HDClone Pro
Reviewed June 2007

What’s It Do? HD Clone copies the complete contents of hard disks and other IDE/ATA/SATA, SCSI, and USB media on a physical level. This allows it to create even backups or copies of complete operating system installations smoothly In combination with the "SafeRescue" mode of HD Clone, this technique can rescue data in case of defective hard disks. It works independently of partition layout, file system, and operating system and works with proprietary data formats that could not be accessed otherwise. Copies can be made at speeds up to 3.5 GB/minute.


Does it do what it Promises?

Reviewer 1: There are times in the past when I have really needed to make an exact copy of one hard drive on another. From reading the information on the Web site I was under the impression that I would be able at least to clone one partition from one drive to a partition on another one. (The Webopedia definition of "partition" is "To divide memory or mass storage into isolated sections. In DOS systems, you can partition a disk, and each partition will behave like a separate disk drive".) My C: drive, although reasonably large, is only partially filled. The intended target drive is quite large. I spent considerable time moving many files from that drive to a third one (on my local network, not available to HDClone) so as to be sure that I could clone the active portion of my C: drive to the other. I noticed warnings that data on the target drive would be overwritten in the cloning process so I tried "partition to partition," with the same warning. There is no product offered by Miray Software that will allow one to manage partition sizes. This is a bit odd, as other programs that offer imaging, or "ghosting" also have partition management software. It is true that in the partition to partition option, I can specify both the source and the target "Sector Area"; however these are just numbers, and I do not know how to determine which sectors to specify. I also noted to my dismay that people reported cloning a smaller drive to a larger one, with the result that the "clonee" (the target of the cloning process) shrank to the size of the source drive, and no efforts using a number of disk management programs were able to restore the drive to its actual, original size. To avoid some of these potential issues, I acquired a Partition Management program, and set up a partition large enough to hold the data from the source drive on the target drive. However, when I tried the partition to partition I was warned that since "the source drive is larger than the target, approx. xxx MB overhang will not be copied". With no help from the Support people at Miray software (see below), I was unable to go further.

Miray, developers of HDClone, commented: A common mistake is to compare HDClone to imaging tools like Norton Ghost. While this may seem reasonable due to the fact that both programs are used as backup tools, HDClone makes "physical" clones, which means exact 1:1 replicas, while other tools make "logical" copies. If one wants to make a copy which is then used for forensic analysis, imaging solutions will fail since they don't copy unallocated space. This is also why you need partitions/drives that are at least as large as the source. Since we are aware of the fact that many customers expect HDClone to include at least some of the features offered by other imaging solutions, we are in the process of developing such features and expect them to be released at the end of the year.

Reviewer 2: Yes. HDClone creates identical copies of hard discs allowing bootable backups of the complete operating system for use as emergency backups or to migrate from one drive to another.

Reviewer 3: HD Clone 3.2 directly copies a hard drive or partition to another hard drive or partition. (A partition is a designated portion of a drive that is treated by the operating system as if it was an independent disk.) It works from its own operating system and from removable media so it can copy ALL of the files from your operating system, even those that are system-protected or are ever-changing while the operating system is running. The company claims the potential uses of "data rescue, backup, system restore, mass installations" and HD Clone is capable of doing all of these functions, although I believe that there are other programs better suited to perform data backup on a regular basis. While HD Clone can back up one's data, it lacks features such as: data compression, the ability to do a selective or incremental backup, scheduled backups, backup to CD or DVD, or backup across a network.

Miray: Again, due to the nature of HDClone, this is not intended, but may change as we release imaging features.

Data backed up from a drive to another drive, or from a partition to another partition yields an exact duplicate of the original drive or partition that is fully readable and useable by the native operating system. If one backs up a drive to a partition, or a partition to a drive, the copied data will be accessible to HD Clone for copying onto another hard drive, but the data in its stored form will neither be recognized nor useable by Windows. I experienced this firsthand and initially thought that an error had occurred, but the user's manual reports that this is normal.

Miray: This is correct. Since there are other data (MBR, partitioning information) that have to be included when making a drive to partition clone, Windows and other Operating Systems won't be able to read its contents. However, as soon as the backup partition is restored to a drive, it will be usable as before.

Reviewer 4: Of the features tested, yes it did. One feature that particularly interested me was that I could copy an image to an external drive that, to my knowledge, heretofore only Norton Ghost had made possible. With the boot floppy or CD/DVD in place, the program starts to the exclusion of windows or any other operating system. Because of this, and having its own "operating system", the program can run independently of any mechanical or software/OS issues the computer may have. Obviously, this is of great worth for a recovery a attempt. The program is able to make an exact sector-by-sector duplicate image from disk to disk or disk to partition, partition to partition or partition to disk, including through external USB 1.1, 2.0 and Firewire connections. Therefore, the computer's operating systems as well as data and settings can be imaged, allowing for full operation from a target disk in the event of a system crash, if necessary. Because the target can exactly duplicate the source, one is able to fully restore computer operations including the OS, data, settings and most programs (fully-operating programs, not just set-up files). This can save many hours of work and aggravation in case of a system "meltdown".


Was it easy to install?

Reviewer 1: Yes, The installation on the floppy drive is very quick and very simple. The same is true for the bootable CD. The first step in the process is to create a bootable diskette or a bootable CD or DVD. This is accomplished very easily. I did both a regular CD and a floppy disk. To run the program itself, the computer must be rebooted and started from diskette or CD. If the system has a floppy disk drive, it will likely look for the floppy diskette before the hard drive. If it does not, the BIOS must be set to accomplish this by bringing up the BIOS setup at booting (from the opening screen, follow the instruction for "Esc" or F2 for "Setup" This opening screen will also prompt which key to use to access the "Boot Menu", if it is desired to boot from a CD.

Reviewer 2: No, but this is simply due to a lack of necessary tutorials or help files than due to any flaw in the program. Otherwise, it was a very simple, fast, and small 4.0 download and installation-the installation of which requires burning an ISO file to a floppy disc or CD for purpose of bootability. (See below for further explanation.)

Miray: Apparently, Reviewer 2 overlooked the manual included in the ZIP archive. It comes as a PDF file with 65 pages, three of them describing the installation process.

Reviewer 3: Installation went smoothly but it was different than most programs. First the you .zip file must be unzipped to a location on the hard drive. Then, the .exe install program installs the program on either a bootable CD or floppy drive. It will not install onto a hard drive in order to avoid the conflict that would occur if there were two or more bootable partitions present when the system boots up. The license agreement is detailed in the user's manual. Simplified, it permits use on a single computer at a time with no more than 25 corporate computers covered under one license, and a separate license required for each branch of a company.

Reviewer 4: Yes, although this is not a true "install" as such. Nothing is installed on the computer itself. Rather, the program will create a self-booting floppy or CD/DVD. One must set the BIOS so that the boot floppy/disk is the first thing the computer looks at. At startup, if the boot medium is in the drive, it will start HDClone. If it is not, the machine will proceed as normal. The entire process to create a boot disk is clearly explained, with completion within less than 5 minutes. The boot size is a mere 1.06 MB.


Good Points.

Reviewer 1: HDClone runs entirely from the floppy (or the CD). This is accomplished by installing its own operating system, which, in turn runs HDClone. When booting from that disk / CD, the system is not in Windows at all, but a unique operating system. Regardless of the operating system used (or no OS at all), HDClone can produce an exact replica of one hard drive on another; and, because the operating system and the program have a very specific task nothing that is unnecessary for that job needs to be introduced into the functioning environment. HDClone offers four versions of the program. The HDClone Free Edition allows migrating data on an existing drive to another target drive. There are some limitations as show on the Web site's comparison chart.

Reviewer 2: This is a very easy program to use with an amazingly simple, almost Spartan GUI (Graphic user Interface). The GUI is easily understood, clean, and has an intuitive listing copy mode, source, destination, options, and a large and easily visible progress bar showing not only the rate of cloning in a percent of completion but also elapsed and remaining time. It also indicates and verifies any read or write errors. It is very fast cloning/copying an old 8G hard drive that I used for this test to my current hard drive in just a little over 23 minutes, What was especially noteworthy about this program was its ability to apparently "correct" read errors. I knew from past experience that the hard drive I used had disc errors and these errors had stopped other programs such as Acronis in their tracks. Not so with HDClone. While it reported 23 "read errors" from the source disc there, were no "write errors" to the new disc. I checked the destination disc to verify the clone and all information-some of which I thought was not recoverable due to "write errors"- was there and intact. It appears that HDClone is the ultimate tool for copying damaged discs as it will correct read errors and work around bad sectors unlike similar tools which will simply crash when they encounter a bad sector. The program will work with not only the more or less standard SATA drives but with the older IDE/ATA drives as well as SATA II, eSATA, (AHCI), USB 1.1, USB 2.0., SCSI, and even Firewire/IEEEE. An added plus is that with the Professional Edition the user is given a "technician's license" allowing legal ) use of the software commercially on other machines. Technical support was slow but forthcoming. It is an East German company and, one has to calculate and allow for time change differences, the European work week (generally, a bit shorter than in the U.S.), and obviously some language barriers. Miray: Actually, we're a Bavarian company, and Bavaria is not part of East Germany, which doesn't exist anymore, but never mind. Based on my experience working with this software, I have no hesitation in recommending it. I might suggest that at $99.00 the Professional version may be more than is required for the average user but that there is a Free Edition available (which I also tried and worked perfectly) as well as a Basic Edition for under $20.00 that I suspect would be what most users require.

Reviewer 3: HDClone does a capable job of making an exact copy of a chosen disk drive or partition. It captures all of the data on a sector-by-sector basis instead of reading and then writing individual files. This means that it is capable of copying data written by a different operating system or of capturing all of the details of corrupted files. The ability to quickly restore copied data would be very useful to someone who was building or managing a large number of computers and wanted to place the operating system and programs on each system quickly without the need to go through the lengthy and tedious process of installation of the programs on each one. The details of the copy/restore function can be customized when setting up the process. The verify function will make the biggest difference in speed in a normal job. If verify is turned off, the data is copied but not checked against the original. If it is turned on, the data is checked against the original and this improves confidence in the integrity of the data but at the price of doubling the time it takes to complete the job. On my system, copying a 120GB drive took just under two and one-half hours with the verify function turned on and with no errors reported. The manual is clearly written and filled with detail. It is a bit "geeky", but this program seems designed for advanced users. A very strong application for this program is its ability to copy data from a failing disk. Its greatest strengths in this area are threefold. First, because it reads data in a "linear fashion" it can read the data from that failing drive without the excessive drive head travel which would be needed if it was reading one file at a time. Secondly, it has an optional "SafeRescue" feature that will skip over difficult to read areas of the disk and return to them at the end of the job. In that way, the reading of good data is not interfered with or halted by the unreadability of specific drive areas. I have not seen this feature in any other copy/backup program, but have encountered halted backups in other programs when data was corrupted. Thirdly, since all of the drive or partition is copied bit for bit, deleted or corrupted data can be reconstructed from the copy on the good drive without risking further degradation of the data.

Reviewer 4: This program can perfectly image not only to another partition or another hard drive, but also to external media using standard USB or Firewire connections. This frees one from the necessity of depending on the OS as usually contained in your C: drive, very important if that drive became inoperable or if the OS was corrupted. The program is able to image the source even if errors exist, skipping them and continuing on, a feature apparently is unique to HDClone. I was not able to test this, since all my source media were error-free. In perhaps my most demanding test, I used the C: drive as a source to the D: drive. What made this interesting to me was that I was copying four partitions, 3 of which were operating systems (XP Pro, Win '98, and XP media center edition). Of these, the file system of three were NTFS and the other FAT32 (programs, data, email, etc. I used the drive-to-drive setting. The end result showed 4 separate partitions, each maintaining the original file system, each perfectly duplicated from their original setting. Further, all three operating systems worked perfectly. I then went on to test partition sources and partition targets, using an external drive with a USB 2.0 connection. These too were accomplished without a hitch and were recalled flawlessly. In order to partition the target drive prior to imaging, I used an older version of Power Quest's Partition Magic. This was necessary because HDClone has no such facility. The manual is voluminous, covering every situation fully, as well as situations that hadn't occurred to me. In some cases the English translation was a little awkward, but understandable. In addition there are individual help tips for most functions only a click away. There is an in-process verify function, which confirms that the image has been correctly recorded by the target. I prefer to use this as an additional safeguard, although it does slow the imaging process.


Weak Points.

Reviewer 1: I am very disappointed with product support. I sent requests for information or clarification to the support staff through their support system starting in early February, and have never had any acknowledgement or response beyond the automated message generated from the support page. Users must be able to count on getting help when they need it. If I am trying to restore an operating system from the cloned hard drive created by HDClone, I cannot wait indefinitely. Miray also runs a forum, to provide discussion between users and the developers. While this is a good idea, questions of significant importance have been posted on the Miray Forum with no response, and I also have had no response to an item that I posted there.

Miray: While we don't have huge capacities, we try to answer every single support mail we get, since we think that customer support is one of the most important things commercial software has to offer. As some of the other testers already mentioned, it may sometimes be slow due to the fact that we are not a very large company, but we try hard to answer every mail. It may be possible that the service requests or their responses were caught by spam filtering software or got lost by other means. We already contacted the Neat Net Tricks team so that we can investigate why Reviewer 1 was unable to get technical support and can only assure once more that it is not our style to dump service requests.

Reviewer 2: The most serious weakness in this program is its lack of help files or a tutorial. The program runs from a bootable image file ISO which must be burned to a floppy of a disc. If the user has changed the BIOS settings to boot first from the hard drive instead of the default setting of a CD (sometimes done in the interest of speeding up boot times), the BIOS will have to be restored to its default setting. More information about how this program actually works is needed on the Web site. I would like to see the developers provide locations of the read errors, particularly useful in the Professional version. Also, if the process is interrupted there is no way to continue without starting over from the beginning, a convenience a user should be able to expect in at least the paid version.

Reviewer 3: During the job setup process the user is given a selection menu to choose which drives or partitions to copy from and to. Drives are well labeled, but partitions are identified only by number and size; no mention is made of drive letter or label. On my system, I have seven partitions and determining the appropriate partition to backup required me to leave HD Clone and boot back into Windows to find what its file size was. The copy process is "destructive" to the destination drive or partition; i.e. the destination drive or partition will be completely overwritten and any data contained destroyed. There are precautionary warnings during the process, but if the destination is incorrectly identified, all of the data in the destination drive or partition would be erased and overwritten. This program would be more useful if it had the capability of creating or resizing partitions to match the size of the data being written over them and of creating a new partition to make use of the any remaining space. In its present form, Windows disk management functions or third-party software must be used to manage partitions effectively. The program performed fine when I copied one partition to my "MyBook 500GB USB hard drive". The process was reasonably fast and error-free, and the new partition and its contents could be viewed in Windows, just like the original data. I then copied my entire 120GB hard drive onto a newly created partition on the same MyBook drive. As reported above, the process took just under 2.5 hours with the Verify function on and no errors were reported. However, when I looked at the partition in Windows Explorer, I was asked if I would like to format the partition. I examined it in the Disk Manager portion of Computer Management (under Control Panel) and it reported that my partition was healthy. However, there was no data on that partition which was readable by Windows despite the "Verification" by HDClone. In reading the manual, this is the normal result for this operation, and despite the data being unreadable by Windows, it was available to HD Clone for restoration to another hard drive. A nice improvement would be a pop-up screen when this function was chosen to warn that the saved data would not be readable from Windows. Clicking on the support link in the PDF user's manual resulted in a "404 - Not Found" error. However, there is a direct e-mail link given for support. This is described as a viable but slower alternative to accessing support.

Reviewer 4: It would be advantageous to have a partitioning utility built into the program. As it is, one must use third party software to do this. It is necessary in partition operations to pre-define the partitions; otherwise, the newest image will overwrite the previous contents of the target drive, rather than finding an empty space. Although a warning is provided that over-writing will occur, I found that sometimes I ignored or didn't notice the warning and lost the previously-made images(s). Also, it seems the partition created on the target must be at least as large as the source disk, not just the data on it. When I attempted to image to a smaller target, I was warned that my image would lose information due to space shortfall.


Comments.

Reviewer 1: This program is one that holds great potential. A program with considerable power and functionality that can run with its own unique operating system from a single floppy disk is highly commendable. However, without the ability to manage the size of the source and destination partitions, this program is unusable for me. The abysmal lack of product support is a significant weakness that needs to be urgently addressed by the company.

Reviewer 2: I found this to be an excellent software program for upgrading one's hard drive or installing an external hard drive without having to install everything from scratch.

Reviewer 3: The publishers encourage use of the free version before purchase. They state that the free version will not support all of the drives that the higher (paid) versions will, but that it will show whether one's drives will be supported. There are four different versions of this program with fees ranging from free to 83.19 euros. The program we reviewed was the highest version. The versions vary in the types of supported hardware and over a twelve-fold range of the maximum speed at which files will transfer. While it is nice to have options, I do not personally care for this model as I would feel like speed and features were intentionally being held back if I was to only pay for an intermediate version. If I purchased the highest version, I would wonder if I had paid for features and capabilities I didn't need. Having a simple free version and a full-featured paid version would remove much of the purchase anxiety for me as a consumer.

Reviewer 4: I feel confident with this program. It has proven accurate in maintaining images in fully usable condition. It is claimed that imaging can be done that 5.4+ GB/min, but I found only a maximum of ~ 2.4 GB/min internally and half that if through a USB 2.0 connection to an external drive. If I added verification, this was further reduced to 1.02 GB/min. However, I admittedly don't have the fastest processor in the world, (2.8 gigahertz) nor the fastest spin rates. In any event, even for an average configuration the imaging process seems a relatively quick one compared to Norton Ghost, and certainly more accurate, dependable, and easier to use. As an example, to copy 112 GB to an external drive with USB 2.0 and verification took but three hours 48 minutes and played back perfectly. I created several floppy boot disks without event, but was successful in creating only one out of 3 (CD-R and 2 DVDs) disks. This program was initially a little confusing, but nothing was irreversible or harmed the source medium in any way. After a bit of stumbling around, I feel I have generally mastered at least the basics of the program and have already found it a valuable and easy-to-use tool. The forum is abysmal, but my experience with customer service has been satisfactory. Having written for support on a Saturday, I received an answer on the following Monday (one should allow for the fact that the developer is in Germany, so there may be an appreciable time difference depending on one's location. I recommend HDClone Pro and I suggest at least the free version. It is lacking many features but should handle basic functions well.


Will you continue to use it? Miray (producers of HDClone) notified us that the software this Panel used is an "evaluation copy" which "…may not be used for productive work but only for evaluation/testing and therefore …..y our testers may only test it." Miray has deviated from our normal policy requiring a fully-licensed product as a condition for evaluation in our program. Accordingly, we shall refrain from providing the responses to this section. It is regrettable that we are unable to complete these remarks, since they are typically quite meaningful to the reader in assessing whether our Panelists felt that the product was one worthy of retaining on their own personal systems.

OPERATING SYSTEMS USED IN THIS REVIEW
Windows XP Pro, XP Home

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