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Windows Disk Imaging

I’m no authority when it comes to disk imaging and Microsoft’s products. That is not to say that it isn’t needed, only that I haven’t used a Microsoft product in a serious enough environment to need to do that. Mainly I backup files and directories that I think are important and leave it at that. With my new Vista installation and all the trouble that it has been, I’ve decided to make a disk image of Vista’s current state and reinstall from that.

In this article drivesnaphot.de’s latest offering, Drive Snapshot for Windows Workstations Trial version 1.3, gets reviewed.

What’s in a name?

You might already be asking yourself; what’s the difference between Snapshot for Workstations and Snapshot for Servers? The difference, my friends, is in price, and price alone. In other words, there is no difference between the Server and Workstation versions. With the higher purchase price of the Server edition you purchase a license to use Snapshot on a server. You have the choice of purchasing either version as solely as a download for EUR 10 less. As intimated before, I’m testing the trial version which is good for 30 days. As stated on their web site all features are usable for 30 days, after which the ability to backup is disabled. Technically, after 30 days, if you want to continue using Snapshot you must purchase a license.

The Good

• Most notable is the ability to make an image of the partition or drive you are actually using. Meaning, you don’t have to boot from a live disk, or backup installation in order to make a disk image and your normal work flow remains uninterrupted.
• Also included is the ability to restore a single file or directory. You don’t have to restore an entire image just to recover one file or directory. In addition to the normal GUI, there’s a command line interface where you can automate backups.
• Drive Snapshot allows the creation of differential backups.
• Supported file systems include; FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, EXT2,EXT3, and ReiserFS. Unsupported file systems are stored in their entirety, ignoring any free space information.
• Since this is a workstation product the folks at drivesnapshot.de don’t expect you to have a server lying around. With this limitation in mind, by default the disk image is broken into several smaller CD friendly files. If the user wants to burn files to a DVD instead of a CD, the option of choosing a maximum file size is available.
• Supported Windows versions include Windows NT 4.0 Service pack 3, 2000, XP, 2003 Server, and even Windows PE. Support for Vista is planned for the near future. My tests confirm that Snapshot does work reliably with Vista.
• The installer is small in size, simple, and takes little time to get up and running.
• The 30 day free trial includes all features. This is a pretty big bonus, the only feature you lose after 30 days is the ability to make backups.
• Optionally, the image can be encrypted using the AES standard with a block and key length of 128-bits

The Bad

• While the program is easy to use, at times online documentation can be sparse and difficult to read.
• It’s not Snapshot’s fault, but for this review we’ll stick the following comment here. Before Snapshot will work in Vista, the program needs to be run with administrative privileges. To be fair, this is to be expected since Windows Vista is not yet supported.
• With Vista restoring to the same disk works well. Restoring to a new disk or partition requires restoring the partition structure. I spoke with the developer of Snapshot, and he is currently working on a fix for this.

Wrap Up

Drivesnapshot.de estimates average image size to be about 50% of the used disk space on a drive. My, quick and dirty test supports the claim of 50% of used space. A 24 Gig partition was split in to a total size of about 12.3 Gigs. Before running in Vista you’ll need to run the .exe with administrator privileges. If you don’t have an available Windows partition to reinstall from, options include DOS boot disks, Windows PE, and Snapshot’s own boot disk (currently you’ll have to pay EUR 10 extra for the disk). The developers are currently working on documenting this feature, but it is possible to create your own Snapshot like CD by downloading Snapshots’ disk image and running a few DOS commands. As a bonus, payment options include Credit or Paypal.