Customer Reviews

Powerquest Drive Image 7

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(23)

 

 

This is about the 4th version of Drive Image that I've run over the last few years and it is easily the most impressive.

I upgraded from Drive Image 5 to DI 7 a few weeks ago and have been steadily wowed by the new version.

Backups I've made with this software have now saved me twice -- once when I got a little too zealous with some file cleanup efforts, and once when an major software update failed in the middle. In both cases, I simply restored my previously saved backup image and within minutes everything was fine again.

The single most important new feature is the ability to backup and restore while XP is active so you have easy access to network drives, USB drives, SCSI drives, full DMA support, etc -- all items that used to be problematic when backing up under DOS in previous versions.

The DMA support (under Windows) and the new version boosted my backup speeds from one hard drive to another from 140MB/min to about 750MB/min. It's astonishing -- a 4 gigabyte backup takes 3 minutes on my 1.7ghz P4 machine with 2 IDE hard drives!

DI7 now has the ultimate backup feature that I've been lusting after for many years -- unattended scheduling of backups. Previous versions allowed for backups to be scheduled but they had to be done when Windows wasn't active, or they couldn't include the system drive. Both restrictions are gone with this version -- simply set up a backup schedule and the Drive Image service will "wake up" and perform your backup with the OS active, whether you are logged in or not. All you have to do is clear off some hard drive space on another drive, sit back, and your drive will just automatically back itself up! Fabulous!

Some of the other posters have touched on the downsides to the software -- DI is sensitive to the type of drives you are using -- it has limits with size and type (no Serial ATA yet, according to another poster). Previous versions were limited to 120GB drives, this one is limited to 160GB drives (I believe). Plenty big enough for me but it's something to be aware of.

I was a little surprised initially when I went to restore my backed up system drive because I had to restart the system and boot off the DI 7 CD -- but this makes sense as you wouldn't want to wipe out the disk image of your currently running system drive. That would be a bit like sawing off the tree limb that you're standing on -- it's hard to fault PowerQuest for this.

I also encountered a minor bug when backing up a drive to a CD after turning on the "maximum compression" setting -- it got to the final stages of burning the CD and then reported that an "unknown exception" had occurred. The problem vanished when I repeated this at the "default compression" setting.

I highly recommend this software. This has been the most exciting software upgrade for me for the last year -- way to go PowerQuest!

PowerQuest DriveImage 2000 was a decent disk image backup program. It helped me recover from crashes several times, and I was able to clone my boot drive on a new computer with it. Also, the file editor allows you to pick out individual files to recover--great if you accidentally delete something. Given the usefulness of its predecessor, I had high hopes for version 7.0. Regrettably, DI 7.0 is not a reliable product. It has some very nice features, such as (allegedly) better Windows integration than the previous version, but it seems more than a bit buggy.

First of all, DI 7 _does_ work on 2 of the 3 PCs I "administer" at my home. One of these is an older P3 box with a couple of IDE drives, the other is a Shuttle with a P4 Celeron and 1 100G SATA drive. However, DI does _not_ work on my main PC--a 2400mhz P4 with 2 SATA drives and 2 IDE drives. The problem is that DI refuses to recognize my boot drive--the one I really need to back up. I've corresponded with PowerQuest about this, and all they would say is that they do not support SATA and cannot say when or if they ever will.

There are some other issues--the V2i service complains about "missing" disks when Windows starts up, and the GUI windows behave strangely, making the product difficult to use.

I really wish PQ would get their act together--this _could_ be a really good backup option. I would expect defects like this in beta software--it's not right to release it in this condition, and provide no recourse for customers. As another reviewer noted, PQ does not have a "satisfaction guaranteed or your money back" policy--it's more like "We've got your money, so sod off!" Caveat emptor.

I've used Norton Ghost PE for several years on a Win 2k system. I can never be sure if I have a good Ghost backup or not. Often, I've had to rebuild my system from scratch after a disk crash when I discovered my Ghost backup was corrupted.

Overall, I've been very pleased with Drive Image 7. It makes a perfect backup of Windows 2k when Windows is running. Each time I've needed to restore, it has worked flawlessly. I am backing up to an external USB drive. When restoring, Drive Image 7 has no difficulty recognizing and restoring from the USB hard drive.

The negatives:
1) Have been unable to create a DVD-RW backup. It will run for over 24 hours trying to backup 7 gigs of data. I've never been successful doing this. I have come to the conclusion this software is incapable of backup to DVD.

2) It could just be my setup, but when booting from the Drive Image disk I am unable to see any other PC's on my local network. I've not spent much time troubleshooting this aspect, but from my limited experience so far, networking after bootup from the Drive Image CD will not work.

However, if you want to backup your data to a locally connected hard drive I don't think you can beat this software.

Hopefully future releases will fix the DVD and networking problems. When these problems are fixed, I don't think you could find a better solution to automated backups than Drive Image 7.

Drive Image 7 is potentially excellent software with at least two absolutely show-stopping bugs that make it impossible for me to recommend.

1. Under some circumstances, DI7 makes an un-readable backup. Attempt to open your backup in the Backup Image Browser (DI7's image reader) and get the message "Invalid Backup Format." This situation does not become obvious until you attempt to read your backup, something you normally don't do until you try to restore information you thought you had backed up. The knowledge base articles for the error indicate that turning on a backup verification switch in the software will cause the backups to be unreadable. The solution they recommend is to make another backup with the switch turned off. Obviously this is not an option unless you know about the problem before you need to use the backup.

2. If DI7 encounters an error during a regularly scheduled backup, it aborts the backup and remains silent. The only way to know that something has gone wrong is to look at the date of the last backup image, or to view the log information buried deep in the DI7 console. Errors that abort the backup occur more often than you might think. One common scenario is to run out of storage space on the target volume. What this means is that a periodic backup that has been working for a while can one day stop working, and Drive Image 7 will never tell you that this has happened. For a product that sells itself on convenient peace-of-mind, this is unacceptable.

3. Symantic tech support is non-responsive. I have waited more than a month for a response to my questions about the Invalid Backup Format problem. I have received nothing but an automated acknowledgement that I submitted the question.

Based on these fundamental problems, I cannot recommend the regular use of this software.

I purchased DI 7 because of the accolades it supposedly received. I knew I was going to need it since I was going to be getting a new hard drive for my failing hard-drive in my Dell laptop. At first, I was impressed how easy it was to backup my C:/ drive from my laptop to an external firewire hard drive. I even tested the Recovery Environment as it suggested, and that seemed to work without a hitch.

Then the day came that I replaced my old hard drive with a new hard drive. I started out doing a bare metal recovery as it touts it can do effortlessly.... It didn't work. It gave me an error that my hard drive was not readable. So, I thought, I could just reinstall XP and then restore everything after I had the basic OS up and running. I tried it that way, and same result. Nothing.

I consider myself an advanced computer user.... I know how to partition, reformat drives, etc etc.... All I wanted was an application that would make my life easier as the software said it would. It turns out I wasted $69.00 on this usless software. I guess I'll keep looking for another drive imaging application, because Drive Image 7 isn't worth squat. Good luck.

First let me say I have used the Drive Image product for a number of years (since version 2 I believe). It has been a great program and has saved me countless hours when I have experienced hard drive failures and loaded software that corrupted my machine. It is highly recommended, but beware of version 7.

There is a bug out there in version 7 waiting for Windows XP users. I received my version 7. Upon loading I promptly received an error message when requested to reboot that I had an unmountable drive. I tried to use normal "last good confirguration". Na da. Basically, I had to rebuild my operating system to save my data and then used Drive Image 2002 (version 6) to reimage my system. It was not pretty, but it worked. When I informed the folks who produce Drive Image (Powerquest) I was told after two weeks that my problem had been encountered by others and that they were working on a patch. Last time I checked the problem and the patch still were unloaded. I cannot afford to have a machine that is not backed up completely. I live in Florida the lightening capital of the world. Powerquest did refund my money and I have gone back to using version 6 with my Windows XP operating system.

FYI - Version 6 comes bundled with Version 7. I wonder why. So... if your are upgrading from version 6 to 7 beware. If you don't have version 6 or 7 you can't lose. One is sure to work for you. Again, basically a great program, better than Norton Ghost.

I ignored the warnings of others that I read here and ordered this. The Drive Image 7 product that I received from the Amazon.com seller had a big problem (old version perhaps?).
It created drive backups OK but when I tried to boot the product disk to load the "Power Quest Recovery Environment" to do a system restore it failed solid with TXTSETUP.OEM error 18.
Turns out that the product disk was burned with a directory that had its name truncated on the CDROM. Unbeliveable but true.
After editting a copy of the disk's image to correct things, and reburning it I have it working, but I now no longer feel I can trust this product to do the backup tasks that I bought it for.
Symantec web site wants money before helping you, so forget that option your all on your own.

I have used various versions of Drive Image for 4 years. All have had problems but version 7 has more problems than previous versions. I have encountered a number of the problems I have seen mentioned here. I just put on the upgrade to 7.3 (on a very stable Windows 2000 system), hoping it would fix some of the problems, and it instantly crashed my system and made my system unbootable!!! What an atrocious disgrace. And now that Symantec (Norton) has taken over the product and its support, there is virtually no support or help. The support on the web site is terribly lacking and almost useless. The error messages the product gives are often undocumented.

Particularly bad, as mentioned by someone else, is that DI can create a backup image and say it is successful. But when it later views the image it says the image is invalid. That's as bad as it gets with backup software. The reason I still use Drive Image (I am back to using DI 5 as it is less error-prone than DI 7)is that I have had even bigger problems with Norton Ghost. I wish there was a good and reliable software product for making image backups, but haven't found one yet.

I've used the predecessor of this product--DriveImage 2000, and had pretty good luck with it. In fact, it has saved my bacon more than once. DI 2000 had its problems though--for example, I could never make it work by scheduling a backup from Windows 2000 and then rebooting, though the documentation (and their support people) said this should work. I always had to boot DI from floppies to make disk backups. So I bought the new Drive Image 7.0, figuring that PowerQuest was bound to get it right this time around. I was wrong.

PowerQuest cleaned up the interface nicely, and it does look glitzy. It probably works pretty well too, like its predecessor, though I haven't been able to try it out myself. You see, this version has a defect I haven't found a workaround for: it won't recognize my boot drive. That's right, when the DI interface comes up, it lists every drive on my PC except for the boot drive (C:). And of course that's the one I really want to back up.

I've got an Abit IS7E motherboard, and am running 3 hard drives: 2 of them are Serial ATA (SATA), including the boot drive, and one is IDE. Drive Image can only find D: and E:, but not C:

I emailed PowerQuest support (I only got the support email by complaining to a sales person, by the way) with my problem, and was told that DI does not support SATA, and that they cannot say when or if the product will ever do so. Since SATA is catching on rapidly (no more ribbon cables! Yeah!), this seems like a pretty major defect to me--one that prospective buyers should be warned against.

So this might be a really useful product for you--unless you have the very newest hardware or intend to buy some in the future. PowerQuest has a "no money back" policy, by the way. Caveat Emptor.

a great upgrade from drive image 2002
under the last version, a backup would take hours and had to be done in a DOS environment. Now it can be done in 15 min and in windows. WOW!! This is the software I've wanted for a long time. I"ve used norton ghost too, and this is better than that. save yourself any hassles and just get this. it ships with drive image 7 (windows xp users only) and also the 2002 version for those people who don't use windowsxp

You need the CD to do any restoring of images.