TeraByte Unlimited

Hi everyone!

I'm looking into Terabyte Unlimited's Image for Windows software to safely back up and restore my operating system. I'd like to ask if this software is really reliable when creating disk images for disaster recovery? Also, is there any way to optimize backup speed and reduce backup file size? If anyone has experience using it, I'd love to receive advice on the best settings to ensure the backup process is effective.

Thanks everyone!

Yes, it's reliable. There are settings related to speed and file size. It's a matter of prioritizing one or the other.

1) RELIABILITY: I have relied upon and successfully used Image for Windows (IFW) for many, many years. In fact, just last week I had to restore an entire work drive due to a vendor screwing up some settings (from past experience I have learned to always make a backup the day before I let vendors access our computers!). Because the restoration process took over 90 minutes, there was a bit of anxiety waiting for the restore to finish, but the restoration completed without problems.

2) SPEED: You can change the speed of backups but this may sometimes (not always) change the reliability of the backup. For example, enabling the "Validate Byte-for-Byte" option doubles the overall backup time, but this option does much to make sure your backup is identical to your original. I would suggest you start using IFW with the most reliable options, and once you are comfortable with the software, you can experiment with the options to increase the speed and see if such increases are worth potential risks. Personally, I almost always choose the reliability options.

3) BACKUP SIZE: You can reduce the backup file size by choosing various compression settings. You can also tell IFW to create multiple sequential (smaller) backup files. For a long time I set IFW to create a single file backup to an external drive. However, when our workplace started using a cloud storage service, the service only allowed uploads of 4GB per file. It was quite easy to change IFW to create multiple backup files of 4GB each (still saved to an external drive because of speed). I would then upload those multiple files to the cloud.

There are some downsides to IFW, primarily due to its complexity. This isn't always a bad thing, since the complexity is because of its flexibility, but this does mean there can be a steep learning curve to take advantage of many of the options (the User Manual is over 250 pages!). However, there is a "Simple Operations Mode" for beginners, which makes the program easier to use, but also greatly limits your options (and thus the flexibility).