TeraByte Drive Image Backup And Restore Suite

I'm very surprised that this very powerful and reliable suite of disk management applications doesn't get mentioned much on this forum. Those who have used it know that once you have tried it and gotten to know it, you never go back.

Image For Windows is front and centre of the suite, but there are many more TeraByte Utilities that come bundled with it.

How does it compare with Macrium Reflect, which seems the most popular here and which I use myself?

A lot of people know about BootIt Bare Metal but don't know about IFW.
IFW first release was in 2002 and macrium is 2006 so IFW started four years before Macrium.

I feel one of the reasons Macrium got so popular was because of the free version which IFW does not have.
I think a lot of people may be put off by so many backup options in IFW and if that is the case just tick the box in options named "Simple Operations" then you have like other backup software. Or just press help and all options are explained.

When using the "Enhanced Speed" option in IFW I found it to be faster than Macrium 8 and only one minute slower than Macrium X when creating an image. I have now done about 150 backup/restore with IFW while testing it and none failed.
IFW has a option similar to Macriums "Rapid Delta Restore".

I like IFW better than I did Macrium as for one no running processes or background processes unless I am using it unlike Macrium which runs three processes on your system all the time.

I like that I can browse/extract files in the backup image without mounting as a drive with TBIview.
But I think for a lot of people IFW is just over their head where other backup software is simpler so they use that.

KevTech said:

A lot of people know about BootIt Bare Metal but don't know about IFW.
IFW first release was in 2002 and macrium is 2006 so IFW started four years before Macrium.

I feel one of the reasons Macrium got so popular was because of the free version which IFW does not have.
I think a lot of people may be put off by so many backup options in IFW and if that is the case just tick the box in options named "Simple Operations" then you have like other backup software. Or just press help and all options are explained.

When using the "Enhanced Speed" option in IFW I found it to be faster than Macrium 8 and only one minute slower than Macrium X when creating an image. I have now done about 150 backup/restore with IFW while testing it and none failed.
IFW has a option similar to Macriums "Rapid Delta Restore".

I like IFW better than I did Macrium as for one no running processes or background processes unless I am using it unlike Macrium which runs three processes on your system all the time.

I like that I can browse/extract files in the backup image without mounting as a drive with TBIview.
But I think for a lot of people IFW is just over their head where other backup software is simpler so they use that.

Click to expand...

I turn off all the Reflect services as I find the notifications annoying and rather pointless.

cereberus said:

I turn off all the Reflect services as I finf the notifications annoying and rather pointless.

Click to expand...

They do more that just notifications.
If all are disabled you cannot mount an image to browse/extract files from it.

Stigg said:

I'm very surprised that this very powerful and reliable suite of disk management applications doesn't get mentioned much on this forum. Those who have used it know that once you have tried it and gotten to know it, you never go back.

Image For Windows is front and centre of the suite, but there are many more TeraByte Utilities that come bundled with it.

Click to expand...

I mentioned IFW here:


I've been using it since 2009 when we were gifted it as MVPs (I was in the developer area for 11 years). I also purchased the upgrade in 2016, and that's all the money they've asked for in 15 years. Never used Macrium. IFW has a lot of options and can be on the formidable side to use, which I think contributes to it being infrequently mentioned here. But like you said, it's a great piece of software, and it's regularly updated. They have a good support forum for when you need it, and they've actually implemented suggestions I've made.

KevTech said:

They do more that just notifications.
If all are disabled you cannot mount an image to browse/extract files from it.

Click to expand...

Well this is a bit weird just done some tests - you are certainly right to a large degree.

However, you can see the files in the system partition!

What is even weirder, if you try and mount the C drive 2 or 3 times, it does mount which puzzled me and I dug into it a bit further, and it seems the mounting software switches the service back on if disabled!

I know certain OS services refuse to stay disabled but never seen an app reenabling the service.



I set all the above to take no action but that failed miserably - it still resets service.
I could not see anyway short of uninstalling Reflect to permanently disable the service (not that I have a desire to do so).

trevo said:

How does it compare with Macrium Reflect, which seems the most popular here and which I use myself?

Click to expand...

Hi, trevo.

I don't wish to start a debate between backup applications on this thread, but compared to Macrium Reflect, TeraByte Drive Image Backup And Restore Suite has many more features, and even more so if you include the Special Bundle.

KevTech said:

A lot of people know about BootIt Bare Metal but don't know about IFW.
IFW first release was in 2002 and macrium is 2006 so IFW started four years before Macrium.

I feel one of the reasons Macrium got so popular was because of the free version which IFW does not have.
I think a lot of people may be put off by so many backup options in IFW and if that is the case just tick the box in options named "Simple Operations" then you have like other backup software. Or just press help and all options are explained.

When using the "Enhanced Speed" option in IFW I found it to be faster than Macrium 8 and only one minute slower than Macrium X when creating an image. I have now done about 150 backup/restore with IFW while testing it and none failed.
IFW has a option similar to Macriums "Rapid Delta Restore".

I like IFW better than I did Macrium as for one no running processes or background processes unless I am using it unlike Macrium which runs three processes on your system all the time.

I like that I can browse/extract files in the backup image without mounting as a drive with TBIview.
But I think for a lot of people IFW is just over their head where other backup software is simpler so they use that.

Click to expand...

Hi, Kev.

I'm a big fan of the IFWRotate based on count script.
It's very easy to use and does a superb job. Have you ever used it?

Stigg said:

I'm a big fan of the IFWRotate based on count script.

Click to expand...

No, never used it.

KevTech said:

No, never used it.

Click to expand...

With this script, I set the maximum number of Full and Differential backups I want.
A Full backup is initially created, then the next backups are Differential. When the maximum number of Differentials are reached, a new Full backup is created. When the maximum number of Full backups are reached, the oldest Full image (along with any associated Differential images) are deleted.

In case you're wondering where it is, it's on this page in the Scripts section.

Version 4.04 - February 25, 2025

Upgrade History

It was mentioned that a lot of people know about BootIt Bare Metal but don't know about IFW.
I, on the other hand, have been using IFW on one of my laptops but know nothing about BootIt Bare Metal. I wish I knew how to use it. IFW, incidentally, is a good and reliable image backup software.

@Stigg

Please could you compare the backup speed of IFW with Hasleo?

It would be interesting to know if the created recovery drive has a boot repair option on it the same as Macrium ?

Why not trial it? Image for Windows

kelper said:

Why not trial it? Image for Windows

Click to expand...

If the question is aimed at me then the answer is simple. It would save me a lot of hassle trialing it ( done a few trials of other imaging products already) so if any of the users could give an answer I would be grateful.

System / image backups are one thing - We've done it to death on the Forum - but there are zillions of Free backup methods of taking a system backup - especially if you obey the golden rule - keep the OS and base applications disk / partition small and all user stuff such as multi-media things, office / work type files, email, pdf / other receipts e.g scanned tax / e-commerce images on to separate devices, and for critical stuff - sling on to a cloud server - quite relasonable amounts of cloud storage on reliable servers are available very cheaply - and even better if you subscribe to office/365 (which I don't BTW).

Then it's data backup tha'ts important - and if data doesn't really change much - then once you've got a decent copy somewhere e.g for example multi-media files any old now cheaply available classical HDD spinner is good enough - back up and then store off line.

If users are being REALLY HONEST with themselves, how much of their own data regularly changes daily -- probably not much so do we need any more all these convoluted Incremental type data schemes on increasingly more complex backup programs. Businesses or people running any sort of e-commerce of course need serious backup and data recovery schemes and it must be resilient but for logging and tracking possible around 1GB of data at most which changes shouldn't require any of this stuff.

Copilot or any other type of A.I is quite able to keep a log of what's changed, what's new and what's deleterd - and the A.I will only get better as time goes on.

Like the whole issue with domestic A/V software - it's a C20 problem when there are much better C21 solutions.

@Fabler2
If you start using Windows on physical vhd(x) file(s) - what could be easier than simply copying the windows image which is the vhd/vhdx set of files with old fashioned file explorer to another device. Free "Seeemples" and 100% foolproof. !! To restore just boot any windows install media, choose repair system -->command mode and recopy the vhd/vhdx set back to the original device.


Cheers
jimbo

Which is faster will depend on your hardware. IFW backed up my Windows in five minutes. This was 55GB and from one partition to another on my internal SSD.
Macrium Reflect X took 4 minutes.

kelper said:

Which is faster will depend on your hardware. IFW backed up my Windows in five minutes. This was 55GB and from one partition to another on my internal SSD.
Macrium Reflect X took 4 minutes.

Click to expand...

Not sure if speed is an importance issue any more if backing up a system is not a hugely often performed action especially with fast internal (or even external) NVMe sticks / SSD's etc and fast powerful latest or even recent gen CPU's.

If speed and resilience was that important one would "Mirror" the OS via RAID and then in a lot of cases recovery would just entail using the other device until system could be restored fully.

It took me even less to backup almost the same volumeof data (57GB in this case) simply copying the vhdx file for my windows installation via bog standard file explorer to an EXTERNAL NVMe device !!! 3 Min 47 secs.

Cheers
jimbo