R-Drive Image 7.1 review: The best backup now supports VHD and WinPE

Best Prices Today: R-Drive Image 7

With quite a lot of free backup packages accessible, together with people who ship together with your working system, R-Drive Image is a program I’d pay for. That’s about as nice a praise as I can supply to a chunk of software program.

The motive is straightforward. In all of the years I’ve been utilizing the low-resource-consuming program (almost 20), it’s by no means failed as soon as at its main job of making photographs of partitions or disks. Nearly each different backup program I’ve used has hiccupped in a technique or one other. In reality, I take advantage of R-Drive Image for backing up my backups and failing onerous drives, the place you might not get a couple of shot at it.

This overview is a part of our ongoing roundup of the best backup software. Go there for info on competing merchandise and the way we examined them.

Version 7 launched a friendlier interface; file and folder backup; and a partition supervisor that made this system considerably extra versatile. If the corporate ever rolls in its wonderful R-Studio restoration software program, the boot disk rely in my restore equipment will go down to precisely… one. Now there’s a brand new model that expands these capabilities even additional.

R-Drive Image: What’s new

Version 7.1 addresses considered one of my primary complaints about R-Drive Image previously: its full reliance upon its personal proprietary photographs. While this system has by no means glitched for me, my choice with any backup program is to maintain a few backups round in VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) format, which you’ll be able to mount utilizing nothing however the Windows working system (or macOS with the assistance of VirtualField or different software program).

Note that model 7 did help the high-end Hyper-V VMDK format on the company stage.

The different main excellent news for Windows customers is the addition of a WindowsPE boot disc. The Windows Pre-install Environment (Windows 10) might supply some Windows-only drives not accessible from Linux and permit booting on some techniques with Secure Boot enabled within the BIOS.

There’s additionally now the choice to transform partition layouts from MBR (Master Boot Record) to GPT (GUID Partition Table) and vice versa. I’ve by no means had the necessity, however some techniques boot higher utilizing one or the opposite. AES-XTS picture encryption is now supported and you can too resize the C: (OS) partition with out having to reboot afterwards. Lastly, there’s a new choice to test a number of photographs for errors with a single command.

R-Drive Image: Interface

R-Drive Image maintains the brand new interface that was launched with model 7.0. The previous model was environment friendly, however dated in look. The present GUI not solely has a extra trendy look, the workflow needs to be a tad extra intuitive to the typical person. Below you possibly can see the older model (higher left), in addition to the brand new one (backside), plus my private favourite: the character-based interface that I take advantage of to intimidate clients wanting over my shoulder.

Both the brand new GUI and DOS-like interfaces can be found from the Linux boot disc, nonetheless the WinPE model options the brand new GUI solely. Alas, the brand new partitioning services are solely accessible from the trendy GUI. Honestly, I can’t be too sore in regards to the omission, as porting it to the older DOS-like GUI would seemingly be quite a lot of work. But, hey, R-Tools, if you happen to’re ever bored….

R-Drive Image: Features

R-Drive Image will create full (all information), incremental (all information modified for the reason that final picture), or differential (all information modified for the reason that unique full picture) photographs. It may also confirm them, copy disk-to-disk (cloning), and mount photographs as digital disks that you may browse and get better particular person recordsdata and folders from. It understands Microsoft’s FAT (16/32), NTFS, and exFAT codecs; Apple’s HFS/HFS+, and APFS; in addition to the Little and Big Endian variants of UFS1/UFS2 and Ext2/Ext3/Ext4 FS (Linux), and ReFS.

Other file techniques are supported on a byte-by-byte (all sectors are backed up—containing information or not) foundation with no preview or file-level entry from throughout the program. R-Drive Image additionally helps {hardware} RAID (as single volumes) and software program RAID: Windows, Apple, and Linux mdadm. You can save your photographs nearly wherever and to simply about any media. The program even burns CDs and DVDs by itself. Don’t snicker—optical media remains to be in widespread use for company archiving.

Jon L. Jacobi

Related options embody electronic mail notifications on job completion; working packages primarily based on the success or failure of the method; the flexibility to bypass file or disk errors and proceed the job (nice for recovering information); utilizing Windows or its personal proprietary shadow service (flushing and locking information); in addition to job throttling (diminished CPU utilization).

Scheduling is supported, and I like that it leverages the prevailing Windows job scheduler. Too many distributors add their very own for no significantly good motive. It’s additionally good reassurance that there’s no ongoing telemetry (communications between this system and the corporate) in play. Not to be paranoid, however that’s one thing you would possibly need to take into account when offering low-level entry to your information.

Before model 7.0, R-Drive Image would again up solely whole partitions or drives. Now it could actually create the identical sort of picture recordsdata from teams of recordsdata or folders you choose. You can’t use these for catastrophe restoration, simply to revive mentioned recordsdata or folders. This permits for quick backup of your important information and might scale back storage necessities drastically.

Jon L. Jacobi

R-Drive Image additionally includes a partition supervisor, which lets you delete, safe wipe, create, and re-size partitions with out leaving the R-Drive Image interface. As talked about, it’s accessible solely from the graphic interfaces (Windows native and Linux/WinPE boot disks). Sigh.

R-Drive Image: Performance

As I’ve mentioned, R-Drive Image has been 100 % dependable for me over time. It may even skip unhealthy sectors and replica what stays, although this may be an exceedingly lengthy process when you have quite a lot of learn failures. Aside from that, R-Drive Image is sort of quick. Version 7.x averaged round 90MB/s studying, compressing, and writing 650GB of knowledge to a SATA SSD in my testing, in addition to to a community location.

Just FYI, R-Drive Image constantly over-estimates the time a job will take initially. Sometimes by a really great amount. No doubt it’s assuming a worst-case situation, reminiscent of backing up non-compressible information to an previous, sluggish onerous drive. If you see an exorbitant time, click on begin and also you’ll seemingly be pleasantly shocked on the velocity of the backup.

Jon L. Jacobi

When I say R-Drive Image consumes few sources, I’m not kidding. The minimal system requirement is simply that the CPU be Intel-based. If you’re utilizing older {hardware}, R-Drive Image is by far your greatest wager. I wrote most of this text with a really giant backup working on my 2015 iMac (working Windows by way of Boot Camp) and forgot it was in progress. Note that the corporate’s R-Studio helps Apple Silicon, so maybe there’s ARM help in R-Drive Image’s future.

Oddly sufficient, I did get my first-ever R-Drive Image error code with model 7.0 (7000 construct) when choosing the modify perform of the partition supervisor on an exterior, exFAT-formatted USB drive. It was non-fatal, which signifies superior error-checking, and R-Tools shipped me a repair (construct 7001) nearly instantly. Yes, the corporate is that devoted and responsive.

While R-Drive Image affords nearly each choice and have you possibly can consider for native and community use, I’d nonetheless foyer for multiple-destinations per job and help for on-line storage companies. Add these and I’m considering it will get one other half star.

Note that I examined a pre-release model of 7.1.

Should you purchase R-Drive Image?

As I mentioned, I got here near awarding R-Drive Image 7.1 a 5-star score. It matches the competitors in ease of use and options, and is a tier up by way of reliability and {hardware}/OS compatibility. Put bluntly, it’s the one you need.

Now friendlier and extra suitable because of VHD and WinPE help, it’s as shut as you may get to a one-stop resolution backup and partition resolution. While not good, this system’s options and reliability in addition to the corporate’s dedication to perfection got here near incomes it my first 5-star score. I’d nonetheless like a number of locations per job, however R-Drive Image is the one you need.

Editor’s observe: Because on-line companies are sometimes iterative, gaining new options and efficiency enhancements over time, this overview is topic to alter with a purpose to precisely mirror the present state of the service. Any adjustments to textual content or our last overview verdict will likely be famous on the prime of this text.