O&O DiskImage 17 Professional Edition

Full product worth £36 oo-software.com REQUIRES Windows 8 or later; 250MB hard drive space; online registration

DiskImage simplifies the task of backing up your data – whether it’s a single file you want to protect, or a complete drive. The software opens with a userfriendly wizard, offering simple options for creating a new backup, imaging just the changes made since your last backup, cloning a drive, creating bootable recovery media, or restoring files you’ve previously backed up.

If you’re using O&O DiskImage for the first time, it’s best to start by making a complete copy of the drive or directories you want to keep safe. That way, you have a starting point, which you can build on by backing up changes over time – although it’s a good idea to make a new complete backup from time to time, for reliability and performance.

To get started with DiskImage 17 Professional, click “Back up drives” and select the source you want to work with. You’ll notice that each disk and volume has its own tickbox, so you can select any combination of drives and partitions. If you prefer to back up individual items, click “File backup”; you can now use a familiar directory tree interface to select all the various specific folders and files that you want to protect.

You can write your backup to any medium to which you have access – including optical discs and synchronised cloud folders, as well as external hard drive or SSDs. Remember though that some of these options are inherently more secure than others: an external drive, for example, is more liable to be corrupted or stolen than a passwordprotected account on a cloud storage service. It’s worth exploring DiskImage’s security options, which include AES 128-, 192- and 256-bit encryption: we’d certainly recommend taking advantage of these if you’re dealing with personal or sensitive

data. You can also choose to compress backed-up data to make the most of your available storage.

Once you’ve specified the level of encryption and compression you’d like to use, you can save your preferences to a user profile and, if you create several of these, switch between them as appropriate. It’s essential you keep your archives up to date, so we’d also recommend visiting the “Jobs & Reports” tab to create a scheduled backup or imaging task. This is quick and easy, and can save you a lot of heartbreak – and potentially expense – should disaster strike.

ABOVE A bootable recovery drive can help you quickly recover from a serious system failure – don’t put off building one, as it won’t be so easy to do after your computer breaks down

ABOVE Copying individual files takes less time and space than imaging your entire boot drive, but it can be very valuable to have a complete backup of your operating system and applications

ABOVE You can create a job that runs a defined backup routine at regular intervals – just make sure your target drive or folder is available so new data can be successfully written

ABOVE O&O DiskImage 17 lets you start backing up drives or files with a click – as well as restoring data or creating bootable recovery media

ABOVE DiskImage 17 Professional Edition supports three levels of encryption, along with various imaging and compression options