How to Put a Drive XML Image on Different Machines

DriveImage XML offers users a free method of backing up their drive partitions for personal use or a paid version for commercial use. DriveImage creates backups using snapshot images in XML format, or extensible markup language. This format allows backup images to be compressed into a smaller size and browsed without restoring the entire image. This is especially useful for reference archives. As such, there may be a need for the same archival backup on several work computers for easy browsing of the archive.

• 1

  Open DriveImage XML as an administrator by right-clicking the program listing and selecting "Run as administrator." Click "Backup" to begin a backup. When selecting options, choose "Split large files," which will break images apart into sizes suitable for DVD burning. If you would like to reduce the image size or number of images, choose a compression option. Begin the backup and wait for it to complete.

• 2

  Burn the backup images onto DVDs. In Windows 7, this can be accomplished in Windows Explorer by dragging and dropping the images onto the DVD drive, while it has a blank DVD in it.

  Optionally, you can also copy the image files onto an external hard drive for a quicker transfer to the other computers.

• 3

  Move to one of your other computers, where you would like the image copied, and place the DVD into its DVD drive. One by one, copy the images onto the new hard drive without the need to extract them. If you are using an external hard drive, connect it and copy all the images at once.

• 4

  Repeat the copying procedure for all the computers on which you want to copy the images.

• 5

  Install DriveImage XML on all computers to enable browsing of the images.