R-Drive Image review: Our favorite backup gets even better

Best Prices Today: R-Drive Image 7

Face it, no one really needs to pay for backup these days, yet I recommend that you plop down the $45 that will get you R-Drive Image. Why? Because it’s the only Windows backup solution that I’ve ever tried that hasn’t let me down in one way or another.

In fact, I use R-Drive Image for backing up my backups. Additionally, if there’s failing media involved, R-Drive is definitely what I reach for. If you’re already familiar with R-Drive Image and only want details about version 7.2’s new features, skip down to the “What’s new….” section.

Further reading: See our roundup of the best backup software to learn about competing products.

What are R-Drive Image’s features?

R-Drive Image’s bread and butter is creating drive and partition images — i.e. copies of everything contained on a disk or one of its subdivisions, including boot records. It creates full (all data), incremental (all data changed since the last image), or differential (all data changed since the original full image) types.

The resulting images can be in R-Drive Image’s own format as well as the more common Microsoft VHD/VHDX formats. Pricier versions support VMDK.

The program will also verify said images, restore them whole, copy disk-to-disk (cloning), and mount its proprietary images as virtual disks that you can browse and recover individual files and folders using Windows Explorer. Note that Windows itself can mount VHD/VHDX formats, but R-Drive will mount those as well.

Most users only need to image an entire drive or partition once in a while for disaster recovery. Hence, R-Drive Image will also create the same type of image container from selected groups of files or folders.

You can’t use file and folder images for disaster recovery as they don’t contain all the partition and boot information, but they do allow for fast backup of your essential data, reducing storage requirements and backup times drastically. Note that any task can be saved and reused.

As far as drive file formats, R-Drive Image understands Microsoft’s FAT (16/32), NTFS, and exFAT; Apple’s HFS/HFS+, and APFS; as well as the Little and Big Endian variants of UFS1/UFS2 and Ext2/Ext3/Ext4 FS (Linux), and ReFS.

Other file systems are supported on a byte-by-byte (all sectors are backed up — containing data or not) basis with no preview or file-level access from within the program, only wholesale restore. R-Drive Image also supports hardware RAID (as single volumes) and software RAID: Windows, Apple, and Linux mdadm.

For disaster recovery, R-Drive Image creates WindowsPE (Windows 10 Pre-install Environment) and/or Linux-based boot discs. The former lets you boot on some systems with Secure Boot enabled in the BIOS.

Both the Windows-style GUI and the old-school DOS-like (see the image below) interfaces are available from the Linux boot disc, however the WinPE version offers only the modern GUI.

Jon L. Jacobi

Jon L. Jacobi

Jon L. Jacobi

You can save your images to local drives, network locations, as well as online (new) and to just about any media. The program even burns CDs and DVDs (for boot and backup) on its own. Don’t laugh — optical media is still in widespread use for corporate archiving.

Related features include email notifications on job completion; running programs based on the success or failure of the process; the ability to bypass file or disk errors and continue the job (great for recovering data); using Windows or its own proprietary shadow service (flushing and locking data); as well as task throttling (reduced CPU usage).

Scheduling is supported, and I like that it leverages the existing Windows task scheduler. Too many vendors add their own for no good reason. It’s also nice reassurance that there’s no ongoing telemetry (communications between the program and the company) in play. Not to be paranoid (who me?), but that’s something you might want to consider when providing low-level access to your data.

R-Drive Image also features a partition manager so you can delete, secure wipe, create, and re-size partitions without leaving the R-Drive Image interface. As mentioned, it’s available only from the graphic interfaces (Windows native and Linux/WinPE boot disks).

There’s an option to convert partition layouts from MBR (Master Boot Record) to GPT (GUID Partition Table) and vice versa. I’ve never had the need, but some systems boot more reliably using one or the other. AES-XTS image encryption is supported and you can also resize the C: (OS) partition without having to reboot afterwards.

What’s new in R-Drive Image 7.2?

The most salient new R-Drive feature for most users will be the ability to write images directly to OneDrive, Dropbox, and Google Drive. Connecting requires that R-Drive Image and you log on to the service, as is the case with all programs with this capability.

My only minor gripe is that adding online service destinations is done while defining a task. As the definitions are persistent across tasks, defining them should be done from the main page or the preferences dialog.

Personally, as I use a cloud storage manager to make my cloud storage appear local, the new R-Drive feature that has me most excited is replication — i.e., the ability to copy the image post-creation to multiple secondary locations.

You might ask, “But what if the initial image destination is online? Do you have to download it again for replication, wasting precious bandwidth?” I inquired about this, largely because I had some issues with online imaging using the initial 7200 build that R-Tools sent me. (If you look at the screen captures, you’ll notice that they’re from build 7201).

Fear not, the initial image is always created locally even if the primary destination is online. Both for replication and so that R-Drive Image knows it won’t exceed available storage. Images are shotgunned to any online destinations to maximize performance if you choose more than one.

Another welcome new feature for version 7.2 is differential file and folder backup — R-Drive Image will copy only new files (since the original image creation) to your image.

How does R-Drive Image perform?

Aside from some initial glitches with build 7200, R-Drive Image remains perfect in my testing, and is still my first (and only, really) choice for imaging and disaster recovery.

As to the glitches, build 7200 failed in my attempts to back up online. Apparently, my unique talent for breaking things was at work and there were too many timeouts in my broadband connection for the initial release build to cope with. Everything was right as rain with the subsequent 7201 build.

c, though this can take an exceedingly long time if your drive throws a lot of read failures. Most programs throw up their hands and just tell you you’re SOL. This is the reason R-Drive Image is my go-to for failing media.

R-Drive Image is quite fast, though it still plays Scotty (the Star Trek engineer) by consistently overstating backup times. Transfer rates are of course dependent upon the media and pipeline to it, but all were on par or better for the amount of bandwidth available. I used a 5GB image for online, and a 450GB image for local jobs.

Another great thing about R-Drive Image is that it doesn’t consume a lot of resources and still runs on legacy hardware. The minimum system requirement is only that the CPU be Intel-compatible. If you’re using older hardware, R-Drive Image is by far the best thing going.

Should you buy R-Drive Image 7.2?

As I’ve said several times already, R-Drive Image 7.2 remains my stalwart imaging and disaster recovery utility, and as such, my top recommendation. I love the new multiple destination replication feature — something I think all backup programs should have. As R-Tools addressed the glitches I experienced in record time, I’ll chalk those up to a slightly optimistic release date. Still the best.

Note. If you already have a version of R-Drive Image that you’re happy with, you can leverage a cloud storage manager such as CloudMounter or Mountain Duck and image to just about any online service.

Editor’s note: Because online services are often iterative, gaining new features and performance improvements over time, this review is subject to change in order to accurately reflect the current state of the service. Any changes to text or our final review verdict will be noted at the top of this article.