SPX supports backups from these storage media:



  • Locally-connected hard drives or SSDs

  • Removable hard drives (USB or FireWire)


SPX supports storing backups on these storage media:



  • Locally connected hard drives or SSDs

  • Removable hard drives (USB or FireWire)

  • Virtual drives (LUN) hosted on a local RAID controller

  • Network drives (SAN, NAS, iSCSI)


SPX does not support:



  • Windows Storage Spaces storage pools

  • Windows Server Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV)


Note: Installing SPX on a system using CSV may result in redirection of I/O related to clustered shared volumes. This may preclude access to volumes.


The Restore feature of SPX also supports converting backup image files into these virtual disks:



  • VMware VMDK

  • Microsoft VHD


Supported Sector Sizes


Contemporary hard drives and SSDs ship with a 4096-byte physical sector size. Most also support the 512-byte logical sector size. (These drives are often labeled 512e for "512-Byte Sector Size Emulation".) SPX supports backing up and restoring both 4096- and 512-byte logical sector sizes.


In the unusual situation of restoring a partition/volume from one logical sector size to another:



  • 512 bytes per logical sector  -> 4096 bytes per logical sector

  • 4096 bytes per logical sector  ->  512 bytes per logical sector


SPX will issue an error message during the restore if it encounters a mis-matched sector size.


Note that a second type of 4K drives now appear on the market. These 4K Native (4Kn) drives do not support emulating the 512-byte logical sector size. Microsoft Windows may also issue a warning when restoring volumes from a 512-byte sector size drive to a 4Kn drive. Various Windows applications are hard-coded for 512-byte sectors and cannot re-initialize after migrating to a 4Kn drive.