Product Review
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First off, the product page makes no mention of the version number: the version of Avanquest Perfect Image on sale here is 11 and Avanquest Perfect Image 11 is NOT compatible with Windows Vista 64-bit! This review is on the Avanquest Perfect Image 11 - if you're a Windows XP or a Vista 32-bit user, read on.
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When I saw the average user rating for Perfect Image 11, I navigated away from its product page faster than I was able hit the Back button on my browser. I discovered, however, that the ratings for the alternative products such as Acronis True Image, Paragon Drive Backup, Powerquest Drive Image, and Norton Ghost were less than stellar as well. I decided to give Perfect Image a whirl - and I'm glad I did.
Perfect Image does a superb job of making a clone (image) of your entire hard drive!
Hard Drive Image
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For making an image (clone) of your hard drive, there's no need to install Perfect Image. Simply boot up with the CD into a GUI interface. The GUI isn't as pretty as Vista (or even XP), but it gets the job done.
Here's the *caveat*:
There's NO surefire way to acertain that Perfect Image has successfully made an image of a hard drive other than to TEST the image by performing a restore of the image and verifying that the restored hard drive does in fact work (-1 Star).
In my experience, Perfect Image is fairly reliable for making an image of a hard drive but it does occasionally fail to produce a working/restorable hard drive image - so, test, test, test to make sure you've successfully produced a working image of your hard drive.
You can save your hard drive images onto CD's, DVD's, flashdrives, or external hard drives.
With Perfect Image, formating your hard drive and reinstalling all your applications from scratch (sound familiar?) is a thing of the past.
Backup
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If you plan on selectively backing up files on your computer, Perfect Image seems to be plagued with a multitude of problems from an excruciatingly slow backup process to incompatibilities with OSes to the application failing to load up altogether (-1 Star). If that's what you plan on using Perfect Image for, I'd recommend FolderMatch instead.
Conclusion
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It all depends on what you use Perfect Image for. Perfect Image is pretty darn near perfect for making images of your hard drive. But for selective backups, I'd recommend FolderMatch.
---
When I saw the average user rating for Perfect Image 11, I navigated away from its product page faster than I was able hit the Back button on my browser. I discovered, however, that the ratings for the alternative products such as Acronis True Image, Paragon Drive Backup, Powerquest Drive Image, and Norton Ghost were less than stellar as well. I decided to give Perfect Image a whirl - and I'm glad I did.
Perfect Image does a superb job of making a clone (image) of your entire hard drive!
Hard Drive Image
----------------
For making an image (clone) of your hard drive, there's no need to install Perfect Image. Simply boot up with the CD into a GUI interface. The GUI isn't as pretty as Vista (or even XP), but it gets the job done.
Here's the *caveat*:
There's NO surefire way to acertain that Perfect Image has successfully made an image of a hard drive other than to TEST the image by performing a restore of the image and verifying that the restored hard drive does in fact work (-1 Star).
In my experience, Perfect Image is fairly reliable for making an image of a hard drive but it does occasionally fail to produce a working/restorable hard drive image - so, test, test, test to make sure you've successfully produced a working image of your hard drive.
You can save your hard drive images onto CD's, DVD's, flashdrives, or external hard drives.
With Perfect Image, formating your hard drive and reinstalling all your applications from scratch (sound familiar?) is a thing of the past.
Backup
------
If you plan on selectively backing up files on your computer, Perfect Image seems to be plagued with a multitude of problems from an excruciatingly slow backup process to incompatibilities with OSes to the application failing to load up altogether (-1 Star). If that's what you plan on using Perfect Image for, I'd recommend FolderMatch instead.
Conclusion
----------
It all depends on what you use Perfect Image for. Perfect Image is pretty darn near perfect for making images of your hard drive. But for selective backups, I'd recommend FolderMatch.
