Drive-To-Drive

Drive-To-Drive

Introduction

DriveImage XML lets you image a drive directly to another drive, without having to create an image first.

To create a Drive-to-Drive image on an existing partition, click Drive-To-Drive in the main program window.

DriveImage XML will display all available source partitions and show information about their geometry below.

Select the drive you wish to copy to another drive. DriveImage XML creates images of logical drives and partitions. If you want to image a physical drive that is partitioned into more than one partition, you will have to copy the partitions one by one. Imaging a whole physical drive with more than one partition at once is not supported in this version of the software.

Drive-to-Drive Wizard

Press Next to start the wizard that will guide you through the imaging process.

The drive that you chose as the source drive in the previous step will be displayed again. Verify that you selected the right drive to be copied to another drive.

Options:

Raw Mode - If you select raw mode, DriveImage XML will create a sector-by-sector image of your drive on the destination drive, i.e. of all the sectors on your drive, even the unused ones.
The resulting image will be the same size as the size of the imaged logical drive or partition. You should choose raw mode if you need an exact copy of your whole drive.

If you only need to image the used portions of your drive, i.e. the data on the drive, leave raw mode unchecked. The process will be faster since only the used areas are copied to the destination. Automatic resizing of the destination works only with raw mode unchecked.

Hot Imaging Strategy - DriveImage XML allows you to create an image of your drive even if it is in use. This requires that the section of the drive that is currently processed for the backup is blocked for write access in order to prevent that files are modified without having those changes reflected in the backup.

DriveImage accomplishes that by either locking the volume for write access rights for all other applications or processes while the image is created, or by using Microsoft's Volume Shadow Service (VSS). When using VSS, before backing up files that are either in use, locked or open, DriveImage XML will request the creation of a Volume Shadow Copy, i.e. a snapshot of the specific part of the drive where those files are located. DriveImage XML will then use the Volume Shadow Copy to access those files. The Volume Shadow Copy will be discarded as soon as it isn't needed anymore.
The program by default will try to lock the volume first (unless you tell it to do otherwise), and if that fails, will work with VSS. If that doesn't work either, the program will warn you that no volume locking or VSS is available and that therefore the resulting backup might be corrupt. You may at this point choose to proceed with the image anyway.

Press Next. In the following window you'll be asked to select the destination drive, i.e. the logical drive or partition you will copy the image to.

Use existing partition or create new partition

Note that you must put the image into an existing partition. If necessary create a new partition with Windows Disk Management first.

You do not need to format the drive. The size of the partition you create will determine the size of the drive - for example if you create a 20GB partition and then image a 10GB size drive to it, the size of the drive will still be 20GB. The source drive will be resized to the size of the destination partition during the copy process.

Start Windows Disk Management:

Start>Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Computer Management>Disk Management
If Windows Disk Management does not start, you can use the following commands from the command prompt:

net start dmserver
net start dmadmin
diskpart

If you just now created a new partition to put the drive image to, you will have to close the wizard window and start over by clicking on Drive-to-Drive again in the main program window.

Select the destination partition and click Next.

In the next step DriveImage XML will show you again which drives you selected as the source drive (top window) and as the destination drive (bottom window). Please be aware that all data on the destination partition will be overwritten and any files residing on it now will be destroyed.
Make sure you selected the correct drives and click Next.

The program will once again ask you to confirm your destination drive location. Be sure you selected the right drive, follow the instructions on the screen, then press OK.

DriveImage XML will now image the data from the source drive to the partition you specified. A status bar will tell you approx. how long this process is going to take. Once completed you will be notified whether or not the copy process was successful. Press Finish.

You may want to verify that the drive was successfully imaged to the new location by opening Windows Explorer. Go to the partition you copied the drive to and double-check that the data was written to it and is accessible. Normally DriveImage XML doesn't require you to restart your computer for the changes to be in effect, in some cases however you might have to restart your computer for the new partition to display correctly.

Note on resizing: While copying the source drive will be resized to the size of the destination partition if raw mode is unchecked and the file system to be transferred is an NTFS of FAT32 file system. Otherwise the transferred drive will have the original size, possibly wasting disk space if you had chosen a larger destination partition size.

Note on boot drives: If you want your computer to boot from the new partition you must set it to "active" with Windows Disk Management.

Check our FAQ if you have problems restoring a drive.

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