– Run the program from the Live CD or from the WinPE boot CD-ROM – Schedule automatic backups and image creations with Task Scheduler – Restore the images to the same drive or to a different drive – Easily browse, view or extract files from the images – Quickly backup logical drives and Windows partitions to image files without having to restart Windows (you can remain logged in) Here are a couple of the major features of this program: DriveImage XMLĭriveImage XML is a completely free data recovery program that you can use to create images and backups of logical drives and Windows partitions. The free version can still do a lot of other stuff too like create, delete, and formats partitions, hide/unhide partitions, and mark partitions as active. I would rather they just strip it down to the bare minimum and if I like the program, I might be interested in purchasing the more feature-full version. It’s not a major nuisance, but it’s slightly annoying. The only annoying thing about the program is that it includes all the features from the commercial version too and when you try to use one of them, it will try to upsell you the paid version of the program. – Restore an entire image or only certain files and folders from an image – Linux and WinPE bootable recovery media options – Unique backup capsule feature that lets you store the backup on a local hard disk in a hidden partition for easy recovery if they active partition fails I believe Paragon is the only freeware one I mention here that supports differential backups. – Differential backups so that you can create one full image and then save space on future backups. – Complete disk backup including GPT disks Here’s a list of features that make Paragon one of the best freeware utilities in this category. It’s been around for a very long time and therefore the software is polished and works perfectly on all versions of Windows from Windows 2000 to Windows 8.1 32-bit or 64-bit. It has a slew of features and is very reliable. Paragon Backup & Recovery is one of my favorite tools for backing up and restoring hard drives at home.

Top 10 free hard drive cloning software