Active@ Disk Image 23

Active@ Disk Image is data backup/restoration utility. As we all know, data security is a major issue in any company and even for home users. Everyone must have experienced data loss and I know that it's not funny at all to start scouting for data recovery applications. Besides, we all know that it's best to prevent than to fix problems.

This data backup utility appears to be a pretty cool tool. The user interface is nice and easy to use. Each task has it's own wizard which will take you through the steps of any task. You can use the program to create normal or compressed images for partitions or entire disks.

You can also create RAW disk image files (also used for backing up non-windows operating systems). Backups can be saved on local drives, on CDs/DVDs or on the network. It took me 24 minutes to create an uncompressed backup image for a 35 Gb partition with 10 Gb of data on it. That's a pretty decent time, I reckon. You should imagine that RAW images take longer to create and they are a lot larger, as well.

Images that have already been created can be mounted and explored as well as checked for errors before restoring them. The good thing is that the program can create boot loaders that can be started from CDs/DVDs or USB Flash sticks. This is very useful in case your system crashes and there's no way to boot into the operating system.

Besides backing up, restoring and exploring images, you can clone entire disks.This means that you can make a sector-by-sector copy of an existing disk or partition directly to another disk or partition. All operations can be scheduled and you can choose the number of backups to be stored. Logs containing all the operations performed will be stored in order to keep a clean record of your backups.

Pluses: Archive splitting is available for large images as well as password protection.

Drawbacks / flaws: You can't create a list of files/folders to be ignored while performing backups.

In conclusion: Although there's a small drawback, this is one of the most effective backup utilities.

version reviewed: 3.0.089