SelfImage

SelfImage is a lightweight application that allows you to create a mirror image of a hard disk partition and write it to another disk. The primary goal for this software is to create backup images for important data.
To create an image file you just need to select the source partition and the destination folder. You can select a partition from your local hard disk or a Linux NBD (network block device) from a remote computer. So this program can deal with Linux partitions that Windows does not recognize.
When creating the image file the application can also compress the image in order to occupy less disk space. There are three available methods that are optimized to provide you with the best compression rate or a faster processing rate.
When you need to restore the disk image you just have to select the image file and the target partition. SelfImage decompresses the image file and replaces the data from the target partition with the image content.
Due to the fact that the program creates disk images and not simply copies the files from the partition you can also use it to create backups of the system partition. It comes really handy when you are dealing with a dual boot system.
The interface of the program is straightforward and you can easily perform all the operations from a single window. During the file processing operation you can view the status of the task in the main window that displays the completion percentage and the current writing speed.
During our tests we noticed that the program takes about 50 MB of RAM and about 60% of the CPU power. It has quite an impact on the overall computer performance but backing up a hard disk partition is an important process that is worth the time.
SelfImage is a powerful application that can save you from a hard disk malfunction by backing up your important data files.