I needed a way to image one of my partitions for backup, transport, and mirroring purposes. Yes I'm familiar with various partition software, RAID, and Live CDs (System Rescue CD is a good one) out there that will do the job just fine but I'm extremely anal when it comes to doing the right thing for the right job.
- For one, the partition that I want to image is not a system partition so I do not want to reboot my PC and use a live CD/USB (too much work besides I still want to be able to use my PC while imaging).
- For two, RAID requires at least one more hard drive. Money and space are out of the question.
- For three, I don't want to install a partition software that will install drivers and mess up with the registry (I barely install any software, all portable over here).
- For four, I don't want to image the entire physical drive but only one partition so forensic tools will not suffice.
- For five, I want a tool that is portable, free, mature, does the right job, stable, easy to use, and gets maintained often.
After testing a few tools ( WindDD, dd, FTK Imager Lite, and other useless ones), I downloaded an updated version of a disk utility that I haven't used in a long time. Meet TestDisk. Simply meets all my requirements.
- Download and extract the zip file to a folder of choice.
- Run testdisk_win.exe (requires admin privileges).
- Choose [No Log] and hit Enter.
- Select the media that you would like to work with (i.e the physical hard drive). Select [Proceed]. Hit Enter.
- Select the partition table type. If it's a Windows partition, select [Intel ] Intel/PC partition then hit Enter.
- Select [Advanced ] Filesystem Utils to choose the partition that you would like to image.
- Choose the partition you would like to image. If you are not sure which partition to choose, select [ List ] from the menu to list the files in the partition to help you choose the right one. Hit Enter.
- Now that you know which partition, select [ Image Creation ]. Hit Enter
- Select where to store the image file. The image will be called image.dd. Once you've select the target destination, hit C.
- TestDisk will now create the image.
- To exit, select OK. Hit Enter. Hit Q three times to exit the tool.
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