It is a commercial drive imaging solution that has a free version available for home users and is compatible with Windows XP. The only issue is Acronis is not free so I set about searching for a reliable drive imaging software for Windows XP that was free and easier to navigate than Clonezilla.Įventually I came across Macrium Reflect 7. I have used many imaging utilities over the years starting with Norton Ghost in the DOS era eventually settling on Acronis True Image for my Windows systems.
As the name implies, an exact image of the hard drive is created preserving not only your data but the OS and any installed components. This is where drive imaging eclipses data backup utilities. Consequently you will be burdened with the time-consuming task of manually re-installing your operating system and associated drivers/software. None of these will restore your system to operational status in the event of a hard disk failure. There are many tools available for backing up your data on Windows systems.
