Best/easiest disk imaging software?

[digitalwanderer]

Not for MY rig mind you, but for the new laptop we got coming. I want to do an immediate backup of the factory installed OS before I mess with it in case I have to return it to factory original for any reason.

I might try it on my system too, enough people have yelled at me too....

Any input would be appreciated. Free software is always preferred, but I'd shell out for this one too so if the professional stuff is better please say so.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

It's funny as I'm currently looking around at this sort of thing, and Acronis TrueImage 10 and HD Clone are on the top of my list at the moment.

 

[digitalwanderer]

I heard of Acronis, so I think I'll try that one for now.

 

[chavvdarrr]

Acronis

 

[Miksu]

We're using Acronis at work and it seems fine.

At home I've Nortong Ghost installed and it did its jobs fine yesterday when I returned my XP MCE image. Though be warned that you need to put the images to a secondary hard disk / partition because you can't restore them from a cd or dvd. Unless you have two cd-drivers. Ghost requires that it's boot cd is inserted into drive for the whole operation so you can't swap media at any time.

 

[Albuquerque]

We're using Acronis at work and it seems fine.

At home I've Nortong Ghost installed and it did its jobs fine yesterday when I returned my XP MCE image. Though be warned that you need to put the images to a secondary hard disk / partition because you can't restore them from a cd or dvd. Unless you have two cd-drivers. Ghost requires that it's boot cd is inserted into drive for the whole operation so you can't swap media at any time.

Only if you use their wizard for building your bootcd. I use WinPE for my boot needs and, when using one of the several ramdisk methods, I have zero issues imaging to or from whatever CD or DVD drive that I may or may not have booted from.

 

[ManicMouse]

Another vote for Acronis here.

 

[Frank]

Acronis is the current best.

One caveat: you need to make sure the computer is able to access and boot from the backup device you use before you make the image.

 

[Farid]

Doesn't the bloated and cluttered as heck latest version of Nero comes with a HDD back up soft?

Didn't try it, but maybe someone did and could say if it's worth the trouble essaying it.

 

[ManicMouse]

Yeah, it does. Never tried it because I already have Acronis TrueImage 10 and a bunch of their other utils.

Never did bother to even install Nero's addon crap - all I wanted is the burner software.