HDClone Free Edition

Traditional backup utilities are useful for keeping spare copies of your files, but you need much more if you want to back up your operating system, programs or personal settings. If you suspect that your hard drive is about to fail, you can take immediate measures with HDClone Free Edition. After a straightforward procedure, the software will clone your hard drive, along with any data it contains.

Besides the free edition, HDClone comes in Basic, Standard, Professional and Enterprise versions. The free version's functionality is quite limited, but you can still use it to clone your hard drive, in case of an emergency. Its setup file is 16 MB and it takes about a minute to install its components. You can run any HDClone version on Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8, as well as various Server editions.

You will not encounter any difficulties, while cloning your hard drive. The software will guide you through the entire process, with step by step instructions, just like a wizard. You can choose to back up your hard drive and store it as a virtual image file, create a clone and send it to another mass storage device or recover previously created backups. The software can perform the same actions on individual partitions as well.

The aforementioned options are displayed as large icons, on a clean and simple interface. Once you select one, you may proceed to the next step, by clicking a Next button. Preparing a backup or cloning process is not difficult. The procedure involves selecting a hard drive or a partition, a destination and making a few final adjustments. When you select a destination, you can also click a few options, if you want to create a RAW or Smart image and if you want to encrypt it.

When you reach the final step, you may click a series of check boxes, to verify the data before you clone it, to save resize and defrag information, to compress the output image and more. Finally, you must click and wait until the software is done cloning or backing up your hard drive.