O&O DiskImage

When backing up data, a good idea is to compress the files, to prevent data corruption or other issues. O&O DiskImage offers a better solution. It gives you the possibility of creating virtual images with individual files or with entire drives. What's more, using the application is quite easy. The whole system can be backed up with nothing more than a few clicks. Thus, in the event of hardware or software failure, you will be able to recover any lost data, even if the operating system refuses to start.

The software is free to try for a limited period of time, without any functionality restrictions. It works on Windows XP and all later versions and it provides full support for both 32 and 64-bit operating systems. Installing O&O DiskImage is a quick and easy procedure, in which you can choose between a typical, full or custom installation.

When launched, O&O DiskImage will display a dashboard, from which you can access several features, for creating images of your local partitions or external drives, creating incremental or differential images and for backing up or restoring files and folders. In addition, the application lets you know if your drives were imaged and when and it also displays an option for creating an image right away, if you haven't created one. Recent activities are listed in the lower region of the window, where you can also find options for viewing the last report and for executing the last operation again.

To create a disk image, you only need to select a drive or a partition and click a Start button or a different one, if you wish to schedule the operation. If you decide to start an on-demand operation, a report window will show up, with various parameters, which can be changed if you want to. If you are satisfied with the settings, you must click a second Start button, on this new window and the application will start creating an image right away. Backing up files and folders can be done in a similar manner, but instead of drives and partitions, you have to select individual files or folders.

As mentioned above, backup operations can be scheduled as well. Depending on your settings, the application will execute your defined imaging job once, at a certain time and date or regularly, on a daily or weekly basis. What's more, O&O DiskImage can be set to create an image when a removable drive is plugged in. Besides choosing when to carry out an operation, you can also set the program to send email notifications, if the job is successful or not and to execute user-defined commands, before and after it creates a virtual image.

In addition, O&O DiskImage provides you with a large number of miscellaneous tools, for burning images, mounting them, checking drives and more. You can view them on the same interface or go to a specific tool right away, by selecting it in one of the top menus.