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The best way to protect all of your important data is to generate a sector-for-sector image file of your hard drive partitions--boot record, file tables, and all. Unfortunately, capturing the image of a Windows partition from within the comfy confines of Windows itself has always been problematic: Imagine servicing your car while driving it.

Traditionally this problem has forced drive imaging software users into an archaic, DOS-like realm. But that journey is now unnecessary, thanks to PowerQuest's new Drive Image 7. Acronis True Image got there first, but Drive Image 7 has important options (such as verification) that its rival does not.

In addition to its new Windows capabilities, my shipping version sported an XP-like interface, the ability to restore individual files and folders from within the main program (older versions had only a separate image browser), and a background app for mounting any Drive Image file as a read-only virtual drive.

Even better, Drive Image 7 has extensive disaster recovery options and imaged my XP partition in about half the time that the competing Acronis True Image took. The program was rock solid throughout my informal testing, as was its DOS-like recovery environment.

Despite these improvements, however, I have one major beef: Drive Image 7 includes Microsoft's .Net framework, and that adds software I never wanted along with a whopping 40MB to DI 7's 45MB installation footprint.

SUMMARY

PowerQuest Drive Image 7 Price when reviewed: $70 full, $40 upgrade Current prices (if available) A powerful drive-imaging program for power users, but .Net underpinnings are burdensome.

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