FlashBoot vs other tools

FlashBoot Pro vs other paid tools

Unlike other paid tools for disk cloning and imaging, your copy of FlashBoot is not bound to one PC. You can use it on multiple computers you own without paying extra money. FlashBoot license does not require any kind of online activation.

Unlike other paid tools, disk images created by FlashBoot are not encrypted by "group key" for 5 PCs or so. Disk images created by FlashBoot can be restored or booted from on any number of different PC(s), even with dissimilar hardware.

Unlike other paid tools, FlashBoot runs on Windows Server operating systems as fine as on mainstream client Windows operating systems. There's no need to pay extra for separate overpriced "edition" just for compatibility with Windows Server.

Unlike other paid tools, FlashBoot has free updates and free upgrades for lifetime. You don't have to pay every year for new versions, and there are no artificially introduced incompatibilities in disk image format. It's enough to pay once.

FlashBoot Free vs other free tools

Unlike other free tools for USB mass storage device formatting, FlashBoot can create FAT32 filesystems on USB thumdrives larger than 32 Gb. This is especially important in UEFI environment, where filesystem on USB thumbdrive must be recognized by motherboard firmware, and so NTFS is not supported.

Unlike other free tools, FlashBoot can work with USB thumdrives which have no drive letter assigned or have no partitions. If capacity of USB thumdrive was reduced by other tools (for example, 64 Gb USB thumbdrive has become 32 Gb USB thumbdrive), then FlashBoot will automatically recover it to full capacity.

Unlike other free tools, FlashBoot supports ESD format of source Windows installation images (in addition to ISO image files and directly-accessed DVD disks).

Unlike other free tools, FlashBoot remains fully functional under Windows XP. This is because FlashBoot does not mount registry hives, FAT filesystems, WIM and VHD images via Windows kernel. These features are implemented inside FlashBoot, without invocation of platform-specific tools.

For specific formatting scenarios, where compatibility with older computers matters, FlashBoot formats USB thumbdrives in such way that they will boot both in USB-ZIP and USB-HDD mode, regardless of BIOS settings. For such cases, FlashBoot also allows to specify disk CHS geometry explicitly at format time, as well as target drive letter, i.e. A: or C:

FlashBoot supports command line interface as alternative to GUI for power users who need automation or unattended operation.

Last but not the least: FlashBoot stands against the always-online, spy-on-everything, everything-is-a-service, subscribe-not-buy, force-updates-you-don't-want madness of recent years. FlashBoot does not interact with the internet in any way — it's up to you to decide if update is necessary. No toolbars, no ads, no spamming through e-mail database and no other crap in the installer, software and website.