MiniTool ShadowMaker Alternatives

Disk2vhd is a tool for creating a physical disk as a virtual hard disk for virtual machines or Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines. The feature that separates Disk2vhd from its alternatives is the support for machines that are running online. You can create a virtual hard disk on local volumes as well as on the entire physical hard disk. Disk2vhd can create a maximum size of the partition up to 127GB. Creating the VHD will not erase the system volume information of the physical disk partition.

Virtualization is a necessity in networked machine infrastructure. If you are an IT company-owned person, this tool will be beneficial for you. This will save you a lot of resources and money by using one storage and virtualizing it on every machine. In this way, all the computers will use the same hard drive. One con of virtualization is that it makes the storage speed slow as many machines are using it simultaneously.

BackupChain is software that allows you to make server machine data backups. For IT-related business, this tool is beneficial as you can customize the way you want to backup files and choose the format the way you want. Formats include ZIP, 7Z, virtual disks, etc. Besides a regular backup, BackupChain offers data compression to save storage, duplication of files, and disk backup.

BackupChain can also convert physical machines into virtual ones and back it up as a whole to the network server. Other notable features include Hyper-V module support for Hyper-V servers, Automated virtual machines backup, Unicode letter support for filenames, eSATA and USB hard drive support, Cluster shared volumes, and synchronization of server files with all networked machines.

OSFMount – Create RAM Drives is software that allows you to mount an image file to the RAM, physical hard disc, or virtual disk. The supported formats are .IMG, .ISO, .BIN, .VHD and .DD. If you alter the file mounted on disk, it will not affect the original file. The purpose is to make image files extractable. For example, OSFMount makes it easier to extract and install windows setup or other software.

A big feature of OSFMount is that it can mount files on RAM storage. RAM tends to perform at higher read and write speeds and it will make your operations faster than traditional hard disks. This will benefit large files like games, software with large no. of cache files, and database applications. One con is that the data on the virtual disk is not preserved when the PC shuts down.

Rollback Rx is software that restores your computer to the previous state it was in. If you accidentally lose the power supply, you can use this software to restore the PC from the last state and continue working without losing your important files. Rollback Rx is built specifically for IT companies where important data is being processed every time. In case of a system crash, it will restore all the files that were running in the RAM.

Along with that, it offers many other features like VMWare support, Subconsole access, and Multiple drive support where the PC is working on a virtual drive. With remote management, you can access the other systems and take over the control as an admin. Task scheduler allows you to set the saving time of restore point. The paid version has an edge of unlimited restore points as compared to the 7 in the free version.

elby Virtual CloneDrive is software that creates a virtual drive and runs compatible files after mounting them on it. It is an alternative to Daemon Tools Virtual HDD, Magic Disk, and Power ISO with minimal and bug-free user experience. The drives it makes act just like physical drives. Files like .ISO, .IMG and .BIN, .CCD, .DVD requires a physical disk drive to be executed or explored. To make them compatible, they are mounted and executed on virtual drives. This is fully integrated with Windows and gives you several options to mount, execute and make virtual drives directly into the context menu.

Other options in the menu include auto mounting the last image, eject the drive to unmount, emulation of DVD or Blu-ray media files. You can also install Windows operating system with it. It supports up to 15 virtual drives at a time and keeps a record of recently mounted drives.

DAEMON Virtual HDD is a tool to create Virtual Disks from a physical disk. It can host disk files like ISO, IMG, and DVD on Virtual disks and execute them. The VHDD takes up the storage of the selected Partition or whole disk. One of the highlighting features of DAEMON Virtual HDD is that it can create a Virtual Disk on RAM storage too. This makes a big jump in performance of reading and writing speed. Any file execution on Virtual disk will have minimum effect on the system performance with Virtual RAM Disk as compared to mounting on Hard Disk.

One con of RAM mounting is that it is a volatile memory which means the data will be wiped on a PC crash or power supply cut. TrueCrypt feature creates a layer of security in the form of a password. You can encrypt your files which comes in handy for sensitive data.

HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool is software that formats any type of storage. It is a direct alternative to Etcher, Windows Media Creation Tool, Rufus, and WinToUSB. Either a USB, Hard Disk, SSD, CD, or DVD, this tool can wipe off the data within no time. It can format disks in FAT, FAT32, and NTFS file system. Additionally, HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool has an option to create a DOS startup disk to help boot a PC if there is no Windows installed. The quick format option performs fast formatting leaving the deep bin files checkup. Un-checking this option will perform deep formatting but takes more time.

HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool can also makes your USB bootable and place Windows installation files in it. This helps in installing Windows without a physical disk. It is a small but useful tool whenever you want to format or make the USB bootable.

NVIDIA Control Panel is a driver utility that allows you to manage your graphics settings. With the Nvidia graphics card support, you can customize the settings like Anti-aliasing, configurations, Nvidia G-sync, Resolution, and Overclocking. It has built-in presets for video modes like vivid, cinema, gaming, vibrant and normal. Supported Graphics cards can be overclocked by increasing memory and Core clocks to get some more frame rates in games. NVIDIA Control Panel has secure driver support that doesn’t push the card above its limits. With the advanced 3D settings, you can maximize the hardware capabilities like MSAA, Particles quality, and FXAA to render 3D work.

Basic settings like exposure, contrast, saturation, and resolution of your screen are available on the main window. Additionally, FirstPacket technology provides IP acceleration that reduces input lag in games and IP acceleration is offloaded from the CPU to the dedicated GPU hardware. A con is that it only supports Nvidia graphic cards and the operations are a bit complicated for a beginner.

AMD Dual-Core Optimizer is a utility that boosts your software performance to get a better gaming experience. It compensates for the running applications by using the Read Time Stamp counter of the processor. Those applications lag in performance due to skipping the RDTSC step in Dual-Core processors. AMD Dual-Core Optimizer synchronizes the applications and games with the processor and gives a boost in speed. The supported processors are AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core, AMD Athlon 64/FX series, and Turion 64 X2 Mobile processors.

AMD Dual-Core Optimizer has become obsolete as this was built for the older version of Windows and will not work on Windows 10 or the newer version. This software can only increase the performance of old games on old computer hardware. As modern hardware is optimized for gaming, this software will not be needed for processors with more than 2 cores.