Recommend free/open source disk imaging program?

I have Acronis True Image 11 Home. I love Acronic stuff especially compared to Norton Ghost which has always given me nothing but trouble. Recently, ATI has been giving me some hiccups and I'm losing faith in its reliabilty. Could anyone recommend some good freeware/open source disk imaging alternatives? I've heard of Clonezilla, Partimage, Systemrescuecd, and Driveimage XML but haven't tried them. I'd prefer a simple UI (none of this linux leet speak) and compatibility with Vista but both are not required if they do the job better for my needs. The only requirements are that I can save the image to an external USB or DVD for restoration later and it can backup/restore multiple partitions and operating systems (e.g. Vista/XP dual boot).

 

Selfimage Download

I use selfimage



Very good OpenSource program.

 

Thanks. I have an M1530 as well. Do you need to do anything special like load the SATA drivers? Are you using the program in XP or Vista? Do you need to use anything special like VistaPE/BartPE/etc?

 

Just out of curiosity, what is the exact version number of Acronis and what type problems are you having?

 

Acronis True Image Home version 11.0 (build 8,101), retail box.

I make the backups in Vista, with verification of the backup, and written to an external harddrive (WD My Book 1TB USB 2.0). I boot from the ATI (boot) CD, using the full version so it loads drivers and what not, and restore with verification again prior to restore (because I'm obsessive like that). Usually restore occurs without a hitch. On occasion though, restore will fail with a "poor media quality" error notice immediately following a successful verification. This of course, screws everything up.

I did a bit of searching on this issue and found that an Acronis tech suggested this might be due to the external media's bandwidth and that going into the Acronis options and lowering the write speed might be the solution. One problem with that though is you can't access the write speed option from the ATI CD. You can only access it from the installed program, which of course you can no longer access due to the restore failure. I have read that others tried lowering the write speed (prior to failure I assume) as well as splitting the backup archives but that they still have the same issue.

Edit: I've noticed that the "poor media quality" error is occurring only (so far, knock on wood) when I select the validate the backup prior to restore option during the restore process. Most of the time the error pops up. But it rarely successfully completes the validation. When this option is not selected, the restore seems to be working fine (knock on some more wood). Immediately following the reboot after the restore, I always get an initial message in Vista stating that it wasn't shutdown properly or something to that effect. I select the "start windows normally" option and all is good after that (knock knock).

 

I use vista and xp. And i use this program on both of them.

You do not need any special drivers.

Just start i up ad start toasting

 

I recommend "Ghost 4 Linux"

http://sourceforge.net/projects/g4l

Simple to use interface, G4L performs a bit by bit image of the source disk.

 

You might look at VistaPE or BartPE with ATI11

 

What about restoring? Doesn't it need a bootable disk?

 

You can either download and use the BartPE experimental plugin, or download and burn the Ultimate Boot CD for Windows.
The ability to create a bootable disc from SelfImage is still in the works.

 

Is SelfImage still being maintained or developed? I took a look at its support forums. Not much activity, mostly 0 responses to people asking for help, and a few people asking where the developer is as he doesn't seem to have posted in a while.