Anyone Use Active @ Disk Image?

[sapphirescales]

I've been screwed over by HD Clone for the last time. I loved their old software (version 5) but every new version seems to get worse and worse. The latest update caused it to destroy the data on ALL drives connected to my imaging computer (including the internal OS drive) when I went to image a drive. I thought my hardware was to blame so I tried it on another computer with the same result. When I contacted the company, they said that it was a "known issue." Well thanks for causing many hours of work for me and losing my client's data.

So anyway, rant over. I used Active @ Disk Image many years ago and it was great. The only thing is, it looks the same as it did when I used it like 10 years ago. The most recent version was released in January of this year though, so I assume they've kept up on it. It just looks really outdated. I don't know how much they've improved the imaging process these last 10 years. HD Clone is always touting how they've completely re-engineered their copy algorithms and stuff and I see none of that on the changelog of Active @ Disk Image. Have they not improved the way the program images disks in 10 years? Does anybody here use this software?

 

[NviGate Systems]

The only "cloning" tools I trust are Paragon or Acronis (by using backup, verify then restore).

With UEFI and other firmware/SSD issues, I find the other companies are hit and miss. Sometimes they work, other times they mess up the partition tables and Windows won't boot. Sorry to burst that bubble. Paragon or Acronis were the only ones for me that gave consistent results.

I used Active @ Disk in the past. Sometimes OK, sometimes not. Mostly screwed up when dealing with GPT and changing partition sizes.

 

[sapphirescales]

The only "cloning" tools I trust are Paragon or Acronis

It's been years since I've tried Paragon, but the last time I looked at it, it didn't have an option to clone to an image. As for Acronis, the last time I tried using it was back in 2020. It caused my imaging computer to BSOD as soon as I turned on my USB hard drive dock. At first I thought it was my docking station so I bought another one, but it BSOD'd too. I uninstalled Acronis and it's been fine for over a year now.

HD Clone was the most reliable hard drive cloning software I've ever used. It's been getting worse and worse though so I have to look for an alternative. Either that or I'll just go back to using version 5, but version 5 is like 7 years old now. I have no idea how it would handle an NVMe drive. I'd prefer to find something modern that's decent. When was the last time you used Active @ Disk Image?

 

[NviGate Systems]

It's been a few years since I've used it. (like maybe 2016/2017) Does version 6 sound right?

Paragon 15 was the last version I purchased which does indeed support cloning to an image. You can even clone to VM or do a universal fix (can't recall the name) where you tried to boot Windows on different hardware.

 

[seashore]

I'd prefer to find something modern that's decent.

Macrium Reflect clones fine for me if the source drive is in good health. Doesn't cope well with a failing drive, even in 'forensic' mode, in which case I just Fabs it.

 

[TazUk]

Does anybody here use this software?

I used it up until recently. Had a few issues with booting after cloning so switched to Macrium Reflect.

 

[cypress]

I been using Macirum Reflect pretty much exclusively for the past 5 years.

 

[Sky-Knight]

Clonezilla or Macrium for me.

 

[sapphirescales]

I'm exploring O&O Disk Image too. I don't like that Macrium doesn't automatically resize partitions. I don't want to have to mess with that BS. I frequently restore an image to many different disk sizes and I don't want to have to worry about manually resizing partitions.

 

[Larry Sabo]

Let us know what you find as a suitable alternative to HDClone. I'm getting tired of having to repair boot problems with the clones it has made lately (9.1.11f). No way I'm paying the king's ransom for a Macrium commercial-use license.

 

[sapphirescales]

@Larry Sabo I've been using Active @ Disk Image (the free version) for the past few weeks and it's been perfect. I had problems with O&O Disk Image. I haven't done any large images (more than 200GB of data) so I can't speak to the reliability of those rare clones you get in where a client has 1TB+ worth of data on their C drive that you've got to clone over to a larger (2TB+) drive. I'm getting one of those suckers in tomorrow probably and I'll test Active @ Disk Image with this large clone.

I mostly only use images for deploying fresh installs of Windows. I recently got in a few dozen refurb laptops that I purchased and I'm loading them all up with Windows 11 using Active @ Disk Image. So far so good, even when imaging directly to the computers using my portable SSD (so I don't have to take them apart and remove their SSD's).

 

[SmallSpace]

I use Active @ Disk Image and find that I often need to run chkdsk after imaging to get the new drive to boot. The bootdisk allows you to restore an image to a no booting USB too.

 

[mattsnoddy]

Another vote for Macrium, with the caveats previously mentioned of bad sectors causing it to fail by default (you can turn on the option to skip bad sectors, but if the source is SSD, it can still fail) and the clone keeps the partition size. Not a huge deal to resize as long as you don't have another partition after it.

 

[thatdude]

Another vote for Acronis. Haven't used CloneZilla in years but great for simple cloning of any type of formatting or filesystem on the drive. I've used AOEMI as well and it's pretty good.

Keep in mind, we use Crucial SSDs almost exclusively. When you buy a Crucial SSD you get a free copy of Acronis (for Crucial) to download. As long as the computer you are working on has a Crucial SSD in it (or attached via USB) you can clone, backup, restore or whatever to any of the disks attached to that computer.

I've found that no matter what imaging software I use if the source has bad sectors it's best to backup the drive (skipping bad sectors) instead of a straight up clone to another drive. Usually I find out about the bad sectors when trying to clone. When that happens I kill the clone process, hook up a USB 3.0 drive and then backup the drive.

 

[fincoder]

if the source has bad sectors it's best to backup the drive (skipping bad sectors) instead of a straight up clone

Do you mean a drive image backup instead of clone? Just wondering how that makes any difference for a drive with bad sectors.

 

[Rigo]

I've been screwed over by HD Clone for the last time. I loved their old software (version 5) but every new version seems to get worse and worse. The latest update caused it to destroy the data on ALL drives connected to my imaging computer (including the internal OS drive) when I went to image a drive. I thought my hardware was to blame so I tried it on another computer with the same result. When I contacted the company, they said that it was a "known issue." Well thanks for causing many hours of work for me and losing my client's data.

So anyway, rant over. I used Active @ Disk Image many years ago and it was great. The only thing is, it looks the same as it did when I used it like 10 years ago. The most recent version was released in January of this year though, so I assume they've kept up on it. It just looks really outdated. I don't know how much they've improved the imaging process these last 10 years. HD Clone is always touting how they've completely re-engineered their copy algorithms and stuff and I see none of that on the changelog of Active @ Disk Image. Have they not improved the way the program images disks in 10 years? Does anybody here use this software?

I've been using Casper since Win XP's days for software cloning with no problem at all for reasonably healthy drives.
UEFI or MBR no problem.
Support by email is OK when I hit a snag but I'm quite happy with it.
Wasn't lucky with Acronis and Macrium, even paid for them and never used again after initial failures.

 

[Porthos]

If the drive has issues and will not image, I do a Fabs back up and start fresh with a new SSD.
I usually know it won't image after a cristal disk info scan.

Cloning takes up bench time my clients never want to pay for.

 

[thatdude]

Interestingly enough @fincoder I've found and have taught my techs that cloning a drive directly to an SSD is great! UNLESS that original drive has bad sectors. I don't know exactly why but often times when a drive has bad sectors the cloning process will fail at some point during the process.

I'll elaborate. When prompted while doing a clone by the imaging/cloning software you can answer a prompt that states something like, "Bad sectors. Would you like to skip bad sectors?". If you answer yes the clone will often fail. But, if you backup the drive to external media and skip bad sectors when prompted you'll get a good backup that you can restore to a new SSD. Weird, huh?

I've seen this with at least three different backup programs. So, if you try to clone and it fails, it's time to drop ten and punt. Get a "backup" image and then restore it to an SSD. It takes longer but probably not as long as running (and risking) a checkdisk on the original problem drive....with bad sectors.

Note: I have not seen this problem a couple of times. I've seen it several times. Get a backup image skipping bad sectors and restore it to an SSD. After you've got it up and running, run checkdisk on the new drive.

 

[Rigo]

Get a backup image skipping bad sectors and restore it

Wow!
That's a very neat trick! Thanks mate.
I'll have to try it next time bad sectors prevent a clone from booting.
I used to just use the clone for data extraction to a N&P new system then slog through re-installing the required programs if they had their licenses.
That the re-installation of the programs the main drive for cloning as most customers had long lost the keys. Even came across cases where the ladies dutifully transferred their cds to cd albums and tossed the sleeves with the license keys. Didn't know the media were useless with the key.
Neat but now useless

 

[fincoder]

Get a "backup" image

Just to be clear, when you say clone, or image backup, you're referring to those functions in Acronis? If so it may be a quirk with Acronis.