Imaging software for your Hard drive. RAW format

[Batmeat]

Is there any imaging software for your hard drive that can make a RAW image of just the data? I have a machine with a 160Gb hard drive, 30Gb is used. I want to make an image of just the data and store it on a 80Gb drive. RAW format is preferred so I can quickly dump the data back onto my machine incase of crash.

 

[corkyg]

To get RAW, you have to start in the camera. Software doesn't create pixels that don't exist. RAW image storage will not make dumps quicker - in fact it will slow them down because the file size per image dumped is much greater. An image file in any format is just data. The best defense against a drive or system crash is to store duplicate files on an external drive, optical disks, or off line in the cloud.

 

[Batmeat]

Sorry, I should have mentioned this is for a computer hard drive, not a camera

 

[lxskllr]

Can't you just drag/drop the data over?

 

[Batmeat]

Can't you just drag/drop the data over?

You can, but you can't copy over your OS and all the settings. I want to be able to do that so I don't have to reinstall anything.

 

[Gooberlx2]

DD
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dd_(Unix)

But It'll make a 160GB image file. You might get some of that back by compression, but I wouldn't expect miracles.

What you really want is something like acronis true image. Or clonezilla, if you need free.

 

[nitrous9200]

Drive Snapshot
http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/

Not free, but it will at least have the ability to create images for a few weeks. Better yet it is able to image drives with bad sectors; it skips over them and continues rather than most other products which will just fail.
The user interface isn't the greatest either and the last time I used it to clone a Win7 install to a new drive, it wasn't bootable right away even after copying over both the system reserved and C partition, but booting from the Windows disc and then choosing "repair your computer" was able to fix it easily.

 

[Mongrelchops]

What version of Windows are you using? have you tried the Windows Backup / File & Settings Transfer Wizard / USMT etc - again dependant on what version of windows you are running?

 

[Batmeat]

What version of Windows are you using? have you tried the Windows Backup / File & Settings Transfer Wizard / USMT etc - again dependant on what version of windows you are running?

Windows 7 Pro 64

 

[stevech]

Acronis True Image (and other products) have a DISK CLONE capability. Copies every sector on drive A to drive B. And if A was bootable, B will boot identically.
I use drive CLONE instead of IMAGE... and the backup drive is bootable.

Has saved my butt several times.
I CLONE my SSD every now and then in case it dies. But it's had heavy use since April 2010.