R-Drive Image 5.3.5305
R-Drive Image is a versatile, full-featured disk image application that can handle all your backup and restore needs. It can create and verify byte-by-byte exact copies of your hard drives, partitions, logical disks, and removable media, which you can then use to restore all your valuable data in case of data loss due to a disk failure or as a consequence of a virus attack.
Unlike other disk image applications, R-Drive Image supports no other image file type other than its own proprietary RDR file format. When it comes to restoring data, the program will also open ARC files (for compressed image files), but no support is provided for such popular formats as ISO, CUE/BIN, or NRG files, which may be a serious drawback for some potential users.
To compensate the limited number of formats supported, the program offers you a wide variety of useful features and utilities. It opens with a main menu where you can choose among such functions as create or restore an image, clone a disk, connect (and disconnect) an image as a virtual logical disk (mount the image to access its files), create a startup disk, check and verify the integrity of an existing image, schedule unattended disk image creations, and write scripts to create image files and append data to existing images (to be executed from a command line or a command file). All of these tasks will open their own wizard-like interface, thus guaranteeing that any user can use and benefit from this backup tool.
Modularity is one of the program’s beauties – it allows you to create an image file from your entire hard drive, one or more of its partitions, or from a logical disk. Another interesting asset is that these image files can be created and compressed on the fly without interfering in your operating system’s performance. The resulting file can be stored in a wide variety of media, from recordable disks to external drives and USB removable devices.
Except for the fact that the created image files can only be restored by using R-Drive Image (due to their proprietary nature), all in all this is an excellent tool to produce reliable and verifiable backup copies of both your operating system and all your valuable data.
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Review summary
Pros
- Wizard-like interface
- Offers a wide range of disk image related tools
- Creates byte-by-byte perfect clones of any hard drive or disc
- Saves bootable images in external drives and other removable media
Cons
- Creates and restores from proprietary RDR and ARC image files only
