Price:
The software retails for $69.95 on line at the Power Quest website at www.powerquest.com, but it can be purchased for as low as $39.95 at other software sites or on sale.

System Requirements:
Pentium compatible processor or higher, 35 MB of hard disk space, a CD drive (any speed), and a high-density floppy disk drive.

PowerQuest Corporation, 1359 North Research Way, Bldg. K, PO Box 1911,Orem, Utah 84059-1911. TEL: 1.801.437.8900, FAX: 1.801.226.8941 www.powerquest.com. 

Support:
30 days free from the day of your first call.

Drive Image 2002

By Ed Allen

Drive Image 2002 is a recovery, backup and system upgrade program. I volunteered to review this product for the Thousand Oaks Computer Club because I was in the market for a good program to backup the data on my hard drive. The software is manufactured by Power Quest; a company that also produces two other programs; Partition Magic and Drive Copy.

After reviewing the Quick Start Guide that is included in the box, I decided that this software looked like it could also help me add a second larger hard drive to my computer, in addition to backing up my data. The computer is a 1733 megahertz Intel Pentium 4 running Windows XP Home Edition. It had a 40-gigabyte hard drive. I have added an 80-gigabyte hard drive as a slave to the main drive using this software. 

The Quick Start Guide is well written, clear, and with lots of diagrams and pictures of what the various screens will look like during installation. 

The program has three main features: Disaster Recovery, System Backup, and System Upgrade. I will discuss and review each of these below:

Disaster Recovery - The program has wizards that take a user through each step of creating Rescue Diskettes that can be used if your hard disk becomes unbootable and you do not have access to windows. I had no trouble creating two 3.5" recovery disks using this wizard. After the recovery disks are created the wizard leads you through the process of creating a partition, either on your single hard drive, or in my case on my new second hard drive. This partition is where Drive Image 2002 will create an exact copy of your hard drive, including operating system, applications, and data. Additionally, this part of the software helps you create the exact copy of all your operating system and data on CD-R's or CD-RW's, if your computer has a CD burner. Mine does, so I did both of these operations. Backing up the data in the partition I created on my second drive took about 30 minutes, and on the CR-R's near one hour and 30 minutes. It was easy, as the program shows the progress and estimated time remaining. I did other things during the backup process, since the computer will stop and ask for another CD when each one is completed. My backup took 14 CD's, so have lots of blank CD's before starting. In case of a disaster, either the backup image on the hard drive or the CD's can be used to completely restore your system to the condition it was when they were created.  

System Backup - The backup data that is copied on either the hard drive of CD's can be used to restore individual files that may have been lost or corrupted. To restore individual partitions or specific files from the backup copies use a feature called Image Explorer. You can restore individual folders or files by right-clicking them and choosing Restore. 

System Upgrade - There is a feature included in the program called Copy Drives. This is used when you are upgrading to a new hard drive. The Copy Drive part of the program makes an exact copy of a drive or an entire hard disk and makes use of any additional space available on the new hard disk. 

I am sure that installing my additional hard drive and creating a backup partition would not have gone as smoothly without this software In conclusion, this is an excellent program, but I would not recommend it for a new computer user. Power Quest tried to make the book and interface clear, yet with over 15 years of computer experience I still became confused at times. This first-rate program is well worth the price.