Disk imaging programs can simplify the process of backing up by creating an image of a computer's hard disk that can then be used to restore the computer if it fails.

These images can be stored on external or internal hard disks or DVDs. Because they cover the whole disk, they include installed software, personal files and drivers.

Diskimage 3 uses the ribbon interface, similar to Office 2007, which makes it less easy to pick up than the previous version, which used wizards. After selecting a disk or partition of which to create an image, for example, there’s nothing to point the user towards the options dialogue box, which the essential next step in creating the image. From the options window, the user can choose between different kinds of image, along with the level of compression and whether it should be encrypted.

During our testing, applying both compression and encryption to an image dramatically increased the time it took to create the image, and once even caused our PC to crash. Creating a simple image of a 3GB partition was reasonably quick, though, finishing in roughly five minutes.

Version three of the program supports the scheduling of incremental images. This is useful for those whose files change regularly: instead of making a new image from scratch each time, only the changes made since the last image will be recorded. This can be automatically created at specified time intervals. These are comparable to the system restore points created by Windows, except that Diskimage gives full control over which files are included and which are not, as well where the image file is stored. It's also possible to merge multiple incremental images to save space.

That merging process wasn't as easy as it should have been, though, with a confusing layout and technical terminology making the process more complicated.

For basic creation of disk images, this software is a good choice, and the ability to boot from the program CD is useful (so you can restore a DVD image if the main hard disk fully fails). However, it can be slow, the interface is confusing and advanced operations are more complicated than they should be.

Vista compatible: Yes