OS imaging software for Windows 10

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Sp33dFr33k

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What do you use and did it work you had to do a full OS recovery?

I've always used Acronis or Windows' built in system image and have used both a few times for a full recovery using OS's other than 10. For 10 I'd like to find something that works well for online/offline imaging and has a good track record for being able to recover.
 
I have used Paragon's cloning tools to image and migrate my OS's with no issues.
 
Acronis True Image since it was in early alpha stages, it's never ever failed for me and I've made thousands upon thousands of images using it. I don't use the Windows-based software, however, that is an extremely important aspect of it - I only use the bootable media to make my system images meaning the OS is not running and the computer is booted from the media (CD more often than not but as Acronis keeps bloating the software at some point it won't fit on a damned CD anymore and require a DVD, never bothered to put it on a USB stick yet either). Also, because of them bloating up the code for no good reason I still use True Image 2012 which is an older version obviously but I mean really, it's software designed to copy data while compressing it then copy it back while decompressing it, should it really need 550MB of code to do that? No, it shouldn't, hence me using the older more efficient and much smaller faster loading version. :D

If you own a Seagate or Western Digital hard drive both of those companies provided a slightly stripped down version of True Image for use with cloning/imaging operations on their drives. As long as you have at least one Seagate or Western Digital drive connected to the machine the software works without issues and does cloning and imaging as required.

There are multiple such programs nowadays: Macrium Reflect has a free version and is very well reviewed and can do live imaging (while the OS is running), True Image can do that as well but restoring an image always requires a reboot, always. Clonezilla is quite nice but the lack of a GUI can leave some folks dumbfounded if they're not paying attention to what they're doing and potentially wiping out a drive by restoring an image to the wrong one so if you choose to use it be very careful and read EVERYTHING twice before committing to any actions.

Dozens of imaging apps available these days, I used to use the original many years ago: Powerquest Drive Image, which came out before Ghost did (which was bought by Symantec and ruined), and then Drive Image was bought out by Symantec and of course fucking ruined - it was and to this day remains the only drive imaging software that I know of that creates a bootable backup to restore from. I don't mean the app itself is on one disc and then your images can be on others (spanned if necessary), I mean the first disc of your imaging data had Drive Image installed on it so it was bootable. No other imaging software has ever done that and I miss that aspect, I really do.

You'll find something that suits your needs, take a look around and give what's available some testing.
 
I use a combo of EaseUS TodoBackup and Clonezilla. I prefer Clonezilla but it does have one drawback: You can't clone a larger drive to a smaller drive which if you're going to an SSD is probably what you will be doing. That being said it's not an issue when you're using Clonezilla to image a backup rather than clone.
 
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EaseUS is great when imaging from a large HDD to a smaller SSD...
 
Thanks for the replies. My use case is for disaster recovery rather than cloning the drive but I've used most of these programs for cloning and they worked fine.
 
A really fantastic place for discussing such utility software is over at the Wilders Security forums, they have a subforum specifically devoted to imaging software and disaster recovery issues:

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/forums/backup-imaging-disk-mgmt.97/

Several companies actually do some of their tech support through that forum too and introduce new products/betas/etc there as well so, definitely someplace to look in on for more information.
 
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