Active@ Disk Image is disk and partition backup software for Windows. It saves a drive’s contents in an image archive that can later restore a disk, a partition or selected files. Its backup selection works at partition level, preserving folders, installed software and system files without requiring you to assemble a list of individual files.
Normal, raw and ISO images
A normal backup image records occupied sectors and leaves out unused space, deleted-file remnants, Windows paging data and hibernation data. One ADI archive can contain selected partitions from more than one disk. Active@ Disk Image supports hard drives, SSDs and removable drives, including USB storage, and handles both basic and dynamic volumes. Images can be saved to local storage or network destinations such as shared folders and NAS devices.
Standard and Pro also provide raw imaging. This copies every sector of one disk or one partition, including space that the file system considers unused. Raw imaging suits preserving a disk for examination with data recovery software, since an ordinary backup leaves out space that might contain deleted data. A raw image uses a DIM configuration file alongside its numbered data files, and each image contains a single disk or partition.
Optical discs take a separate route. Selecting a CD, DVD or Blu-ray disc as the source produces an ISO image, which can subsequently be burned back to optical media.
Compression, encryption and verification
Active@ Disk Image offers compression settings from no compression through Fast, Normal and High. Their usefulness depends on the contents: text and program data can compress differently from JPEG images, videos or ZIP archives that are already compressed.
The image can remain a single file or be split into chunks sized for the destination medium or its file-system limits. A normal backup can also be burned directly to optical media, but incremental and differential images cannot use that destination.
Password protection controls access to an image through the application. Pro adds AES encryption, with a choice of 128-, 192- or 256-bit keys, to encrypt the image contents themselves. These are separate settings; assigning a password alone does not encrypt the archive. The Verify Image tool reads an existing archive to check its integrity and identify reading errors, and verification can also follow image creation.
Restoring disks or files with Active@ Disk Image
The Image to Disk wizard restores either a complete disk or a selected partition. Choosing a whole disk restores its partitions together; individual partition selection allows a narrower restore. Active@ Disk Image can process several selected partitions or disks in one restoration session.
For a smaller recovery job, Image Explorer displays the archive’s folders and files and lets you restore individual items. You can also mount an image as a virtual drive to access its contents through a drive letter.
Standard and Pro include rescue media for restoring a system disk outside the installed operating system. Active@ Boot Disk Lite runs Active@ Disk Image in a Windows PE environment from USB or optical media. Network access and additional driver loading allow the recovery environment to reach shared backup storage and recognize devices that need a driver.
Images that build on a full backup
Standard and Pro can create incremental and differential images after an initial full backup. An incremental image records changes relative to its chosen base, which may be the full image or an earlier increment. Restoring a later point requires the full backup and every intervening incremental image. The partition selection stays tied to that base backup.
A differential image records changes relative to the full backup rather than extending a chain of increments. Recovery needs the full image and the chosen differential image. Compression and splitting can be set for each new image, but password protection is shared with the full backup.
Disk transfers
Active@ Disk Image separates direct copying from archive creation in its paid editions. Copy Disk to Disk transfers used blocks to another disk or partition and allows partition resizing during the transfer. Clone Disk makes a sector-by-sector copy of the source instead. Neither operation creates an intermediate image file, so these tools suit copying a drive onto replacement storage or duplicating a disk configuration directly.
Scheduled backups
Pro can run image tasks daily, weekly, monthly or at a specified date or interval. A scheduled incremental task creates a full backup, follows it with the selected maximum number of increments, then starts another full backup. Its retention setting counts full backups rather than treating every increment as a separate backup to retain.
Pro also supports scripts created through its wizard for execution from a console or command file, email notifications of imaging results and Windows Server systems. Operation logs record the actions performed, with XML, plain text and Windows Event log formats available.
The free Lite edition retains normal image creation and restoration, compression, verification and image access, while raw imaging, direct disk transfers, rescue media and incremental or differential backups require Standard or Pro.
