http://www.ComputerBob.com/reviews/review_image_for_dos.php .
.
.
by ComputerBob
September 19, 2005
Last Updated September 25, 2005
Any geek who has ever had a catastrophic problem with Microsoft Windows knows that it takes less than an hour to reformat a hard drive and reinstall Windows. Sadly, it might take several days to completely reinstall and reconfigure all of the software that you use so that it looks and works exactly the way it did before the problem. I stayed up really late the past few nights, looking for the best way to create reliable disk images of my Windows 98 SE hard drive. My favorite PC newsletter, The LangaList, provided a valuable overview of the imaging process, but I found its recommended imaging process to be very clunky. So, I read a lot of reviews, tried some free trials of imaging software -- which cost up to $79 (U.S.) to register -- and then decided to buy and use Image For DOS (IFD) v1.93 by TeraByte Unlimited, which costs less than $20 (U.S.) and can run from a hard drive, a bootable floppy disk or a bootable CD, using DOS (not Windows). It can create images of FAT, FAT32, and NTFS partitions, and can also create bootable CD/DVD backups.
TeraByte's other products, Image For Windows (IFW) and BootIt Next Generation (BING) can also create disk images, but those products cost more and have features that I don't want or need. For example, IFW runs from within Windows, which makes it easier to use than IFD or BING. Unfortunately, IFW can't create an image of a Windows 98 SE hard drive while Windows 98 SE is running, so IFW requires you to use IFD (included when you purchase IFW) to do that task, which makes IFW useless for my purposes. Like IFD, BING runs in DOS (not Windows), but BING is designed for those who are very technically oriented and who want the ability to create / resize / delete hard drive partitions and/or run multiple operating systems. All three products allow you to save a disk image to a separate partition, to a separate hard drive, or to CDs/DVDs (if you have a CD or DVD burner). IFD and IFW also allow you to save images directly to network drives (to do that with IFD, the network must be available while in DOS). Terabyte offers a free 30-day trial of each product, so you can download and try them all and then decide which one fits your needs the best, knowing that they can all read each other's disk images. NOTE: While the trial versions are full-featured, any disk images that you create with the trial versions will become unusable at the end of the trial period.
On my main computer, the C: drive takes up about 1.3 GB of a 2 GB partition, and it includes Windows 98 SE and all of the software that I use. I store all of my data on a separate partition (the D: drive), and I make daily backups of it on a separate hard drive plus I also make occsasional backups of it on CDs. It only took about 5 minutes to create a bootable Image For DOS CD containing the 2 necessary IFD files. Then I booted my computer with that CD and answered about 6 questions about which partition to create an image of (my C: drive), where to store the image (my CD drive), and a few other details. For the next 25 minutes, I watched as Image For DOS created and validated a 2-CD compressed disk image of my entire C: drive. All I had to do was put CDs into my CD burner when it prompted me to do so. The first image CD is bootable and includes IFD software to restore the entire image to my computer's hard drive. According to the IFD User's Guide, the whole process would have taken about half the time if I hadn't enabled the optional byte-for-byte comparison of the source (hard drive) and backup (CD) data. By the way, that comparison concluded that my disk image was flawless.
Many disk imaging products only allow you to restore entire disk images, not individual files or folders. Fortunately, TeraByte also offers a small, free utility called TBIView, that gives Windows Explorer the ability to view and extract individual files or folders from disk images that were created by IFD, IFW, or BING. TBIView was a tiny download that took less than one second to install. Now when I view my disk image CDs in Windows Explorer, instead of seeing one large, compressed image file on each CD like I did before I installed TBIView, I see every single file and folder that was imaged, with exactly the same structure as my C: drive. I can easily extract files and folders from the CD back onto my hard drive (or to any other local or network drive). From now on, I'll create a new disk image before I make any major changes to my PC. Then, if anything goes wrong, whether it affects one or more files, one or more folders, or the entire hard drive, I'll be able to quickly and easily restore my computer back to exactly the way it was before I made the changes. I have a feeling I'm going to sleep really well tonight.
UPDATE: For a method to backup Windows 95/98/SE/ME systems, using totally free software, see
How To Clone A Win95-WinME System, which you can find in my
Guest Articles section.