Disk Image Software

Any PC user knows that the first thing after installing the fresh operating system is to back it up either creating its image or cloning it. Those who had trouble with persistent and indestructible malware know how much it can be painful when the only solution is to format main partition and install operating system all over again. Although OS reinstallation takes around 10-15 minutes with modern operating systems and hardware it is still a great headache when you need to reinstall all of your programs from scratch and this can last a lot longer than a mere OS reinstall. This also goes if you plan to install the same OS and applications on your second computer which, as you may imagine, can take forever.

With all that in mind LSoft Technologies offers Active@ Disk Image, a tool that can copy and preserve the state of your partition and enable you to install it later on some other computer or resurrect it on the old one.

Imagine the situation: you've just created an image of a really valuable disk. Maybe it's an image of favourite DVD that you're taking on holiday, or perhaps it's a backup of a solid state hard drive containing critical business data.

You've gone through the image creation process, and your program told you the file output was successful... Active@ Disk Image is our flagship disk image tool, and we built it to the highest standards.

Data is a precious commodity, and a significant data loss can cause havoc in your personal life, career or business.

In today's digital age, we're all well aware of the importance of backups. But how many of us are really doing them regularly? If the computer you were reading this on suddenly died, would all your crucial data be safely stowed away somewhere else and easily recoverable?

Disk image software provides the ultimate solution to data backup since it allows you to make a complete, byte-by-byte copy of an entire disk without the risk of missing anything important.

Computers have a nasty habit of going wrong on occasion. Sometimes, this can lead to major data loss, and there are few things more disastrous with computers than losing important data. While there are many different ways to back up what is important to you, disk image software provides the most thorough solution since it makes a backup of absolutely everything stored on your hard disk or other storage media. Active@ Disk Image presents the perfect solution since it works with any kind of media such as hard disks, optical disks or portable flash drives.

When trying to image a drive, an error appears indicating the CreateSnapshotSet() failed. How can this error be resolved?

The error basically means that the system doesn't have enough of a buffer to hold all write operations occurring during a backup. You need to increase the area allowed to VSS to buffer such write operations.

On Windows Server operating systems you need to open the properties of one drive, such as C:, and open the Shadow Copies tab. Then select the drive and click Settings:

Now you need to specify No Limit or at least 15% of the drive's size as a limit. Do this for each drive in your system and try to run the backup again.

Can you tell me how Active@ handles SQL databases? Does it shut down SQL and then backup the data files?

No. No stopping of the SQL Server is required. Active@ Disk Images completes backups "on-the-fly" using Microsoft's built-in helper services, like "SQL Server VSS Writer":

"VSS Writer" service flushes SQL cache critical data back to the HDD, and creates something like a "safe restore point", specifically for backup purposes. After that, Disk Image starts the imaging process.

This avoids SQL service interruption, giving the active SQL users the ability to work with a database while backups are in progress.

If you, like me, find yourself in a constant struggle, trying to keep your computer under control in terms of starting up and keeping your data safe; you should try Disk Image, a program I recently started using. In short, the name describes what it does.

This software helps create a disk image of your computer, which is basically like a backup of your entire machine (you can choose to save less if you want). What's awesome about this software though is that it comes with more than just the tools to do that. It also comes with a powerful feature called "Boot Disk". But I'll talk about that later on in this… review, I guess?

Hi, my name is Michael Findley and I'm a small business owner in the GTA. Here, I'll be writing a review on a product I have recently needed to use, called Active@ Disk Image, by LSoft Technologies Inc.

To start off, Active@ Disk Image is software designed to deal with anything regarding the copying of disks, making it appropriate for making backups, copies of disks and, with their "Boot Disk" options, a great way to restore computers from unstable states. Although I tried of the software to see how it would work in those situations, this wasn't the reason I purchased Disk Image...