MultiDrive Review

Moving on from the impressive disk cloning functionality and we see that the MultiDrive software also includes a dedicated disk imaging module as well. This module is intended primarily for making full backups of any installed disks in their entirety into a file (or multiple files) which can then be stored else ware for safe keeping.

Disk imaging works slightly differently to disk cloning in that the source disk (or individual partition if specified) being imaged is not written directly to a target device, but instead to a file which can then be used for restoring a target disk at a later date.

NB – Disk imaging involves writing an exact copy of the disk to a file for backup purposes as opposed to directly copying a source disk to a target disk in real-time at the time of operation.

Creating a new backup in MultiDrive begins at the “Backup” module which can be accessed via the application’s main menu. As can be seen below, once in this module, we are greeted by a clean and well-designed page which makes selecting the source drive to be backed-up as simple as clicking on it via the left part of the page.

With the drive to be backed-up selected (we will handle selecting individual partitions for backup in a moment) the right part of the page is where the target storage location can be specified. Alongside the ability to specify this target storage, we can also specify some other related options including the file format (this can be raw or ZIP-based) and automatic file splitting which is useful when saving to fixed sized media including CDs and DVDs. Furthermore, clicking on the “Options” button (found at the bottom of the page) will open the advanced settings box where this backup can be further configured.

As can be seen above, the advanced options box provides some additional control over what is being imaged during the backup process. Leaving the source drive range sliders untouched will see the entire disk drive included by default whereas (as is shown in my example) repositioning these sliders to select only an individual partition will ensure only that partition is included.

Advanced users can opt to enter this selected range manually (should this be required) and the tool also allows turning on verification of the resultant image allowing for a specific algorithm to be used to perform this task.

Whilst this advanced data selection tool will undoubtedly be very useful for advanced users, I would personally like to see a simpler interface for selecting what is being backed-up. For example, the ability to select either an entire disk or 1+ individual partitions on the main Backup page itself (not via the advanced options box) would be more straightforward in my own opinion. Additionally, I believe the ability to turn data verification either on or off would also help to simplify this setting given a typical PC user won’t be interested in the actual verification algorithm being used.

With the data to be backed-up now selected, the backup task itself can then be started by simply clicking on the button labelled “backup”. Whilst the interface for selecting disks and partitions might not be ideal in its composition, MultiDrive have made up for this with the provision of what I believe is a very nicely designed progress monitoring page as can be seen below.

NB – MultiDrive always utilises sector-by-sector disk imaging which means all sectors (even those which are unused) will be saved (which, whilst more thorough, could mean this process takes longer to complete with MultiDrive than with a disk imaging tool supporting the skipping of such sectors).

Once running, this progress page shows a clear description of the job details (e.g. source and location devices), the current amount of data copied at any given time plus an estimate of the speed of the operation and the time which is remaining. Also notable is the nicely drawn chart atop the progress page which shows in real-time the progress of the operation (and could be potentially useful for highlighting any issues with the process or identifying degraded hardware etc.).

Once complete, the application will provide some more statistics upon the backup job just run. This includes time spent, average data transfer speeds, the amount of data copied plus the verification hash was this specified under the options section earlier on. Unfortunately, given MultiDrive doesn’t as of yet support utilising backup sets (each run of the Backup tool is essentially an independent ad-hoc backup), these settings are lost upon the completion of the job and the next backup will (essentially) be a new task.

This “ad-hoc” approach to making disk image backups means that key backup elements including the ability to save backup sets, choose individual files to include or exclude, specify historic file versioning periods, use incremental and differential methodologies plus applying zero-knowledge encryption are all unavailable. With this in mind, the backup module within MultiDrive is more of a dedicated disk imaging tool than a fully-functional backup utility.

Overall, it is clear that MultiDrive’s focus with this tool is to provide an easy-to-use tool for making full image backups of a disk (and it does this really well). Be aware though that by omitting support for backup sets and incremental backups, MultiDrive might not be suitable for making on-going disk image backups (e.g. making regular full backups would require too much disk storage for many typical PC users).