Group test: Runtime Software Drive Image XML

Runtime’s Drive Image XML isn’t the prettiest of programs, but it’s free to download, although to some extent you get what you pay for.

All too many commercial utilities look cosmetically wonderful, but have flaws in their user interface and functionality. Runtime says that a drawback of other imaging products is that they use proprietary file formats, rendering backup data inaccessible other than from the imaging product itself. Drive Image XML uses XML for its image files, which can be processed using a number of third-party tools.

Since this is a free utility, service and support are minimal. You can email questions about Drive Image XML to Runtime, but there is no telephone support.

Drive Image XML can only perform backups of logical drives and complete hard disk partitions. If you want to back up a multi-partition disk you will have to perform a separate backup for each partition.

Menu choices on the opening screen are: Welcome, Backup, Restore, Drive to drive and Browse. These are accessed via a vertical row of buttons down the left-hand side of the application window, or from a standard pulldown text menu from the top menu bar. Selecting Backup opens a drive selection panel in the main area of the application window.

With a drive or drives selected, clicking on the Next button at the bottom of this panel opens a three-step wizard that displays the selected source partition or partitions on the first screen. The following screen allows selection of the backup destination and setting of the limited number of backup options, such as compression and large file splitting. Progressing to the next and final screen starts the backup and shows progress through a text log and a segmented progress bar.

During its operation Drive Image XML does display a fair amount of information about the partitions and drives it is manipulating. For example the type of filesystems used, the total number of sectors available, the number of sectors in each partition and the physical drive number, are shown.

Backups are stored as an XML file that contains a drive description and a data (.dat) file that contains the binary image data. If the ‘Split large files’ option is selected, multiple Dat files will be created, limited to no more than 4GB in size. You will need to do this if the image files are to be stored on a Fat 32-formatted drive (Fat 32 cannot handle files over 4GB).

Since Drive Image XML is the only product in this group that doesn’t feature built-in CD and DVD burning, to back up to CD or DVD you will have to perform a partition backup onto hard disk using the split large files setting, and then use a suitable third-party burning program to write the backup files to CD or DVD.

Only the complete image can be restored with Drive Image XML; there is no option to restore individual folders or files as there is with the other four programs reviewed in this group test.

For simple image backups Drive Image XML is a cost-free solution that saves images in a non-proprietary format that should be reasonably future proof. In our tests, with compression off, which is the default mode, its backup rate was a little faster than the R-Tools or Paragon products, but with compression on, it was the slowest product of the five reviewed.

One neat free extra that Runtime offers is a Drive Image XML plug-in for the free BartPE that lets you create a bootable Windows CD for emergency use.

This article is part of a group test of drive-imaging software.
See also:
Acronis True Image 10 Home
Paragon Hard Disk Manager 8
R-Tools R-Drive Image 3.0
Symantec Norton Save & Restore

Graphs and table of features can be read via our pdf download above.