat! Plus, I used the drive copy option to upgrade my desktop hard drive from 6GB to 40GB in an hour! Ghost is really just a ghost now.

I purchased DriveImage2000 simply so that I could copy my C: drive to my backup D: drive, which is nearly double the size of my C: drive. After one backup was done, it won't let me do another backup because it says my D: drive doesn't have enough space. It doesn't give the user the simple option of selecting whether the destination drive/media should be overwritten or not. Thus, if you want to do a backup, you MUST have completely blank media, or you must erase your destination media before you attempt to do any backup. Sorry folks, but I don't think I'm going to install a blank hard drive, or manually erase my existing backup hard drive every time (daily) I want to do a new backup. Their advertising on the box says, "You can schedule your hard drive to be automatically backed up daily, weekly, or monthly." What a bunch of bunk! That simply is UNTRUE unless your backup hard drive is many, many times larger than the drive to be backed up, or unless you manually erase everything that's on the backup hard drive each time a backup is done. If you do that, then why backup at all!? This software is worthless, and it's advertising is very misleading. It has a great number of limitations and one does not know the limitations until it is too late; (until after one has paid for the software and has broken the seal on the package).