R-Drive Image 7.3 review: Far more versatile, but hyper-reliable no more

Price When Reviewed

$44.95

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Editor’s note: This review was updated in May 2025 to reflect further test results, which changed our assessment of the product and its rating. See the performance section below to learn more.

I’ve truly enjoyed reviewing the various iterations of R-Drive Image — it’s been my go-to imaging/backup utility for nearly two decades. And until recently, never created a bad backup. Sadly, while that perfect record remains intact with the program’s proprietary images, it’s only 1-for-2 with VHDs.

Additionally, a lot of foibles, small and not so small, have reared their head in my looks at version 7’s new features. Hence, while R-Drive Image is still a favorite in its older, more basic form, it’s slipped from the number-one slot.

Read on to learn more, then see our roundup of the best Windows backup software for comparison.

What are R-Drive Image 7.3’s features?

The big news for R-Drive Image’s 7.3 dot upgrade is expanded support for cloud storage services — especially Amazon S3 and S3-compatible repositories, something I have been hoping for.

Also new in the cloud arena is support for Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, though only in R-Drive’s pricier Technician and Corporate tiers. Most end-users will be more interested in Dropbox, OneDrive, and the cheaper S3 and S3-compatibles, which the consumer tier supports.

Salient existing R-Drive Image features include: file, folder, partition, and whole drive imaging in R-Drive’s own format; partition and drive imaging to non-proprietary VHD/VHDX as well as VMWare formats (read the performance section about thses); copying and cloning discs; a full-featured partition editor; and a bootable recovery disk with a choice between the modern and old-school, character-based interfaces.

The character-based interface (shown below) on the recovery disk is still my favorite, and is also good for freaking out my friends and IT customers. Its appearance is as dated as my own, but it too is a hoot. Most users will prefer the modern interface shown in the previous image.

There are also “Tasks,” R-TT speak for jobs. These feature very granular scheduling and even media rotation in the pricier versions. Scripts are the same thing as tasks, but for command-line use. Yes, you can use R-Drive the super old-fashioned way.

Another feature I love in R-Drive Image 7.x is its replications. These are copies of the image saved to other destinations. In other words, you can define one data set to back up, and back it up to multiple locations using the same “script,” aka job.

If you’re looking for the ability to back up non-Windows computers, the recovery disc allows you to image FAT/exFAT, NTFS, ReFS / ReFS2+ (Resilient File System, Windows 2012/2016 Server), HFS/HFS+/APFS, XFS, Little and Big Endian variants of UFS1/UFS2 (FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD/Solaris), and Ext2/Ext3/Ext4 FS (Linux). Whew.

That said, Apple, a tough-to-love company, makes it nearly impossible to boot from unsigned media these days, so backing up your Mac using R-Drive Image requires workarounds (search OpenCore) that few users will want to bother with.

Another niggling complaint is that there’s no visual browsing for network locations. You must either mount them as drive letters in Windows Explorer or type in a network URL in the file name field. I don’t mind this in the character-based boot disc interface, but I do in the full Windows interface.

I’d also argue that program should stop you, not just warn you (the warning can easily be missed) that you are trying to write an image to a destination that doesn’t have room for it.

How easy to use is R-Drive Image 7.3?

For basic operations, R-Drive Image is easy to use — once you’re comfortable with it. It walks you wizard-style through selecting files/folders, drives, or partitions, then where you want to write the resulting image. Creating recovery discs is simple as well.

Where the program could use a bit of work is in the Tasks/Scripts area. The way they’re portrayed in the interface, it’s not immediately apparent that tasks are for the GUI and scripts are for command-line use. Yes, RTFM.

I certainly appreciate that you can save ad-hoc jobs as command-line scripts, but it would be nice if you could save them as a task as well. Tasks, or recurring jobs, can only be created in the Tasks pane. This is also where you’ll find the retention options and scheduling.

I’d also like to see an “Execute” button in the task bar. As it stands, you must right-click over the task to run it. R-Drive Image doesn’t make heavy use of right-click context menus, so this wasn’t something I immediately thought of. Double-clicking starts editing. I would’ve reversed those choices.

Also, options that aren’t valid aren’t grayed out, they’re rendered in red. Either don’t show them, or gray them out like the entire rest of the world.

How much is R-Drive image 7.3?

The end-user version of R-Drive Image, good for one computer is $45. The transferrable-seat Technician version is $299, the Corporate version that I tested is $189, and there are multi-seat and transferrable-seat versions for $500 and $900, respectively. You can see the full list and the feature differences at this link.

How does R-Drive Image 7.3 perform?

You may notice that this section of the review isn’t titled “How fast is…?” That’s because reliability and bug-free operation are every bit as important as how quickly backups are created.

I’ve touted R-Drive Image as the most stable and reliable backup program I have ever used — and until version 7, it was. I discovered a couple of small visual glitches plus a rather large bug in testing 7.3 (7304) that I actually traced back to 7.0.

Additionally, for the first time ever, it created a corrupt backup that couldn’t be mounted or restored by either Windows or R-Drive Image. This was the main drive of the PCWorld storage test bed and left me without a valid current state backup. I’d never seen R-Drive image fail at this, so I didn’t take other precautions. Yup, confirmation bias.

Note that this was 900GB to VHD format, not R-Drive Image’s own image format — which has still never failed me, at least for restore. I have seen images that were apparently to large for the program to mount as a drive letter but files were always recoverable. As I’ve hyped the VHD capability in the last couple of reviews, this was especially disappointing.

Then there’s that not-enough-space warning I mentioned. As you can see below, I ignored the rather small warning message and proceeded anyway.

The first time I ran into this, R-Drive Image went into a closed loop with the error dialog that you couldn’t cancel out of. I had to end the program using Task Manager. Drive and partition imaging jobs showed the error dialog, but you could cancel out of it. The company has since fixed the issue, but it would never have occurred in the first place with proper vetting.

Then there were the overlapping buttons shown below. Anyone using the program could spot them, which tells me that this version was likely rushed out the door.

Aside from the one fatal operational glitch and mis-drawn buttons, R-Drive Image performed generally as I’ve come to expect with its own image format. Around a dozen operations to and from internal and external storage, NAS boxes, and online storage services (Dropbox, OneDrive, and Google Drive) went off without a hitch. The recovery media also booted just fine and backup/restore operations were glitch-free.

As to the aforementioned failure with the VHD backup… Well, that rattled me.

In the final analysis, while the program had some issues with not enough space, all RDI format backups that completed were restorable. But my former complete faith in R-Drive Image has been shaken over the last few iterations.

My message to the company is to slow down, test new features thoroughly, and stop relying on your customers for what is in essence, beta testing.

Should you buy R-Drive image?

The new online support and multiple destinations per job make R-Drive Image one of the most complete backup solutions available at the price, and I’m thinking if you stick with its own proprietary image format, you’ll be fine.

However, I’ve gone back to the text-based interface, boot disk/USB stick version so I’m not tempted to use version 7’s not-as-reliable new features.

I’m also back to using a second program, Macrium Reflect 8 free edition as a hedge against further not-so-pleasant surprises.

This article was edited on May 8, 2025 to correct the info on VHD container support. You can’t create VHD/VHDX containers from files and folders as previously stated.

This article was heavily edited and retitled on May 20 to report the backup failure and altered opinion on newer versions.

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