Avanquest Perfect Image 11 - PC review

Will it offer more than its competitors?

26 June 2007 9:00 GMT / By Stephen Patrick

It’s a common fact that no one thinks to back up their PC’s hard drive until it’s too late.

After all, it’s not one of the most glamorous tasks we needs to perform but we should all do it. Which is where tools like Perfect Image 11 come into play, as this is a great set of tools that set up a backup routine and will automatically archive your stuff. What’s more, if you’re system fails for whatever reason, you won’t need to reinstall Windows and all your programs as you’ll have them as a handy image.

The tool works by backing up everything pertinent to a hard disk’s partition. So, you’ll find that all the programs, files and even registry entries are backed up. This is nothing new, there are a few programs that do the same thing and Perfect Image doesn’t really offer anything new but we found it easy to install and relatively easy to setup and manage.

The interface is clean and simple and because it runs using a simple wizard, you’ll find that it’s easy to run. If you have created separate partitions on your hard disk, you’ll find that it backs each one individually, rather than taking your HDD as a whole. The partition can be restored using a bootable disk that is created as part of the process.

You can choose to copy to either an external drive, a network location or even to blank DVDs, which is possibly the cheapest method but it can be the most time consuming, especially if you have a large HDD. If you have to manage a small number of machines, you can even create an image of a fresh install and then simply install this on all the machines, saving time IT costs.

If you have a failure on your hard drive you can choose to restore the full image. Alternatively, if you’ve deleted a file you can always restore it from the backup. This is easy, as the image can be searched as those it were an active disc.

Verdict

Perfect Image 11 may not offer anything that you won’t already find in similar packages such as Partition Magic and Norton Ghost – it’s even a similar price – but it doesn’t miss any tricks either.

So, if you need assistance to make sure you back-up your media on a regular basis, you can choose this one with confidence.

Score

Review Recap

Made by: Avanquest
Price as reviewed: £40
The good: Plenty of features, reasonable price
The bad: Can be tricky to set-up
Quick verdict: This is a handy set of tools to help you back up your PCs hard drive and re-install after a failure
Score