Selfimage - Hard Disk Imaging Utility, Freeware

SelfImage is the little hard drive utility with big aspirations.

SelfImage is capable of making an image file of a hard disk or hard disk partition, and can restore an image back to any drive or partition that doesn't have open files. Useful for making backups. Unlike dd for Windows (or cygwin), SelfImage is capable of creating an image of a partition that is currently in use.

Additionally, when run on Windows 2000 or XP, SelfImage can create images of partitions that Windows doesn't even recognize or have mounted on a drive letter. Perfect for the dual-boot system, you can create an image backup of a Linux partition directly from Windows.

Features include:

* Create 1:1 image files of any mounted (or unmounted on Windows 2000/XP) hard disk partition.
* Can create an image of an entire hard disk, including the master boot record, partition table, and all partitions (Windows 2000/XP)
* NEW Restore previously created images to any partition, even mounted ones, as long as it doesn't have open files.
* NEW On-the-fly compression accelerated with parallel CPU support to take advantage of today's hyperthreaded, multi-core and SMP systems.
* Multi-threaded design for maximum throughput and low CPU overhead.
* It's free software - free as in cost, and free as in freedom - released under the GNU General Public License.


SelfImage is a new project. As such, there are lots of plans for the future. Currently on the drawing board:

* IN-PROGRESS Skip reading a disk's "free space", treating it as if it were zero. This will decrease the size of a compressed image and make it process MUCH faster.
* IN-PROGRESS Network Block Device support to make images of disks on remote machines, and restore back to them.
* Restore capability:
o Creation of bootable restore media to restore to drives that can't be restored to from witin Windows
o Ability to read files from an image.
* Output file spanning for easier use of CD/DVD-R media
* Direct backup device output support (direct to CD/DVD/Tape)
* Your idea here!
http://selfimage.excelcia.org/