NTI ECHO 3 Single Minded Drive Cloning Utility

NTI ECHO 3 is a simple and effective utility for cloning hard drives and partitions.

Echo 3 can copy data from a single partition, from an entire drive, and from both while filtering out file types you define. You can also have the program dynamically resize partitions to fit a new drive. If a partition took up 33 percent of a 250GB drive, for instance, you can have it take up the same percent­age of a 500GB drive.

I do have two minor com­plaints. First, although Echo 3 warns you that it will over­write any data on the desti­nation drive, the warning comes only after you've cho­sen a disk from a drop-down list. Best practice would be to show the drives and detail exactly what’s on them. Sec­ond, Echo 3 performs clon­ing during a reboot, instead of from within Windows.

Echo 3 is handy, but you can clone your drive (in more steps) with Windows Vista/7 Backup and the Windows boot disk. Also, a number of more-expensive programs Acronis True Image Home 2012 ($50), Paragon Hard Disk Manager Professional 2012 ($100), and R-Drive Image ($45) do cloning and a lot more.

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