The Disk Imager's advantage is its ability to copy corrupted data which other cloning devices cannot handle because other cloning devices are designed to only copy good files or not corrupted sectors. They are not designed to be working with faulty HDDs. When you are in the situation of doing data recovery the problem is that the source drive is obviously not responding correctly. The computer has many levels of Error correction and other inner tools to make sure that bad data is not copied or read from its HDD. Traditional cloning devices utilize these same upper level OS/BIOS control and you do get copies but only of the good data. Bad sectors and/or corrupted files are skipped over which is perfectly acceptable when dealing with the cloning of a good HDD but it is those bad sectors which is the reason for Data recovery.

What the technician receives with the Disk Imager is a device that can read sectors with corrupted ECC and suppresses SMART and G-List auto reallocation when it does it’s imaging With there always being a risk that the source HDD can completely fail, the technician needs a tool to get that information over to a good drive quickly and efficiently. Other important attributes includes the fact that the Disk Imager is aware that the source drive is in the process of failing so it uses techniques which are less damaging to the drive in the process of copying especially the bad sectors. Traditional cloning devices will continue to send read commands to the HDD sending the head actuator again and again at the data it wants to read putting the HDD in the position of complete failure. The Disk Imager uses another type of algorithm accessing the data. Since the product is designed to handle bad sectors properly, repeated attempts to get at those bad sectors may be avoided and the head actuators sweeps the HDD with as few passes as possible with the most information being transferred to the good drive.

• The Disk Imager also copies configuration information to the target drive allowing for the drive imager to be unplugged from one job and then continued at a later time without loss of previous information or need to start from the beginning.
  
• The Disk Imager provides real time evaluation of the data being copied so that the technician can see right away that the files are being recovered.
  
• The Disk Imager does not require supervision and has methods to recover from many hang-ups allowing drive imaging to be done un-attended.
  
• The technician has a full control of the imaging process depending on the type of data recovery to be done. Single pass or multiple pass imaging, read/ready timeouts to access sectors, specific algorithm to handle bad sectors, retry attempts, reading sectors ignoring ECC and more.
  
• Ability to reboot HDD and to continue when the drive becomes unresponsive without user intervention.
  
• Full reporting of what happened during the drive imaging including the state of the imaging process, any available information about the source HDD, and the map of sectors already read or attempted, along with error type, if any.