As you'll have gathered from our previous reviews (here and here for the Pro version), we use Drive Image quite a lot. It's handy for backing up hard drive partitions before installing new review software, then restoring the original partition afterwards.

For new users, this utility allows you to back up complete hard drives without worrying about details such as files, directories, registries and so on. Drive Image 4.0 achieves this task by backing up entire partitions, rather than the files stored on them. All logical drives (with letters such as C:, D:, etc.) are stored on partitions - they are the lowest order of data structure on a hard drive.

Drive Image 4.0 provides the user with a simple interface that is similar to that of Windows 98. Using this, you simply choose which partitions you want to back up, where you want to back them up to, and the level of compression required. There is also the option of password-protecting the backup files, along with a SmartSector function which can skip empty sectors on some types of partition and copy exact file layouts.

The core program, although installing via Windows, must be run from a DOS prompt. PowerQuest has provided its own boot disk maker and a version of Caldera OpenDOS for users who don't already have access to another DOS, but you may need to tweak your CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files to get the drivers for your chosen storage drive working. Drivers are provided for Iomega drives, most SCSI drives and selected MO drives, though, so this process shouldn't be too problematic.

Backup files can be stored on any drive that has a drive letter under DOS, or even on CD-R/RW drives and hidden partitions in some circumstances. PowerQuest also includes utilities for the transfer of applications between partitions and the re-assignment of drive letters. Plus there's an updated file manager that allows you to extract specific files from a Drive Image backup file, and perform general data housekeeping tasks such as altering compression ratios and so on, along with a variety of other handy tools.

For the average user wanting a quick and painless way to ensure the safety of their data, the simplicity and ease of use of Drive Image 4.0 make it worthy of consideration, particularly now that individual files can be easily extracted from compressed partition images.