Free Backup Utility for Windows

If Windows fails to read your drive, MultiDrive can still keep working. See how it works:

1. The utility faces an unreadable block.
2. Issues a hardware reset command to clear any error states.
3. Attempts to read the block waiting longer for operation to complete.
4. In case of another read error, skips the bad block and continues the backup process.
5. Fills the corresponding 256KB block in your backup with zeros, keeping the correct file size and offset positions.

Backing up your system drive is better done when your main system is not running, because Windows constantly runs background processes and changes the data on the drive. Restoring the system drive from the backup also requires a separate bootable media.

That's why we created a bootable WinPE environment with MultiDrive pre-installed. Here's how it works:

1. Download ISO or ZIP file with WinPE image.
2. Prepare a bootable USB drive.
3. Boot from the USB drive. After booting in WinPE, MultiDrive starts automatically.
4. Backup or restore your system drive with MultiDrive.

When backing up a large drive, pause the process anytime and resume it later without skipping or losing a single bit.

This comes in handy when you need to free up computing resources or temporarily leave your desk.

By default, MultiDrive creates a full backup of the selected drive, including free space. But you can select to back up only a specific partition or a sector range using the Options button on the Backup screen.

MultiDrive is able to split large backups into smaller chunks of a defined size. This way, for example, you can store a backup of a 1TB drive on four 250GB devices.

To enable this option, toggle Split to files in the Target section and enter the desired size of each split file.

MultiDrive offers three standard output formats for backup files: RAW, ZIP, and ZSTD. In the ZIP and ZSTD formats, the data is compressed, so your backups will take less storage space.

The compression typically saves 20-50%, but its rate depends on the types of files on your source drive and may vary. Some, like text, provide high compression ratios, others, like JPEG images or MP3 audio, do not compress well.

A hash value is a unique "digital fingerprint" of your data. It is used to make sure that not a single byte has been lost during the backup process.

MultiDrive supports four different hash methods: MD5, SHA1, SHA256, and SHA512. To enable hashing, click the Options button on the Backup screen and select the preferable hash method.

To save time, MultiDrive can create backup copies of the several drives in parallel.

Progress and status for each running and completed task is shown on the Dashboard.

Parallel backup tasks can also be launched using the command-line interface.

If you manage multiple computers and want to back them up regularly, try the portable version of MultiDrive. It requires no installation, runs from a USB drive, and has the same functionality as the regular version (backup/restore, clone, and erase features are included).

For advanced users, MultiDrive offers a powerful command line interface. The backup command looks like this:

mdcli.exe backup [source] [target] <OPTIONS>

Check our detailed guide on how to create backup from command prompt in MultiDrive >

Or learn how to automate backups using MultiDrive CLI and Task Scheduler >

Drive backup features available through the CLI include:

• Compressing the target backup file to ZIP format
• Hash calculation for integrity checks: MD5, SHA1, SHA256, SHA512
• Specifying number of bytes to back up (like 500MB or 1TB)
• Starting byte offset for both the source and target drives