ShadowProtect Desktop 3 is out...

[HAN]

I just purchased/downloaded a copy (BIG download... 318 MB.) I only run SP as a boot CD environment. After burning the ISO, I gave it a quick test. Worked great! I chose to boot into the Vista environment (not legacy.) Some nice, new options like CD/DVD burning and image verification. Even hardware independent restoration!

Overall, I'm very pleased. I'll be doing a few more tests in the coming days (like trying out the DVD burner etc.)

http://www.storagecraft.com/products/ShadowProtectDesktop/

[screamer]

I was looking forward to this release. I tries SP ver 2? and had issues w/ FD-ISR. Heard they were fixed a while back along w/ Raid 0 compatibility, but I decided to wait for ver.3.

I just requested an Enterprise version eval.

Currently I'm using ATI ver.9. It takes 45min to image & 6hours to recover my 52GB drive.

...screamer

[Huupi]

{QUOTE-> I was looking forward to this release. I tries SP ver 2? and had issues w/ FD-ISR. Heard they were fixed a while back along w/ Raid 0 compatibility, but I decided to wait for ver.3.

I just requested an Enterprise version eval.

Currently I'm using ATI ver.9. It takes 45min to image & 6hours to recover my 52GB drive.

...screamer <-QUOTE}

Had never issues with ver. 2 ,but also curious about universal restore,buy me a new vista rig and replace this vista stuff with an image of my good old XP install,what are the cranckles and hooks with this option i don't know,maybe Pete have something to say about this.

[Peter2150]

{QUOTE-> Had never issues with ver. 2 ,but also curious about universal restore,buy me a new vista rig and replace this vista stuff with an image of my good old XP install,what are the cranckles and hooks with this option i don't know,maybe Pete have something to say about this. <-QUOTE}

HIR will work, but, there is a caveat. HIR's purpose is to get the computer to boot. Won't necessarily work that well. Once booted, then you have to update drivers, etc to polish it off.

If you can you'd be smarter to buy a rig that already has XP on it.

WHen I tested the HIR I was amazed at what it could do, but still system's are rough after initial restore.

I have two desktops, one AMD and one Intel. I cross installed images. Also I have a pentium 4 laptop with promise raid, and I restored it on the desktops. So it does work, so long as you understand the objective.

Pete

[huntnyc]

I am about to purchase upgrade to 3.0 desktop but am thinking is it worth getting 1 year maintainence plan on this. Anyone bought that opition or think it is better no to and why. Thanks.

Gary

[aigle]

Can u give some details about how fast it is? Some numbers etc.

Thanks{QUOTE-> I just purchased/downloaded a copy (BIG download... 318 MB.) I only run SP as a boot CD environment. After burning the ISO, I gave it a quick test. Worked great! I chose to boot into the Vista environment (not legacy.) Some nice, new options like CD/DVD burning and image verification. Even hardware independent restoration!

Overall, I'm very pleased. I'll be doing a few more tests in the coming days (like trying out the DVD burner etc.)

http://www.storagecraft.com/products/ShadowProtectDesktop/ <-QUOTE}

[ErikAlbert]

I'm not going to upgrade. SP v2 is good enough and I only need it for my system partition. I don't need SP under Windows anymore.

[ErikAlbert]

{QUOTE-> Can u give some details about how fast it is? Some numbers etc.

Thanks <-QUOTE}
My system partition = 11.4gb and I use only the Recovery CD.
Backup time = close to 4 minuts. Restore-time = close to 6 minuts.
The loading time of the Recovery CD = 3m30s.
ShadowProtect Desktop v3 = close to $80

[sukarof]

{QUOTE-> Can u give some details about how fast it is? Some numbers etc.

Thanks <-QUOTE}

I just installed it in Vista. 17 minutes for a full backup of my C drive 35GB @35MB/s (in the background while using the computer as usual).

I havent restored yet though, but looking at the history of Shadowprotect (in my machine at least) I have no doubt what so ever it wont work.
Now I am just waiting for my new serial so I can activate it in Vista. I have the one year maintenance.
And fyi (http://forums.storagecraft.com/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=653)to anyone has bought the one year maintenance : We will get a email within a week with the product key and a link to the new ISO file.
No worries :thumb:

[Peter2150]

{QUOTE-> I am about to purchase upgrade to 3.0 desktop but am thinking is it worth getting 1 year maintainence plan on this. Anyone bought that opition or think it is better no to and why. Thanks.

Gary <-QUOTE}

I did. Gets you all updates and upgrades. So if you had bought 2.0 around this time last year, you'd have gotten 2.5 and now 3.0.

I think it's worth it.

[Peter2150]

{QUOTE-> I'm not going to upgrade. SP v2 is good enough and I only need it for my system partition. I don't need SP under Windows anymore. <-QUOTE}

You might want to rethink that. The new recoverey disk(assuming you aren't using nvidia raid) loads in about half the time, and also the restore times are shorter.

[screamer]

Pete,

Is there anything special I need to do w/ re: to FD-ISR & Raid 0?

...screamer

Edit: nVidia Raid 0

[Huupi]

{QUOTE-> You might want to rethink that. The new recoverey disk(assuming you aren't using nvidia raid) loads in about half the time, and also the restore times are shorter. <-QUOTE}

I,m using SP for more then a year, up until now i never got it to work on my main rig,have no complaints because the recovery disk is reliable and very fast and as Pete said version 3 recovery environment is all the more faster,so i got to scrape some money together to get version 3 !

[Horus37]

I'm wondering if it would be wise to get the service for 1 year because I'm assuming that when xp service pack 3 and Vista service pack one comes out it might change the 2 so much that a newer version of ShadowProtect will be needed above newly released version 3?

[grnxnm]

{QUOTE-> You might want to rethink that. The new recoverey disk(assuming you aren't using nvidia raid) loads in about half the time, and also the restore times are shorter. <-QUOTE}

For you guys with nForce chipsets, use the "Legacy" environment when booting the recovery CD. This "Legacy" environment isn't really old, it's just based on Windows Server 2003 rather than Vista, and has better support for nForce. Microsoft shipped crap drivers for nForce with Vista-WinPE (upon which the "Recommended" environment is based). You should have no disk or network issues with nForce as long as you use the Legacy environment.

[HAN]

{QUOTE-> Can u give some details about how fast it is? Some numbers etc.

Thanks <-QUOTE}

I'll post back later today with more info... :)

[lodore]

so can the version3 recovery cd reconize any nvidia chipset?
inculding 650i and 680i?
because when i get a new computer at christmas if i want to use a winpe cd with paragon i will need a new iso from paragon with the 650i or 680i chipset drivers on it.
but if i buy shadow protect desktop for that computer i can just burn the iso to disc and use it.
lodore

[aigle]

@Peter
@Sukarof

Thanks for the details.

[Peter2150]

{QUOTE-> so can the version3 recovery cd reconize any nvidia chipset?
inculding 650i and 680i?
because when i get a new computer at christmas if i want to use a winpe cd with paragon i will need a new iso from paragon with the 650i or 680i chipset drivers on it.
but if i buy shadow protect desktop for that computer i can just burn the iso to disc and use it.
lodore <-QUOTE}

Hi Lodore

Haven't got v3 of desktop yet, but v3 of the IT edition should cover all the nvidia chipsets. I've tested it on the 590 and 680 flavor's and it works fine.

My advice would be unless you need to buy now, to wait, but if you need to buy new, I think Shadowprotect would be a good bet.

Pete

[Huupi]

{QUOTE-> HIR will work, but, there is a caveat. HIR's purpose is to get the computer to boot. Won't necessarily work that well. Once booted, then you have to update drivers, etc to polish it off.

If you can you'd be smarter to buy a rig that already has XP on it.

WHen I tested the HIR I was amazed at what it could do, but still system's are rough after initial restore.

I have two desktops, one AMD and one Intel. I cross installed images. Also I have a pentium 4 laptop with promise raid, and I restored it on the desktops. So it does work, so long as you understand the objective.

Pete <-QUOTE}

After searching high and low all over the web,i realised here in Europe there are no XP machines left to buy,everything is Vista,so the dictate from uncle Bill is very well taken by the industry.

[lodore]

{QUOTE-> Hi Lodore

Haven't got v3 of desktop yet, but v3 of the IT edition should cover all the nvidia chipsets. I've tested it on the 590 and 680 flavor's and it works fine.

My advice would be unless you need to buy now, to wait, but if you need to buy new, I think Shadowprotect would be a good bet.

Pete <-QUOTE}
Hi peter,
thanks for the info.
i can probaly get paragon to make me a new iso with the right drivers on it.
and that will save me $80 or £40.
im not sure which i will do yet since i like the idea of doing incremental images every 15mins to a second hard drive.
or even hourly would do.
but im sure i can set paragon to do on a schdule.
lodore

[grnxnm]

{QUOTE-> so can the version3 recovery cd reconize any nvidia chipset?
inculding 650i and 680i?
because when i get a new computer at christmas if i want to use a winpe cd with paragon i will need a new iso from paragon with the 650i or 680i chipset drivers on it.
but if i buy shadow protect desktop for that computer i can just burn the iso to disc and use it.
lodore <-QUOTE}

Yes. When you boot the ShadowProtect Desktop/Server 3.0 Recovery Environment CD, at the start of the boot process select to boot the "Legacy" environment rather than the "Recommended" environment. The legacy environment is based on windows server 2003 and has been thoroughly tested for proper nForce storage and network driver support.

[Horus37]

The question still stands then, "Would it be worth it to buy the 1 yr service/maint for Shadowprotect now with ver 3 when XP sp3 and vista sp1 on the horizon? With these changes predicted in the 2 service packs, will it change so much that a newer version of shadow protect be needed and if so will that happen in less than 1 year?" Anyone have a handle on when these service packs will hit the market? Perhaps I'll ask storagecraft....

[tradetime]

{QUOTE-> After searching high and low all over the web,i realised here in Europe there are no XP machines left to buy,everything is Vista,so the dictate from uncle Bill is very well taken by the industry. <-QUOTE}
Custom configurations are available here with XP.
http://www.cyberpowersystem.co.uk/

[lodore]

{QUOTE-> Yes. When you boot the ShadowProtect Desktop/Server 3.0 Recovery Environment CD, at the start of the boot process select to boot the "Legacy" environment rather than the "Recommended" environment. The legacy environment is based on windows server 2003 and has been thoroughly tested for proper nForce storage and network driver support. <-QUOTE}
thanks grnxnmm.
i find it a bit annoying the price has gone up from $70 to $80 but oh welll.
i will have to work out if i will buy it or not.
it will cut £40 out of my new computer fund.
lodore

[grnxnm]

{QUOTE-> thanks grnxnmm.
i find it a bit annoying the price has gone up from $70 to $80 but oh welll.
i will have to work out if i will buy it or not.
it will cut £40 out of my new computer fund.
lodore <-QUOTE}

Please don't buy it if the price is not justified for your particular needs. There are a lot of backup products out there, as you're well aware. Maybe you can find something for less that works just fine for you. I'd love to have a Porsche, they're great cars, but I don't need one nor can I afford the price. I drive a Honda Accord. ;)

[Huupi]

{QUOTE-> Custom configurations are available here with XP.
http://www.cyberpowersystem.co.uk/ <-QUOTE}

Thanks Trade Time, but i'm living in holland and here is absolutely nothing like cyberpowersytem,only preinstalled OEM machines with Vista on it.Thats the fate to live in such a small country with such a small market.

[Huupi]

I got sick from this ongoing squabble about prices,just take it or leave it !!!

[Peter2150]

{QUOTE-> The question still stands then, "Would it be worth it to buy the 1 yr service/maint for Shadowprotect now with ver 3 when XP sp3 and vista sp1 on the horizon? With these changes predicted in the 2 service packs, will it change so much that a newer version of shadow protect be needed and if so will that happen in less than 1 year?" Anyone have a handle on when these service packs will hit the market? Perhaps I'll ask storagecraft.... <-QUOTE}

With the maintenance pack,it won't matter. You will get any upgrades and updates.

Pete

[Huupi]

{QUOTE-> thanks grnxnmm.
i find it a bit annoying the price has gone up from $70 to $80 but oh welll.
i will have to work out if i will buy it or not.
it will cut £40 out of my new computer fund.
lodore <-QUOTE}

Hi Lodore this thread is not about money,we should have a nice talk about SP,and the way it can benefit us !!!

[lodore]

{QUOTE-> Hi Lodore this thread is not about money,we should have a nice talk about SP,and the way it can benefit us !!! <-QUOTE}
Hi Huupi,
i know its a great product but its just a bit annoying the price went up for version 3
I like the new features of the product thou.
being a student i have a limited budget for a computer and buying new software is money out of it.
i might email paragon and see if they can make me a new winpe iso once i know what motherboard chipset im getting.
if this pc was for the whole family i would buy the shadow protect desktop myself but since im buying the pc im not so sure about reducing my pc budget.
i might buy it at a later stage thou.
lodore

[ErikAlbert]

Iodore,
Christmas is coming ... give you parents a hint ... it happens all the time.

[nexstar]

{QUOTE-> Hi Huupi,
i know its a great product but its just a bit annoying the price went up for version 3
<-QUOTE}
Be grateful they didn't price it by the megabyte:o .
Graham

[Peter2150]

{QUOTE-> Be grateful they didn't price it by the megabyte:o .
Graham <-QUOTE}

Is a big one isn't it:D

[Acadia]

{QUOTE-> Please don't buy it if the price is not justified for your particular needs. There are a lot of backup products out there, as you're well aware. Maybe you can find something for less that works just fine for you. I'd love to have a Porsche, they're great cars, but I don't need one nor can I afford the price. I drive a Honda Accord. ;) <-QUOTE}
Boy, is this honesty or what?! 8) My hat's off to grnxnm for that statement, how many support people from other companies would make a similar statement? I find this very refreshing.

Acadia

[aigle]

This statement might not be difficult as SP is mainly aimed to corporate people. I doubt taht he will make same statement to his potential corporate customers.:)

[HAN]

Ok. I ran a few more tests... (remember that I run SP by boot CD environment only.)

I imaged drive C two ways. First by DVD. This is new for SP as version 2 did not support direct burning from within the program. 11.5 GB on drive C burned to two DVD+R disks in 15 minutes 49 seconds. IMO, this was amazingly fast. It's been a while but with Image for DOS (my previous choice before SP), it was at least 30 minutes or more.

My second image was to my Western Digital Portable USB 2 drive. This time, 11.5 GB imaged to the HD in 6 minutes 40 seconds. I can't remember what SP version 2 was earlier to this HD but I'm pretty sure it was not less. So the speed to a HD is still excellent.

Lastly, I tried out the image verification routine (which was not part of the GUI prior to version 3.) I tried two different verifications. First, I verified a previous, smaller image I'd made under version 2. No problems. Then I verified tonight's image. It took 4 minutes 30 seconds and I had no issues with it either.

I have yet to test an actual restoration but I will do that sometime tomorrow.

Later... ;)

[Peter2150]

Ran my first image tonight also. Imaged from the desktop, and verified from the desktop. Restore is running right now.

When I was testing the IT edition, I imaged to and restored from DVD's. Worked fine, and I see no reason this would be different.

Need to take a break tomorrow and put Vista, back on, but then next is an HIR test with this version, and then start up the continous incrementals.

Looks great.

While maybe not to home users, but this continuous incremental and image manager sure would seem to justify the extra cost.

[kennyboy]

{QUOTE-> Ran my first image tonight also. Imaged from the desktop, and verified from the desktop. Restore is running right now.

When I was testing the IT edition, I imaged to and restored from DVD's. Worked fine, and I see no reason this would be different.

Need to take a break tomorrow and put Vista, back on, but then next is an HIR test with this version, and then start up the continous incrementals.

Looks great.

While maybe not to home users, but this continuous incremental and image manager sure would seem to justify the extra cost. <-QUOTE}


Peter, you are just trying to make me jealous.........and you've succeeded...hahaha
Wish I could just buy the recovery cd as I think this would be sufficient for a lot of potential users.

[aigle]

I used trial just to check the speed. Like version 2 on my system, it was not much faster than ATI version 7, just a diference of 1 min or even less!

[aigle]

{QUOTE-> Ok. I ran a few more tests... (remember that I run SP by boot CD environment only.)

I imaged drive C two ways. First by DVD. This is new for SP as version 2 did not support direct burning from within the program. 11.5 GB on drive C burned to two DVD+R disks in 15 minutes 49 seconds. IMO, this was amazingly fast. It's been a while but with Image for DOS (my previous choice before SP), it was at least 30 minutes or more.

My second image was to my Western Digital Portable USB 2 drive. This time, 11.5 GB imaged to the HD in 6 minutes 40 seconds. I can't remember what SP version 2 was earlier to this HD but I'm pretty sure it was not less. So the speed to a HD is still excellent.

Lastly, I tried out the image verification routine (which was not part of the GUI prior to version 3.) I tried two different verifications. First, I verified a previous, smaller image I'd made under version 2. No problems. Then I verified tonight's image. It took 4 minutes 30 seconds and I had no issues with it either.

I have yet to test an actual restoration but I will do that sometime tomorrow.

Later... ;) <-QUOTE}
Thanks Han.

[silver0066]

{QUOTE-> Please don't buy it if the price is not justified for your particular needs. There are a lot of backup products out there, as you're well aware. Maybe you can find something for less that works just fine for you. I'd love to have a Porsche, they're great cars, but I don't need one nor can I afford the price. I drive a Honda Accord. ;) <-QUOTE}I just bought it. ShadowProtect is the Porsche, Acronis TrueImage Workstation with UR is the poor running old Chevy.

[huntnyc]

{QUOTE-> I just bought it. ShadowProtect is the Porsche, Acronis TrueImage Workstation with UR is the poor running old Chevy. <-QUOTE}

I second that. Running here smoothly and love the new features. Still lean and mean program.

Recovery CD boots much faster and allowed me to plug in external USB drive after I had booted and it picked it up with no problem. I could not do that with previous recovery CD without restarting it again.

Gary

[alfa1]

What about intel P35 chipset and Jmicron controller? :blink:
Are they reconized by the recovery CD or is it required a special procedure?

Txs in advance... :)

[Peter2150]

{QUOTE-> What about intel P35 chipset and Jmicron controller? :blink:
Are they reconized by the recovery CD or is it required a special procedure?

Txs in advance... :) <-QUOTE}

Hard to say. Wait until grnxnm comes along. Or request the evaluation edition and give it a whirl.


Silver I'd have to agree with you.

Pete

[grnxnm]

{QUOTE-> What about intel P35 chipset and Jmicron controller? :blink:
Are they reconized by the recovery CD or is it required a special procedure?

Txs in advance... :) <-QUOTE}

As a general guideline, if the chipset/storage-controller is natively supported by Vista, then it will be supported in the Recommended recovery environment without the need for you to load additional drivers. However, this is a generalization because we've added many drivers to the base configuration. I'll have to find the list for you. Like the others say, just request the full eval so that you can download the ISO for the recovery environment, burn a CD based on the ISO image, and boot it and see if you can see your disks properly (even in RAID configurations) in the new Disk Map tab. If you can't see your disks, no problem, just click on the Tools menu and select Load Drivers and point it to the .INF file (say on a USB thumb drive, or on a network share - use Network Configuration to map drive letters within the recovery environment) for your storage controller. In fact you can load other drivers here too, such as NIC drivers if they're not included in the recovery environment.

[aigle]

I don,t find any options for MBR, Track Zero etc during imaging. Where are these options?

[grnxnm]

{QUOTE-> I don,t find any options for MBR, Track Zero etc during imaging. Where are these options? <-QUOTE}

Those are options in a page in the restore wizard.

[aigle]

So while taking an image, everything is imaged by default?
Can u restore a standard MBR( instead of imaged one) while restoring?

[ErikAlbert]

{QUOTE-> So while taking an image, everything is imaged by default?
Can u restore a standard MBR( instead of imaged one) while restoring? <-QUOTE}
Yes and yes.

[aigle]

{QUOTE-> Yes and yes. <-QUOTE}
Ok, Ok, Thanks;D ;D

[Karen76]

Having waited for months, I was delighted to learn the Vista-compatible version of ShadowProtect was finally released. I just downloaded and installed the trial version of SP v3. Several seconds after commencing a backup image of my C drive, my new Vista PC experienced its first BSOD. There were some ominous warning messages, the system shutdown then restarted, and my normally-silent PC issued a terrible noise unlike anything I'd ever heard.

Apparently, there's a conflict between ShadowProtect and some other software on my PC, possibly Seagate DiscWizard (a stripped down version of Acronis True Image v10). I rebooted into a different FirstDefense-ISR snapshot to erase any trace of SP. Having read so many glowing reports about ShadowProtect, I was looking forward to seeing how it worked for myself. Since I hope to never hear that godawful sound from my PC again, I think I'll pass on any further experimentation. I've experienced plenty of software conflicts but never one as extreme, and loud, as this one.

[screamer]

Does anyone have ATI & SP on the same box / partition?

...screamer

[HAN]

Did some restores tonight...

Hard drive based went totally as expected. (Setup listed in post #37.) Time? 5 minutes and 15 seconds. A bit faster than version 2 was. Very cool! :)

DVD was a bit different. :( While it did appear to restore drive C, it apparently would not restore the MBR. I tried 4 times from 2 different images. 3 times under the recommended (Vista) environment and 1 under the legacy version (which BTW, took MUCH longer to run than the Vista version.) The error message I received each time was "Failed to restore MBR! Continue the volume restoration?" (To be clear, the restoration did continue (and finish) all 4 times.)

With this all said, it makes me wonder if the DVD imaging/burning routine really does support MBR restoration, even though the option is listed in the restore environment? I very briefly looked through the version 3 SP Desktop User Guide and didn't find anything.

grnxnm, any thoughts? (I have not went to Storage Craft support yet.)

[Peter2150]

{QUOTE-> Did some restores tonight...

Hard drive based went totally as expected. (Setup listed in post #37.) Time? 5 minutes and 15 seconds. A bit faster than version 2 was. Very cool! :)

DVD was a bit different. :( While it did appear to restore drive C, it apparently would not restore the MBR. I tried 4 times from 2 different images. 3 times under the recommended (Vista) environment and 1 under the legacy version (which BTW, took MUCH longer to run than the Vista version.) The error message I received each time was "Failed to restore MBR! Continue the volume restoration?" (To be clear, the restoration did continue (and finish) all 4 times.)

With this all said, it makes me wonder if the DVD imaging/burning routine really does support MBR restoration, even though the option is listed in the restore environment? I very briefly looked through the version 3 SP Desktop User Guide and didn't find anything. grnxnm, any thoughts? (I have not went to Storage Craft support yet.) <-QUOTE}

Hi Han

I found the same thing, but I also found that by repeating the restore, it would work, at least in the legacy. Shouldn't be dvd related as I tested that on the IT Edition beta and it worked fine. Did a little testing and reported the results to grnxnm. It almost assuredly is a bug. He will probably respond tomorrow.

Pete

[Peter2150]

{QUOTE-> Does anyone have ATI & SP on the same box / partition?

...screamer <-QUOTE}

They may conflict depending on what Acronis is doing for it's hot imaging.

Pete

[JimInVA]

While working on a new system and its software installation, an attempt that I'd made at merging some software from a previous system did not produce the desired results. Because I'd installed SP Desktop 3 immediately after the initial XP install... and because I'd made a couple of full backups at various point... I decided that it was time to see how easily a restore operation would go.

Now I must admit that my first inclination was to restore to another hard drive, test it and to then image that to the NVIDIA Raid-0 array... but seriously... if I won't trust the software, then I really shouldn't be using it to begin with. So I initialized the array and began the recovery process. I clicked to start the process and turned to find my cup of coffee. Returning to the system, I continued wait... and wait... and WAIT. At some point, I actually began to read the information on the display before me and saw the word "COMPLETED". In the short couple of minutes that I'd used to chase down some coffee, it had already completed. 9.5GB in 2M/11s. Not just nice... but VERY NICE!!

I've owned my own computer store for 20 years. I've seen so many things over so long a period of time that I can't even remember when the last time some new piece of software was worth much more than the raise of an eyebrow. All I can say is that I'm glad it was after midnight so no one was around to see me hooting and hollering and dancing around the shop! This is some very good stuff!!

Jim

[ErikAlbert]

{QUOTE-> Does anyone have ATI & SP on the same box / partition?

...screamer <-QUOTE}
Yes I had ATI & SP in the same box under winXPproSP2 and they don't like eachother.
My computer suddenly rebooted while I was doing a backup with SP and it happened regularly, not just one time and without any error message, no BSOD, nothing, just a reboot.
First I thought it was SP, but after uninstalling ATI completely, everything was back to normal.
At least one member at Wilders had the same experience, but I don't remember his name.

[Huupi]

{QUOTE-> While working on a new system and its software installation, an attempt that I'd made at merging some software from a previous system did not produce the desired results. Because I'd installed SP Desktop 3 immediately after the initial XP install... and because I'd made a couple of full backups at various point... I decided that it was time to see how easily a restore operation would go.

Now I must admit that my first inclination was to restore to another hard drive, test it and to then image that to the NVIDIA Raid-0 array... but seriously... if I won't trust the software, then I really shouldn't be using it to begin with. So I initialized the array and began the recovery process. I clicked to start the process and turned to find my cup of coffee. Returning to the system, I continued wait... and wait... and WAIT. At some point, I actually began to read the information on the display before me and saw the word "COMPLETED". In the short couple of minutes that I'd used to chase down some coffee, it had already completed. 9.5GB in 2M/11s. Not just nice... but VERY NICE!!

I've owned my own computer store for 20 years. I've seen so many things over so long a period of time that I can't even remember when the last time some new piece of software was worth much more than the raise of an eyebrow. All I can say is that I'm glad it was after midnight so no one was around to see me hooting and hollering and dancing around the shop! This is some very good stuff!!

Jim <-QUOTE}

Hi Jim, Welcome on board ! A question,did you restore the system part. with the recovery disk,or you restored just a data partition from within windows ?
I admit restore time is amasing compared with vers. 2,but from other members their experiences i read,recovery times are just a LITTLE faster.It would be nice if you already had vers. 2,so you could compare,But as you said its a new rig so its not possible

[JimInVA]

{QUOTE-> Hi Jim, Welcome on board ! A question,did you restore the system part. with the recovery disk,or you restored just a data partition from within windows ?
I admit restore time is amasing compared with vers. 2,but from other members their experiences i read,recovery times are just a LITTLE faster.It would be nice if you already had vers. 2,so you could compare,But as you said its a new rig so its not possible <-QUOTE}

Thanks for the Welcome! Been lurking and learning... some very talented folks have been willing to discuss, challenge and be challenged with their ideas. I have learned much!

I did a Volume Restore from the CD. I did note one interesting item, however. Before electing to move directly to the main Raid-0 array (138GB), I did ask the software to look at an 80GB drive. This would have more than enough size for the 9.5GBs of the image. SP insisted, however, that the image was 138GB and disallowed access to the smaller drive for not having enough available storage.

This raises an issue of concern - If my primary had been a 750GB drive(s) and the entire data population of the drive was only 100GBs. I'd have hoped (and expected) that I could use a smaller drive (say a 120GB) as a restore destination. This would allow me a quick return to operation while I pursued a larger replacement. I'm now wondering if there was another option available to me that I didn't notice.

I have both SP 2.5 and 3.0 but had only used the 2.5 in trial mode for backups. If time allows later in the week, I might try them both and note difference in image sizes and backup/restore times...

Jim

[Huupi]

{QUOTE-> Thanks for the Welcome! Been lurking and learning... some very talented folks have been willing to discuss, challenge and be challenged with their ideas. I have learned much!

I did a Volume Restore from the CD. I did note one interesting item, however. Before electing to move directly to the main Raid-0 array (138GB), I did ask the software to look at an 80GB drive. This would have more than enough size for the 9.5GBs of the image. SP insisted, however, that the image was 138GB and disallowed access to the smaller drive for not having enough available storage.

This raises an issue of concern - If my primary had been a 750GB drive(s) and the entire data population of the drive was only 100GBs. I'd have hoped (and expected) that I could use a smaller drive (say a 120GB) as a restore destination. This would allow me a quick return to operation while I pursued a larger replacement. I'm now wondering if there was another option available to me that I didn't notice.

I have both SP 2.5 and 3.0 but had only used the 2.5 in trial mode for backups. If time allows later in the week, I might try them both and note difference in image sizes and backup/restore times...

Jim <-QUOTE}

Hey Jim,at time of backup,did you cover free space included in the backup,if so SP always calculate the destination space against backup space,if they don't match,SP fire up the message.Its mostly useless to backup freespace,you get an image with lots of air so to speak.But its my guess,maybe the Gurus can jump in.

[Peter2150]

{QUOTE-> Thanks for the Welcome! Been lurking and learning... some very talented folks have been willing to discuss, challenge and be challenged with their ideas. I have learned much!

I did a Volume Restore from the CD. I did note one interesting item, however. Before electing to move directly to the main Raid-0 array (138GB), I did ask the software to look at an 80GB drive. This would have more than enough size for the 9.5GBs of the image. SP insisted, however, that the image was 138GB and disallowed access to the smaller drive for not having enough available storage.

This raises an issue of concern - If my primary had been a 750GB drive(s) and the entire data population of the drive was only 100GBs. I'd have hoped (and expected) that I could use a smaller drive (say a 120GB) as a restore destination. This would allow me a quick return to operation while I pursued a larger replacement. I'm now wondering if there was another option available to me that I didn't notice.

I have both SP 2.5 and 3.0 but had only used the 2.5 in trial mode for backups. If time allows later in the week, I might try them both and note difference in image sizes and backup/restore times...

Jim <-QUOTE}

Hi Jim

Currently ShadowProtect doesn't have shrink on the fly so you are right you can't restore the bigger partition on a smaller drive. In testing HIR what I did was shrink the partition with Acronis Disk Director first and then image it. Then no problem. Note right now the issue HAN mentioned about restoring the mbr. Image is good, but there is that little nit, that should be fixed ASAP.

Pete

[JimInVA]

{QUOTE-> Hey Jim,at time of backup,did you cover free space included in the backup,if so SP always calculate the destination space against backup space,if they don't match,SP fire up the message.Its mostly useless to backup freespace,you get an image with lots of air so to speak.But its my guess,maybe the Gurus can jump in. <-QUOTE}

As I recall, the default was to NOT save free space. The complete image was only 4 GBs.

Jim

[screamer]

{QUOTE-> Yes I had ATI & SP in the same box under winXPproSP2 and they don't like eachother.
My computer suddenly rebooted while I was doing a backup with SP and it happened regularly, not just one time and without any error message, no BSOD, nothing, just a reboot.
First I thought it was SP, but after uninstalling ATI completely, everything was back to normal.
At least one member at Wilders had the same experience, but I don't remember his name. <-QUOTE}

Thanks Erik, I'll uninstall ATI if I get the eval. of SP ver.3

...screamer

[ErikAlbert]

{QUOTE-> Thanks Erik, I'll uninstall ATI if I get the eval. of SP ver.3

...screamer <-QUOTE}
You might keep your ATI-backup-files and use the Acronis Rescue CD to recover your system, just in case you are in trouble with SP.
But you have to uninstall ATI under Windows.

[grnxnm]

{QUOTE-> Did some restores tonight...

Hard drive based went totally as expected. (Setup listed in post #37.) Time? 5 minutes and 15 seconds. A bit faster than version 2 was. Very cool! :)

DVD was a bit different. :( While it did appear to restore drive C, it apparently would not restore the MBR. I tried 4 times from 2 different images. 3 times under the recommended (Vista) environment and 1 under the legacy version (which BTW, took MUCH longer to run than the Vista version.) The error message I received each time was "Failed to restore MBR! Continue the volume restoration?" (To be clear, the restoration did continue (and finish) all 4 times.)

With this all said, it makes me wonder if the DVD imaging/burning routine really does support MBR restoration, even though the option is listed in the restore environment? I very briefly looked through the version 3 SP Desktop User Guide and didn't find anything.

grnxnm, any thoughts? (I have not went to Storage Craft support yet.) <-QUOTE}

@HAN & Pete

Thanks guys for brining this issue to my attention. We're working on it. When the fix is available for this you'll need to download a new ISO for the recovery enviornment. This issue will only affect those users who experience it and who have custom MBR code (such as FD-ISR users). For the rest of you with the default MBR code already in place on the MBR you won't experience any issue (you may see the error to restore MBR, but your system will still boot after restore because the MBR code is already there). For those of you who experience this issue and have a blank code-section in your MBR prior to restore, you can use mbrfix.exe in the Windows installer recovery mode to patch a blank MBR code section. I anticipate we'll have a fix for this within a few days. Sorry about that. It's an unfortunate truth that no software is perfect. We try to mitigate that fact by responding quickly to such issues. Thanks again!

[silver0066]

{QUOTE-> @HAN & Pete

Thanks guys for brining this issue to my attention. We're working on it. When the fix is available for this you'll need to download a new ISO for the recovery enviornment. This issue will only affect those users who experience it and who have custom MBR code (such as FD-ISR users). For the rest of you with the default MBR code already in place on the MBR you won't experience any issue (you may see the error to restore MBR, but your system will still boot after restore because the MBR code is already there). For those of you who experience this issue and have a blank code-section in your MBR prior to restore, you can use mbrfix.exe in the Windows installer recovery mode to patch a blank MBR code section. I anticipate we'll have a fix for this within a few days. Sorry about that. It's an unfortunate truth that no software is perfect. We try to mitigate that fact by responding quickly to such issues. Thanks again! <-QUOTE}I am one of those that uses FD-ISR. Will you please let us know when the new update is availalbe? I just purchased 1 license 2 days ago and am considering more after some additional testing with HIR...which did not work yesterday on a test. I could have very well done some things in the wrong order, or it could be some king of a bug. I was restoring from a newer Dell laptop to an older one with different video and network cards. I will keep experimenting as time permits.

Silver

[grnxnm]

Yup, I'll keep you posted.

[aigle]

{QUOTE-> Hi Jim

Currently ShadowProtect doesn't have shrink on the fly so you are right you can't restore the bigger partition on a smaller drive. In testing HIR what I did was shrink the partition with Acronis Disk Director first and then image it. Then no problem. Note right now the issue HAN mentioned about restoring the mbr. Image is good, but there is that little nit, that should be fixed ASAP.

Pete <-QUOTE}
Peter, does it mean that if I image my C partition/ drive( 10 Gb with 4 GB of data) and later on want to restore the image to a smaller C partition/ drive( say 6GB), SP will not let me do this?

Thanks

[Peter2150]

{QUOTE-> Peter, does it mean that if I image my C partition/ drive( 10 Gb with 4 GB of data) and later on want to restore the image to a smaller C partition/ drive( say 6GB), SP will not let me do this?

Thanks <-QUOTE}

Correct, if your current partition is 10g with 4gb of data it won't restore on 6gb at this time. IF you know you want to do this, then you can shrink the partition to 6gb and then image. Then you can restore. Shrink on the fly is coming.

Pete

[Acadia]

This MBR issue thingie for FD-ISR users, is it a non-issue for those of us still using the old version of SP? Thanks.

Acadia

[aigle]

{QUOTE-> Correct, if your current partition is 10g with 4gb of data it won't restore on 6gb at this time. IF you know you want to do this, then you can shrink the partition to 6gb and then image. Then you can restore. Shrink on the fly is coming.

Pete <-QUOTE}
I wonder why SP has no such feature, I feel far less impressed now. ATI has this feature since long.

[Peter2150]

{QUOTE-> This MBR issue thingie for FD-ISR users, is it a non-issue for those of us still using the old version of SP? Thanks.

Acadia <-QUOTE}

If you are using an older version of SP, it's a non issue for now. Correct. In fact I did a restore tonight with the new version and it worked fine. If it hadn't, I'd have just gone to the other version and would have been fine.

Also note if you do a restore, and don't delete the volume first it won't be an issue as then the default is not restore the mbr. Kind of like an IFW restore.

Pete

[Peter2150]

{QUOTE-> I wonder why SP has no such feature, I feel far less impressed now. ATI has this feature since long. <-QUOTE}

Aigle it's coming. All in all I think this version of SP blows ATI away. The continous incremental with the new image manager is awesome. The reason it's not there yet, is an issue of priority. Don't know for sure, but I'd suspect it's not as much of biggie for the IT types.

[aigle]

{QUOTE-> The reason it's not there yet, is an issue of priority. Don't know for sure, but I'd suspect it's not as much of biggie for the IT types. <-QUOTE}Agree!

[kennyboy]

Although there are bound to be a few bugs in any new release, it is incredibly reassuring to have grnxnm keeping so up to date and interested. Makes you think that when it is finished, this will be a very desirable piece of software.

[Huupi]

I need no install,done everything from the recovery,SP 2 already serves me well,i can only think of a little speed difference,oke but that is just me,can imagine that many angry awaited the SP 3 release with more supported drivers,HIR etc.
At the moment the extra provisions are just overkill to me.So i stay with.......

huub.

[nexstar]

Does the Server recovery iso work with the Desktop installation?

I've just requested the evaluation version but it is the desktop demo version I have installed and would be interested in.

They said that the iso would probably be ready on Wednesday for download so I presume this would be the updated one.

Graham

[HAN]

{QUOTE-> Does the Server recovery iso work with the Desktop installation?

I've just requested the evaluation version but it is the desktop demo version I have installed and would be interested in.

They said that the iso would probably be ready on Wednesday for download so I presume this would be the updated one.

Graham <-QUOTE}

My ISO download filename said it was the server version too but when I burnt it, it was, from everything I can see, the desktop version. IMO, you're good to go (except of course, the fact that the MBR restoration patch is coming in a few days.)

[HAN]

{QUOTE-> @HAN & Pete

Thanks guys for brining this issue to my attention. We're working on it. When the fix is available for this you'll need to download a new ISO for the recovery enviornment. This issue will only affect those users who experience it and who have custom MBR code (such as FD-ISR users). For the rest of you with the default MBR code already in place on the MBR you won't experience any issue (you may see the error to restore MBR, but your system will still boot after restore because the MBR code is already there). For those of you who experience this issue and have a blank code-section in your MBR prior to restore, you can use mbrfix.exe in the Windows installer recovery mode to patch a blank MBR code section. I anticipate we'll have a fix for this within a few days. Sorry about that. It's an unfortunate truth that no software is perfect. We try to mitigate that fact by responding quickly to such issues. Thanks again! <-QUOTE}

Thank you for getting back to us. :)

[nexstar]

{QUOTE-> IMO, you're good to go (except of course, the fact that the MBR restoration patch is coming in a few days.) <-QUOTE}
Thanks for the info. As I want to try it out with Rollback, I'll wait for the patched version before downloading it.

Graham

[grnxnm]

{QUOTE-> Does the Server recovery iso work with the Desktop installation?

I've just requested the evaluation version but it is the desktop demo version I have installed and would be interested in.

They said that the iso would probably be ready on Wednesday for download so I presume this would be the updated one.

Graham <-QUOTE}

The ShadowProtect Desktop and Server Editions share the same ISO file for their recovery environment CD. In fact this same ISO also contains the installers for both the installed Desktop and Server edition products, as well as the ImageManager and KeyFileMaker (ImageManager and KeyFileMaker are for the Continuous Incrementals feature which is mostly for the IT community).

[screamer]

I'm really interested in this software, but I'm a little confused. If I could get a better understanding of what I'm looking for, I'd be more than willing to go to my hip for the $80.00 / $160.00

The last time I trialed this software I had issues w/ FD-ISR. I've been assured that they were corrected. This was on my laptop. I didn't have the balz to try it on my work box (FD-ISR & nVidia RAID 0)

I only used the SP Recovery CD & Legacy Mode. My aim for this app is to replace ATI which I find super slow. 45min to image / 6hrs to recover.

Storagecraft just suggested that I D/L ShadowProtect Desktop Edition 3.0 until the ShadowProtect Recovery CD is available on Wednesday.

Do I need the Desktop edition or can I just use the Recovery CD to image and recover an image?

I realize that my question may be very elementary, but for some reason I just can't grasp this app ???

Second, even more elementary question. What procedure should I follow to image and restore? Yes, I RTFM but I still don't get it.

...screamer

[Peter2150]

{QUOTE-> I'm really interested in this software, but I'm a little confused. If I could get a better understanding of what I'm looking for, I'd be more than willing to go to my hip for the $80.00 / $160.00

The last time I trialed this software I had issues w/ FD-ISR. I've been assured that they were corrected. This was on my laptop. I didn't have the balz to try it on my work box (FD-ISR & nVidia RAID 0)

I only used the SP Recovery CD & Legacy Mode. My aim for this app is to replace ATI which I find super slow. 45min to image / 6hrs to recover.

Storagecraft just suggested that I D/L ShadowProtect Desktop Edition 3.0 until the ShadowProtect Recovery CD is available on Wednesday.

Do I need the Desktop edition or can I just use the Recovery CD to image and recover an image?

I realize that my question may be very elementary, but for some reason I just can't grasp this app ???

Second, even more elementary question. What procedure should I follow to image and restore? Yes, I RTFM but I still don't get it.

...screamer <-QUOTE}

Lots of options.

Okay. Assume you buy it. You download an ISO file and burn it to disk. That disk serves 2 purposes. 1) It is indeed the recovery disk. 2nd) It is the install disk for the Desktop version.

From here the options expand.

You can image from the desktop version, and you can verify the image from the desktop. Do it manually if you so desire You can also set schedules to automate taking incremental snapshots if you desire. Doing that will of course pile up incremental snapshots, hence Imagemanger. If you use continous incrementals it will follow a schedule every day taking say 15 minute incrementals. Then at the end of the day imagemanger will collapse the incrementals into one. At a designated time all other incrementals are deleted. Phew. It works beautifully. Hands off.

OR

You can fire up the Recovery CD and image/verify and restore from there. You can as in the desktop also mount the images.

When you boot the Recovery CD you will also see two options. Legacy which boots to Winpe, and recommend which boots to VistaPe. VistaPe is much faster, but there is a catch.

Nvidia Raid drivers. The drivers are now in the recovery CD, and the see Raid 0 configurations fine. Works fine on both of my machines which are different invidia chipsets. The catch is the set of drivers Microsoft chose to include with VistaPe. The chose a bad set, so although I can see my disks the results are at best sketchy. If it works the restore is fine, but it doesn't always work. So with Nvidia drivers best bet is use the Legacy boot, and all works fine.

Overkill????

Pete

Didn't answer one question. Simplest procedure of all is just image with the Desktop and restore with the recovery CD. Or even simpler if you want to do what I do which is restore every image. Just boot the CD and Image mount/verify(whichever) and restore.

Also no FDISR conflicts at all. I use VSS on FDISR and all is fine.

[screamer]

Pete, I recall seeing several partitions on the laptop. One was the Dell recovery partition which has been deleted. There were several small FAT partitions also.
I needed to buy Acronis Disk Director in order to fix / combine all the small partitions in order to get my original 90G partition back.

When I go to restore an image, do I need to delete it first, or will SP show me a partition that is OK to restore to?

Will I see my original 160 / 320GB RAID 0 drive and just click Restore?

If I do see several small partitions can I combine them? Not sure if I'm making sense here, It's been a while since I trialed this app.

...screamer

[silver0066]

{QUOTE-> @HAN & Pete

Thanks guys for brining this issue to my attention. We're working on it. When the fix is available for this you'll need to download a new ISO for the recovery enviornment. This issue will only affect those users who experience it and who have custom MBR code (such as FD-ISR users). For the rest of you with the default MBR code already in place on the MBR you won't experience any issue (you may see the error to restore MBR, but your system will still boot after restore because the MBR code is already there). For those of you who experience this issue and have a blank code-section in your MBR prior to restore, you can use mbrfix.exe in the Windows installer recovery mode to patch a blank MBR code section. I anticipate we'll have a fix for this within a few days. Sorry about that. It's an unfortunate truth that no software is perfect. We try to mitigate that fact by responding quickly to such issues. Thanks again! <-QUOTE}grnxnm

I just purchased Desktop3 a couple of days ago. I did not get the Maintenance option as there was no explanation of it on the StorageCraft site.

Will I be able to get the new fix when it comes out?
What does the Maintenance option provide that is not available to me now?

I will be buying more licensing after more testing with HIR and will need to know what the Maintenance provides over no Maintenance.

Many thanks,

Silver

[Peter2150]

{QUOTE-> grnxnm

I just purchased Desktop3 a couple of days ago. I did not get the Maintenance option as there was no explanation of it on the StorageCraft site.

Will I be able to get the new fix when it comes out?
What does the Maintenance option provide that is not available to me now?

I will be buying more licensing after more testing with HIR and will need to know what the Maintenance provides over no Maintenance.

Many thanks,

Silver <-QUOTE}

Hi Silver

Can't speak for grnxnm, but I have to believe since it it a bug, there will be no issue.

As I understand the maintenance contract(I did get it), and what has actually happened, is I bought SP 2.0 and the maintenance contract. When 2.5 came out I received that. Now that 3.0 is out, I will also being receiving it. Another words anything release while the maintenance contract is in effect.

From the website it looks like when my maintenance contract expires, I can just purchase another year.

Pete

[Peter2150]

{QUOTE-> Pete, I recall seeing several partitions on the laptop. One was the Dell recovery partition which has been deleted. There were several small FAT partitions also.
I needed to buy Acronis Disk Director in order to fix / combine all the small partitions in order to get my original 90G partition back.

When I go to restore an image, do I need to delete it first, or will SP show me a partition that is OK to restore to?

Will I see my original 160 / 320GB RAID 0 drive and just click Restore?

If I do see several small partitions can I combine them? Not sure if I'm making sense here, It's been a while since I trialed this app.

...screamer <-QUOTE}

Hi Screamer.

I have a new IBM(Lenovo) Tablet PC. First thing I did was image it. I told it to image the whole drive. I was using IT edition, but the recoveryCD would be the same. What it did was create two images, one of each partition. When I did the restore, I just restore, the main partition, I left the hidden partition alone. No reason just lazy. Had a wanted too, it would have been a separate restore.

Pete

[grnxnm]

@Silver

Of course you'll receive minor patches for free, such as the fix to the MBR-restore issue (where MBR restore fails when restoring from split optical media sets).

Maintenance gives you major upgrades for free.

[Huupi]

{QUOTE-> This MBR issue thingie for FD-ISR users, is it a non-issue for those of us still using the old version of SP? Thanks.

Acadia <-QUOTE}

Imaging for a year with SP2 and FDISR[bootback] ,never ever met any problem.

[JimInVA]

{QUOTE-> Although there are bound to be a few bugs in any new release, it is incredibly reassuring to have grnxnm keeping so up to date and interested. Makes you think that when it is finished, this will be a very desirable piece of software. <-QUOTE}

Obviously, one would expect any piece of software to stand on its own merits before making a purchase. I spent many hours that bridged into days narrowing that which I would personally use and that which will become my recommendation to hundreds of clients. In the end, it came down to the products of two companies - Acronis and StorageCraft. Each have their own unique merits but only the StorageCraft products come with easy access to one like grnxnm.

It seems quite apparent that grnxnm takes pride for his portion of contribution to the product (at least for the ShadowProtect line) yet would be the first to suggest that it is a continual work in progress. Even with that, he would remain one of the most encouraging voices towards my right of choice towards any product... even that of a competitor's if it better fit my need.

And so... while a piece of software must certainly stand on its own merits, at any one point in time, it is the attitude of those behind the product that allow me a glimpse of what is yet to come. And so I've made my bet with StorageCraft... and have already had reason to communicate with various departments within the company. I have found them to be responsive and each of them seems to share something in common - an enthusiasm for the job that they do. It is an attitude that is both surprising and refreshing in today's marketplace.

Jim

[Huupi]

According to Nate/Grnxnm the HIR option in the Desktop/Server version is limited to a machine where already SP [any version] is installed,so you can place any image from whatever OS windows on this desktop, As a consequence it means if you want to "HIR" more desktops you have to buy that many SP3 copies. I guess for home users this restriction is not a worry,you can play and have some fun. The IT version SP3 has no restrictions of this kind,but then you have to pay $$$

[rodnh]

The HIR "limitation" with both the Desktop and Server editions of SP3 should be a concern for all home users who run dual boot XP/XP or XP/Vista machines. The limitation means that HIR will only work on one of the two boot partitions (volumes) - the one with SP3 installed on it. To have HIR work with both boot partitions, SP3 needs to be installed on both prior to imaging them. That appears to require two licenses, even though only one computer is involved. Either that or the $3500 annual fee for the IT edition, which is an amusing suggestion for home users. This significant restriction on HIR is not mentioned at all in the SPDT3 user guide or in the promotional material at the StorageCraft website. In fact, it is not even hinted that any type of HIR restriction exists for the Desktop edition. The way I found out about it was by accident in reading a post by Nate in the SP3 Server edition forum - hardly a place where home users hang out. I am now trying to get the licensing matter answered definitively over at the SPDT forum but I suspect that dual boot hard disks cannot be fully restored to new hardware with a single license using HIR. I purchased SPDT3 over other imaging software (most notably True Image, which I now use) for several reasons in addition to the promise of HIR. I am still pleased with it despite this limitation. The official WinPE recovery environment is well worth it even if that was the only benefit. I am a little disappointed however because I run a dual boot XP/XP system. I should be able to get one of my XP partitions migrated when the time comes. The other one will not be as easy as I had hoped, requiring a repair install and subsequent updates. Purchasing two licenses for one computer to accomplish this with HIR is not an option I care to exercise. Ignorance is bliss until you find out the real deal.

Rod

[Peter2150]

{QUOTE-> The HIR "limitation" with both the Desktop and Server editions of SP3 should be a concern for all home users who run dual boot XP/XP or XP/Vista machines. The limitation means that HIR will only work on one of the two boot partitions (volumes) - the one with SP3 installed on it. To have HIR work with both boot partitions, SP3 needs to be installed on both prior to imaging them. That appears to require two licenses, even though only one computer is involved. Either that or the $3500 annual fee for the IT edition, which is an amusing suggestion for home users. This significant restriction on HIR is not mentioned at all in the SPDT3 user guide or in the promotional material at the StorageCraft website. In fact, it is not even hinted that any type of HIR restriction exists for the Desktop edition. The way I found out about it was by accident in reading a post by Nate in the SP3 Server edition forum - hardly a place where home users hang out. I am now trying to get the licensing matter answered definitively over at the SPDT forum but I suspect that dual boot hard disks cannot be fully restored to new hardware with a single license using HIR. I purchased SPDT3 over other imaging software (most notably True Image, which I now use) for several reasons in addition to the promise of HIR. I am still pleased with it despite this limitation. The official WinPE recovery environment is well worth it even if that was the only benefit. I am a little disappointed however because I run a dual boot XP/XP system. I should be able to get one of my XP partitions migrated when the time comes. The other one will not be as easy as I had hoped, requiring a repair install and subsequent updates. Purchasing two licenses for one computer to accomplish this with HIR is not an option I care to exercise. Ignorance is bliss until you find out the real deal.

Rod <-QUOTE}

Hi Rod

One suggestion is do one partition at a time. Not sure this is all that bad a restriction. I think for most "home" users HIR is best left alone. People will assume they can just restore an image and like magic there system will run fine. Whole purpose of HIR is to be able to restore the image and have the system boot. That doesn't mean it runs perfectly. There is still a lot of driver installation work to be done.

HIR works beautifully, and I have tested it thoroughly here, but still if I bought a new machine, I'd do software install from scratch. I can see the beauty of it for an IT situation where they may have lots of almost identical machines.

Pete

[silver0066]

{QUOTE-> Hi Rod

One suggestion is do one partition at a time. Not sure this is all that bad a restriction. I think for most "home" users HIR is best left alone. People will assume they can just restore an image and like magic there system will run fine. Whole purpose of HIR is to be able to restore the image and have the system boot. That doesn't mean it runs perfectly. There is still a lot of driver installation work to be done.

HIR works beautifully, and I have tested it thoroughly here, but still if I bought a new machine, I'd do software install from scratch. I can see the beauty of it for an IT situation where they may have lots of almost identical machines.

Pete <-QUOTE}Pete,

The HIR feature is very beneficial for some home users. In my case, for example, I have a desktop as my main machine, and a laptop for traveling, which I do infrequently. It is much easier to restore the laptop from the desktop using HIR or Acronis UR than to reinstall/deinstall all of the program changes since I last used it.

The driver installations can be handled automatically by using either Driver Magician or Driver Genius with their one click auto extract features. I have learned to uninstall some of the unique network and video card driver setup programs from the main machine before backing up for the HIR install. Then I just restore the main machine from a FDISR archive to get the drivers back.

Silver

[grnxnm]

{QUOTE-> The HIR "limitation" with both the Desktop and Server editions of SP3 should be a concern for all home users who run dual boot XP/XP or XP/Vista machines. The limitation means that HIR will only work on one of the two boot partitions (volumes) - the one with SP3 installed on it. To have HIR work with both boot partitions, SP3 needs to be installed on both prior to imaging them. That appears to require two licenses, even though only one computer is involved. Either that or the $3500 annual fee for the IT edition, which is an amusing suggestion for home users. This significant restriction on HIR is not mentioned at all in the SPDT3 user guide or in the promotional material at the StorageCraft website. In fact, it is not even hinted that any type of HIR restriction exists for the Desktop edition. The way I found out about it was by accident in reading a post by Nate in the SP3 Server edition forum - hardly a place where home users hang out. I am now trying to get the licensing matter answered definitively over at the SPDT forum but I suspect that dual boot hard disks cannot be fully restored to new hardware with a single license using HIR. I purchased SPDT3 over other imaging software (most notably True Image, which I now use) for several reasons in addition to the promise of HIR. I am still pleased with it despite this limitation. The official WinPE recovery environment is well worth it even if that was the only benefit. I am a little disappointed however because I run a dual boot XP/XP system. I should be able to get one of my XP partitions migrated when the time comes. The other one will not be as easy as I had hoped, requiring a repair install and subsequent updates. Purchasing two licenses for one computer to accomplish this with HIR is not an option I care to exercise. Ignorance is bliss until you find out the real deal.

Rod <-QUOTE}

On that note, if you're running a dual-boot system and you have ShadowProtect installed on one OS, and a job with incremental tracking, and you boot the other OS (assuming SP is not on this other OS) and make changes to the first OS's volume, the fast incremental tracking performed by SP in the first OS won't be aware that changes were made (because you made them from an alternate environment) and so your next incremental backup (when you boot back to the first OS) will be bad. You can work around this issue by deleteing all *.idx files in the root of your volumes whenever you boot to an environment on which SP is not installed. This will reset the incremental tracking serialized data. The drawback is that your next image will be a slow diff-based incremental rather than a fast incremental. This whole topic was discussed in another thread but I forget which one, sorry.

[grnxnm]

{QUOTE-> The HIR "limitation" with both the Desktop and Server editions of SP3 should be a concern for all home users who run dual boot XP/XP or XP/Vista machines. The limitation means that HIR will only work on one of the two boot partitions (volumes) - the one with SP3 installed on it. To have HIR work with both boot partitions, SP3 needs to be installed on both prior to imaging them. That appears to require two licenses, even though only one computer is involved. Either that or the $3500 annual fee for the IT edition, which is an amusing suggestion for home users. This significant restriction on HIR is not mentioned at all in the SPDT3 user guide or in the promotional material at the StorageCraft website. In fact, it is not even hinted that any type of HIR restriction exists for the Desktop edition. The way I found out about it was by accident in reading a post by Nate in the SP3 Server edition forum - hardly a place where home users hang out. I am now trying to get the licensing matter answered definitively over at the SPDT forum but I suspect that dual boot hard disks cannot be fully restored to new hardware with a single license using HIR. I purchased SPDT3 over other imaging software (most notably True Image, which I now use) for several reasons in addition to the promise of HIR. I am still pleased with it despite this limitation. The official WinPE recovery environment is well worth it even if that was the only benefit. I am a little disappointed however because I run a dual boot XP/XP system. I should be able to get one of my XP partitions migrated when the time comes. The other one will not be as easy as I had hoped, requiring a repair install and subsequent updates. Purchasing two licenses for one computer to accomplish this with HIR is not an option I care to exercise. Ignorance is bliss until you find out the real deal.

Rod <-QUOTE}


Workaround for you -> Install ShadowProtect in both of your boot partitions, even if you only activate it in one of them. Desktop/Server edition HIR will operate on an OS volume containing even an expired trial version of ShadowProtect. The added benefit is that if you dual boot windows 2000+ OSs, and you install ShadowProtect in both, then no matter which OS you choose to boot, the incremental tracking will continue to take place and you won't have to worry about the bad incrementals issue which I mentioned in the previous post.

[rodnh]

Thank you very much grnxnm. I had a thought that might work but wasn't sure, currently have no convenient way to test it and didn't want to ask specifically. Anyway, I'm not complaining even if it wouldn't work. I knew about the possibility of such a restriction prior to purchase - from Nate's post, although I found it only by chance. I went ahead and purchased anyway since I had other good reasons to move to SP than the HIR capability. I didn't even need to trial the software to make that decision. The WinPE recovery environment, together with the ability to directly (and easily, w/o third party technical "fixes") add your own drivers if needed was a compelling enough reason for me. And it works slick, just as I expected it to.

Regarding the *.idx files. I noticed they have shown up in the roots of the two partitions I have imaged with SPDT3 so far. I did not invoke any kind of incremental scheduling - at least not knowingly. Both images were done manually from within windows. One was also done at a prior time from the recovery disk. Would it be OK to systematically delete these files if I don't use the incremental/differential imaging features? Provided they are not needed for any other purpose, such as scheduling full partition images, I'd prefer to just delete them until such time as I might want to start using incrementals.

I must say your posts here on product information/support present a great "public face" to StorageCraft. That's rare nowadays and it can be a compelling reason by itself to purchase a product. It certainly did not go unnoticed by me before I made my SP purchase decision. Even an excellent reputation can be damaged by a poor public face so I hope the SC powers that be are properly cognizant of your contribution to the company outside of your coding efforts and are compensating you in some extra fashion for it.

Rod

[Peter2150]

Rod

I've been using, testing, and beating on the ShadowProtect products. You won't be disappointed.

Pete

[Karen76]

{QUOTE-> Rod

I've been using, testing, and beating on the ShadowProtect products. You won't be disappointed.

Pete <-QUOTE}

Well, I am. I must be a masochist. Despite my previous adverse experience with ShadowProtect v3, I decided to give it a second chance. I uninstalled Seagate DiscWizard (ATI v10), rebooted, installed the trial version of SP v3, rebooted then tried to make a backup image of my primary hard drive.

After running for around 10 minutes, SP's screen said it was still initializing my drive. I noticed that both my MSN and Firefox browsers were frozen. I tried to activate Task Manager to check CPU usage but no dice. I moved my cursor to cancel the operation, but the cursor froze in place as soon as it touched the SP screen. I had to turn off my PC's power to escape then rebooted into a different FD-ISR snapshot. I have no idea what the problem/conflict is this time and probably never will. For a highly-touted program I've waited for months to finally be able to test on Vista, I'm disappointed I can't even evaluate it. :'(

[Peter2150]

{QUOTE-> Well, I am. I must be a masochist. Despite my previous adverse experience with ShadowProtect v3, I decided to give it a second chance. I uninstalled Seagate DiscWizard (ATI v10), rebooted, installed the trial version of SP v3, rebooted then tried to make a backup image of my primary hard drive.

After running for around 10 minutes, SP's screen said it was still initializing my drive. I noticed that both my MSN and Firefox browsers were frozen. I tried to activate Task Manager to check CPU usage but no dice. I moved my cursor to cancel the operation, but the cursor froze in place as soon as it touched the SP screen. I had to turn off my PC's power to escape then rebooted into a different FD-ISR snapshot. I have no idea what the problem/conflict is this time and probably never will. For a highly-touted program I've waited for months to finally be able to test on Vista, I'm disappointed I can't even evaluate it. :'( <-QUOTE}

I've not tried installing it on Vista. I assume you are using 32 bit vista. I may give it a try later today. I suspect a lot of your problems are Vista, I know I can't run half my software on it.

[rodnh]

{QUOTE-> Rod

I've been using, testing, and beating on the ShadowProtect products. You won't be disappointed.

Pete <-QUOTE}

Thanks Pete. Have you noticed any changes to your system clock when you boot from the recovery CD? My system clock gets bumped up one hour when I boot the recommended environment and I have to change it back when when booting to XP normally. That doesn't happen when booting the legacy environment - only the recommended one. I don't change or do anything that might cause it. Just booting seems to do it. Since it's exactly one hour it might have something to do with how the recommended environment treats daylight savings time as compared with the legacy environment. I'm on Eastern Daylight Time (UT -4hrs).

Rod

[Karen76]

{QUOTE-> I've not tried installing it on Vista. I assume you are using 32 bit vista. I may give it a try later today. I suspect a lot of your problems are Vista, I know I can't run half my software on it. <-QUOTE}

I am using 32-bit Vista. What I find bizarre is I've had no problems getting old, this-can't-possibly-work-on-Vista software to run trouble-free on my new PC (at least after excluding them from DEP) whereas there are numerous problems with some "Vista compatible" programs. Usually these are just minor glitches. ShadowProtect v3 has the dubious distinction of being the only program I can't get to function at all.

Seagate DiscWizard (ATI v10) works fine. Even with DiscWizard installed, Paragon Drive Backup 8.5 Professional makes and restores images without a hitch so long as I use the backup wizard. Using the Cyclic backup wizard to make scheduled images locks up my system. Paragon support believed (i.e. guessed/assumed) my anti-virus or some other security program was preventing a certain script from running. Even with no other imaging software installed, ShadowProtect won't function on my new PC. This isn't my idea of what constitutes "Vista compatible" software. ::)

[huntnyc]

{QUOTE-> Thanks Pete. Have you noticed any changes to your system clock when you boot from the recovery CD? My system clock gets bumped up one hour when I boot the recommended environment and I have to change it back when when booting to XP normally. That doesn't happen when booting the legacy environment - only the recommended one. I don't change or do anything that might cause it. Just booting seems to do it. Since it's exactly one hour it might have something to do with how the recommended environment treats daylight savings time as compared with the legacy environment. I'm on Eastern Daylight Time (UT -4hrs).

Rod <-QUOTE}

Not Pete, but I confirm it on my system as well, just as you said. Have reported it to Storagecraft but will call again. It may be a Microsoft thing but we will see.

Gary

[Huupi]

I got SP2 never managed to work on the main rig,data vol. backed up oke but the windows vol. failed all the time,had some talk back and forth with support but no clue.Like Albert i do backup/recovery from the CD,and now after a year of imaging never had any failure.So SP2 serves my needs very well,thats the reason i stay with SP2.

[sukarof]

I run SP under Vista and it works almost fine. The only thing, if I am not doing something wrong, is that the compression doesnt seem to work. If I do a image in XP (version 2.5) my 36GB C partition ends up with a 17GB image file, while in doing the same thing in Vista (standard compression, SP version 3) the image file is 30GB. But otherwise it works very well.
I have posted on the Storagecraft forum about it.

[grnxnm]

Yeah, the clock issue is a known bug in Vista-WinPE. We're working on a fix, but it may require involvement from MS (translation: it may take time). For now just flip your clock back after using the "Recommended" environment. It annoys me too. ;)

[Peter2150]

{QUOTE-> I am using 32-bit Vista. What I find bizarre is I've had no problems getting old, this-can't-possibly-work-on-Vista software to run trouble-free on my new PC (at least after excluding them from DEP) whereas there are numerous problems with some "Vista compatible" programs. Usually these are just minor glitches. ShadowProtect v3 has the dubious distinction of being the only program I can't get to function at all.

Seagate DiscWizard (ATI v10) works fine. Even with DiscWizard installed, Paragon Drive Backup 8.5 Professional makes and restores images without a hitch so long as I use the backup wizard. Using the Cyclic backup wizard to make scheduled images locks up my system. Paragon support believed (i.e. guessed/assumed) my anti-virus or some other security program was preventing a certain script from running. Even with no other imaging software installed, ShadowProtect won't function on my new PC. This isn't my idea of what constitutes "Vista compatible" software. ::) <-QUOTE}

Hi Karen

Just updated my Vista image, and reinstalled FDISR. Updated an archive and recreated a second snapshot. No errors. Will let you know about SP3.

Pete

[grnxnm]

{QUOTE-> I am using 32-bit Vista. What I find bizarre is I've had no problems getting old, this-can't-possibly-work-on-Vista software to run trouble-free on my new PC (at least after excluding them from DEP) whereas there are numerous problems with some "Vista compatible" programs. Usually these are just minor glitches. ShadowProtect v3 has the dubious distinction of being the only program I can't get to function at all.

Seagate DiscWizard (ATI v10) works fine. Even with DiscWizard installed, Paragon Drive Backup 8.5 Professional makes and restores images without a hitch so long as I use the backup wizard. Using the Cyclic backup wizard to make scheduled images locks up my system. Paragon support believed (i.e. guessed/assumed) my anti-virus or some other security program was preventing a certain script from running. Even with no other imaging software installed, ShadowProtect won't function on my new PC. This isn't my idea of what constitutes "Vista compatible" software. ::) <-QUOTE}

Hi Karen,

I suspect this has nothing to do with Vista compatibility, but is more likely related to an interoperability issue particular to your machine's configuration. I suggest that you open a support incident at storagecraft.com and we'll work with you on this issue.

[Karen76]

{QUOTE-> Hi Karen,

I suspect this has nothing to do with Vista compatibility, but is more likely related to an interoperability issue particular to your machine's configuration. I suggest that you open a support incident at storagecraft.com and we'll work with you on this issue. <-QUOTE}

Hello grnxnm,

I've received a couple cursory replies from Storagecraft support. Their first e-mail said there should be no "other backup or imaging products" on any system using ShadowProtect. Strictly applied, that would include FD-ISR. While I would never, under any set of circumstances, stop using FD-ISR, I did uninstall Seagate DiscWizard after ShadowProtect gave me a BSOD and a horrendous noise from my PC.

My last e-mail from Storagecraft said there was probably some software incompatibility which precluded the use of ShadowProtect on my PC. There was no offer to assist me in resolving the problem. While I appreciate your offer and your presence here on Wilders, I have a strong impression Storagecraft is geared toward corporate customers, not individual PC owners. I understand this may be a smart business decision if only because it avoids the expense and hassle of handling support requests from numerous individual (low $) users.

I don't believe I have an exotic PC configuration. I'm not using RAID and my key active programs are KIS v7, FD-ISR, BOClean v4.25, Spy Sweeper and WinPatrol. I'm really not interested in an imaging program which isn't compatible with my current software.

I can't seriously test ShadowProtect without buying the program. The trial version is limited and, since I'm on dial-up, I'd be drawing Social Security checks before I finished the full evaluation's 318 MB download. Considering ShadowProtect would cost $100+ (program, maintenance fee, installation CD), I think I'd be better served with a combination of Seagate DiscWizard (which is free) and Paragon Drive Backup 8.5 Professional (which is available for $30 with a 70% off coupon). Between FD-ISR and these two mutually-compatible imaging programs, I think there would be sufficient layers of backup redundancy to even protect my glitch-prone Vista PC. :)

Thank you again for your offer.

[Peter2150]

Karen

I finally finished testing here. Both FDISR and ShadowProtect 3.0 worked fine under Vista here, and along side of each other. So there is some conflict on your system.

I understand your not wanting to bother, but the one reason for trying to find it is it will pop again to plague you.

Pete

[Horus37]

Can someone else try boclean 4.25 with shadowprotect and see if there is a conflict? Seeing someone like karen having problems with compatibility between the two has me curious if it's boclean.

[Peter2150]

{QUOTE-> Can someone else try boclean 4.25 with shadowprotect and see if there is a conflict? Seeing someone like karen having problems with compatibility between the two has me curious if it's boclean. <-QUOTE}

Horus. I am not going to be able to do that under Vista at this point, as I need to get my working XP snapshot back on. If she doesn't want to bother, I am afraid, I have to drop it at this pont.

Pete

[Karen76]

{QUOTE-> Horus. I am not going to be able to do that under Vista at this point, as I need to get my working XP snapshot back on. If she doesn't want to bother, I am afraid, I have to drop it at this pont.

Pete <-QUOTE}

"Doesn't want to bother"? ??? As I already mentioned, for me to be able to fully test ShadowProtect then I'd have to purchase the program. The trial version is limited in function and there's no way I can download the 318 MB evaluation version via dial-up. If I could afford to casually spend $100+ on a program which may not be compatible with my PC/software then I wouldn't be using dial-up Internet in the first place.

I tested the trial version of ShadowProtect twice with negative results. I'm sure very few folks would have tried it a second time if they'd heard the blood-curding noise emitted by my PC when SP crashed my system the first time. I'm already working with seven software development teams to assist them in resolving various Vista compatibility issues. If officials at Storagecraft (who are clearly more oriented towards catering to corporations than individual consumers) want to send me a free SP installation CD then I'll be delighted to "bother" to evaluate the program further.

[Peter2150]

{QUOTE-> "Doesn't want to bother"? ??? As I already mentioned, for me to be able to fully test ShadowProtect then I'd have to purchase the program. The trial version is limited in function and there's no way I can download the 318 MB evaluation version via dial-up. If I could afford to casually spend $100+ on a program which may not be compatible with my PC/software then I wouldn't be using dial-up Internet in the first place.

I tested the trial version of ShadowProtect twice with negative results. I'm sure very few folks would have tried it a second time if they'd heard the blood-curding noise emitted by my PC when SP crashed my system the first time. I'm already working with seven software development teams to assist them in resolving various Vista compatibility issues. If officials at Storagecraft (who are clearly more oriented towards catering to corporations than individual consumers) want to send me a free SP installation CD then I'll be delighted to "bother" to evaluate the program further. <-QUOTE}

Karen

No doubt you can run from the recovery CD. But installing from the CD to the desktop won't be any different than installing from the trial. I guess thats why I refered to your not wanting to bother. My apologies on that. I almost suggested facetiously you consider going to XP pro, but if you are having that many issues with Vista, you might seriously want to consider it.

Pete

[silver0066]

{QUOTE-> Yeah, the clock issue is a known bug in Vista-WinPE. We're working on a fix, but it may require involvement from MS (translation: it may take time). For now just flip your clock back after using the "Recommended" environment. It annoys me too. ;) <-QUOTE}The bug is also in Win XP SP2. If you will look at the detailed logs, it appears that it has something to do with Daylight Savings Time.

[Peter2150]

{QUOTE-> The bug is also in Win XP SP2. If you will look at the detailed logs, it appears that it has something to do with Daylight Savings Time. <-QUOTE}

Forutnately it doesn't show up in WinPe which is the legacy environment. I'd be glad to deal with the time issue but alas, the nvidia issue of VistaPe.

[ErikAlbert]

{QUOTE-> The bug is also in Win XP SP2. If you will look at the detailed logs, it appears that it has something to do with Daylight Savings Time. <-QUOTE}
I only use the Recovery CD and only for my system partition.
I use the date and time in the file-name, like this "SYSTEM YYYYMMDD HHMM", since there is no automatic numbering and I don't care about the system date/time anymore. My image-files are now sorted properly also. Last file = last backup.

[grnxnm]

{QUOTE-> The bug is also in Win XP SP2. If you will look at the detailed logs, it appears that it has something to do with Daylight Savings Time. <-QUOTE}

Wow, I didn't know that (that this is also an issue in XP SP2). Can you point me to a Microsoft KB article on this?

[Durad]

How is that "Restore Anywhere" feature working?

Can it be used on registered PC only or? (what are licence terms about this??)

[grnxnm]

{QUOTE-> How is that "Restore Anywhere" feature working?

Can it be used on registered PC only or? (what are licence terms about this??) <-QUOTE}

The machine you restore to can be any machine, physical or virtual, which supports Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista. However, regarding the HIR (Hardware Independent Restore) capability in the Desktop/Server 3.x editions of ShadowProtect, the image that you're restoring must come from a machine's OS volume on which ShadowProtect was installed.

The ShadowProtect IT Edition 3.x HIR capability does not require that ShadowProtect was installed on the source machine.

[starfish_001]

{QUOTE-> The machine you restore to can be any machine, physical or virtual, which supports Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista. However, regarding the HIR (Hardware Independent Restore) capability in the Desktop/Server 3.x editions of ShadowProtect, the image that you're restoring must come from a machine's OS volume on which ShadowProtect was installed.

The ShadowProtect IT Edition 3.x HIR capability does not require that ShadowProtect was installed on the source machine. <-QUOTE}


Does this apply to images created from the recovery disk of the desktop consumer version?

I'd like to make images that have HIR for 3 machines once in a while - I use FD archives and Acronis Workstation-unirestore most of the time.




But the HIR ascpect is appealing

[silver0066]

{QUOTE-> Forutnately it doesn't show up in WinPe which is the legacy environment. I'd be glad to deal with the time issue but alas, the nvidia issue of VistaPe. <-QUOTE}I live on the Pacific Coast, GMT-8. When one of screens flew by during a backup or restore, I can't remember, I noticed a screen that said Pacific Time GMT-7. I think it is a minor programming error that could be easily fixed.

[Peter2150]

{QUOTE-> I live on the Pacific Coast, GMT-8. When one of screens flew by during a backup or restore, I can't remember, I noticed a screen that said Pacific Time GMT-7. I think it is a minor programming error that could be easily fixed. <-QUOTE}

Check your clock time. I bet it's off.

Unfortunately even if it's a minor error, it's in the Vistape stuff not shadowprotect which means Microsoft has to do the fix.

[silver0066]

{QUOTE-> Check your clock time. I bet it's off.

Unfortunately even if it's a minor error, it's in the Vistape stuff not shadowprotect which means Microsoft has to do the fix. <-QUOTE}My clock time is not off. What happens is that if I do a Recovery restore from the boot disk, the clock is set forward by one hour.

[Peter2150]

{QUOTE-> My clock time is not off. What happens is that if I do a Recovery restore from the boot disk, the clock is set forward by one hour. <-QUOTE}

Yep, I experienced between 1 and 2 hours. Nothng I did while in the Recovery Environment mattered. Grnxnm said that behaviour was what they were experiencing and the problem is in VistaPe.

Pete

[HAN]

I verified a few days ago that each time I boot from the Recovery CD into the recommended (Vista PE) environment, my PC's clock advances by one hour. It doesn't happen when I boot into the legacy environment. It's not a big deal but one I hope MS addresses soon... :)

[grnxnm]

{QUOTE-> Does this apply to images created from the recovery disk of the desktop consumer version?

I'd like to make images that have HIR for 3 machines once in a while - I use FD archives and Acronis Workstation-unirestore most of the time.

But the HIR ascpect is appealing <-QUOTE}

For ShadowProtect Desktop/Sever 3.0, HIR functionality will work for any image of an OS volume on which any flavor (trial/full/etc) of ShadowProtect was installed, regardless whether that image was taken from within live windows or from the recovery environment, including any existing older images taken with previous versions of ShadowProtect.

[rodnh]

This morning I successfully moved an XP partition from a quad-boot DOS6/98SE/XPSP2/XPSP2 hard disk to a different single-boot physical disk that was initially all unallocated space using SPDT3. The source XP was in the third physical position on the source disk. The destination position was the first physical position on the destination disk. I am very pleased (and somewhat surprised) with the result.

My first attempt failed because I thought XP recorded partition location information in the XP registry and moving to a different physical location would require that information to be changed in order for a successful boot. I therefore also used SavePart, a DOS program to patch the restored XP registry with the updated partition location information - or so I thought. It seemed to make some partition boundary adjustments but the resulting partition wouldn't boot, hanging just before the login screen.

Sooo, I again restored the source partition using only SPDT3. To my surprise, it booted right up after restore and everything seems perfect. The boot.ini file was automatically patched by SPDT3 and although it works as is as the default, it also refers to a second, selectable XP boot partition which does not exist on the single-boot destination disk. That is easily corrected with a manual edit. I did not restore the source mbr or the source first head since those would not be appropriate in going from an 11 partition disk with a third party boot manager to a 2 partition disk with no boot manager. The source and destination disk were the same total size (80gb).

Apparently SPDT3 automatically revises any partition location information in the XP registry during a restore to a different partition location. Either that or the information I had about such things in the registry is not valid. Can anyone confirm this action by SPDT3?

I am liking SPDT3 very much. I am eager to try the new HIR function but alas, I have no new hardware to try it out on at the present time. :'(

Note that my system clock also gets sets ahead one hour but ONLY when using the "recommened" boot environment. There is no clock setting change when using the "legacy" boot environment. I don't need the "recommended" environment at this time so a prompt fix is not an important issue for me.

Rod

[grnxnm]

{QUOTE-> Thank you very much grnxnm. I had a thought that might work but wasn't sure, currently have no convenient way to test it and didn't want to ask specifically. Anyway, I'm not complaining even if it wouldn't work. I knew about the possibility of such a restriction prior to purchase - from Nate's post, although I found it only by chance. I went ahead and purchased anyway since I had other good reasons to move to SP than the HIR capability. I didn't even need to trial the software to make that decision. The WinPE recovery environment, together with the ability to directly (and easily, w/o third party technical "fixes") add your own drivers if needed was a compelling enough reason for me. And it works slick, just as I expected it to.

Regarding the *.idx files. I noticed they have shown up in the roots of the two partitions I have imaged with SPDT3 so far. I did not invoke any kind of incremental scheduling - at least not knowingly. Both images were done manually from within windows. One was also done at a prior time from the recovery disk. Would it be OK to systematically delete these files if I don't use the incremental/differential imaging features? Provided they are not needed for any other purpose, such as scheduling full partition images, I'd prefer to just delete them until such time as I might want to start using incrementals.

I must say your posts here on product information/support present a great "public face" to StorageCraft. That's rare nowadays and it can be a compelling reason by itself to purchase a product. It certainly did not go unnoticed by me before I made my SP purchase decision. Even an excellent reputation can be damaged by a poor public face so I hope the SC powers that be are properly cognizant of your contribution to the company outside of your coding efforts and are compensating you in some extra fashion for it.

Rod <-QUOTE}

If you never plan on using ShadowProtect for incremental imaging then it does no harm to delete the .idx files in the root directories of your volumes. If you do start using incremental imaging then leave those .idx files alone. Frankly there's never much harm in deleting those .idx files, but they'll just come back. They're written at shutdown time, so each time you shut down they'll reappear on your next boot.

[Defenestration]

I've just installed SPD 3.0 on my machine and have tried to create a Conitnuous Incremental schedule every 15 minutes, but when I set it running SPD "hangs" (ie. the window becomes unresponsive and nothing happens). Eventually, I terminated ShadowProtectSvc.exe but when I started it again it just said "Connecting" for a while, before the GUI became responsive again. Once in, the status of the job was "failed" and the log was as follows (machine info and Volume info removed in case of privacy issues):

29-Aug-2007 21:17:27 service 100 service (build 40) started job by incremental trigger
29-Aug-2007 21:17:27 service 300 trial period has 23 days left
29-Aug-2007 21:17:27 service 104 machine information: <removed> DEFAULT
29-Aug-2007 21:17:27 service 504 Volume {<removed>} was not found
29-Aug-2007 21:17:27 service 100 no need to get snapshot
29-Aug-2007 21:17:27 service 101 Cannot execute job (Unspecified error 0x80004005(2147500037))


Also, the Continuous Incrementals options has me a bit confused - What is the difference between the top "VSS Incremental Backups" and the bottom "Additional Incremental Backups" ?

Can someone explain how to set it up so I can keep on having continuous backups every 15 minutes, every day of the week, every day of the year ?


PS. The on-line help could do with a few tutorials using backup scenarios.

[Defenestration]

BTW, does verify in 3.0 do a byte-by-byte comparison, or does it just do a simple CRC as in 2.5 ?

[Peter2150]

{QUOTE-> BTW, does verify in 3.0 do a byte-by-byte comparison, or does it just do a simple CRC as in 2.5 ? <-QUOTE}

Not sure, have to wait on grnxnm. All I know is I've never had one verfiy and fail to restore.

[Peter2150]

{QUOTE-> I've just installed SPD 3.0 on my machine and have tried to create a Conitnuous Incremental schedule every 15 minutes, but when I set it running SPD "hangs" (ie. the window becomes unresponsive and nothing happens). Eventually, I terminated ShadowProtectSvc.exe but when I started it again it just said "Connecting" for a while, before the GUI became responsive again. Once in, the status of the job was "failed" and the log was as follows (machine info and Volume info removed in case of privacy issues):

29-Aug-2007 21:17:27 service 100 service (build 40) started job by incremental trigger
29-Aug-2007 21:17:27 service 300 trial period has 23 days left
29-Aug-2007 21:17:27 service 104 machine information: <removed> DEFAULT
29-Aug-2007 21:17:27 service 504 Volume {<removed>} was not found
29-Aug-2007 21:17:27 service 100 no need to get snapshot
29-Aug-2007 21:17:27 service 101 Cannot execute job (Unspecified error 0x80004005(2147500037))


Also, the Continuous Incrementals options has me a bit confused - What is the difference between the top "VSS Incremental Backups" and the bottom "Additional Incremental Backups" ?

Can someone explain how to set it up so I can keep on having continuous backups every 15 minutes, every day of the week, every day of the year ?


PS. The on-line help could do with a few tutorials using backup scenarios. <-QUOTE}

HI Defenestration

First have you been able to do a one shot image. Anyway to do what you want, first you have to have the imagemanger installed, and setup.

To setup the schedule.

1. Select Backup Wizard
2. Choose your source disk
3 Choose Destination (you can rename the destination file by double clicking.
4 On the next screen chose weekly and leave the others alone, except if you want to include Saturday
5. Set start and end times
6. Change the time with the scroll buttons to 15
7. On the options just click next
8. Everything should be okay on the summary so click Finish.

Thats it.

Pete

PS. You need to set up the imagemanger. Let me know if you need help with that.

[Defenestration]

After readin the help I came across the bit about configuring the imagemanager. However, there is no shortcut for it on the Start Menu so I cannot et it up. Is this only for registered users ?

[grnxnm]

{QUOTE-> I've just installed SPD 3.0 on my machine and have tried to create a Conitnuous Incremental schedule every 15 minutes, but when I set it running SPD "hangs" (ie. the window becomes unresponsive and nothing happens). Eventually, I terminated ShadowProtectSvc.exe but when I started it again it just said "Connecting" for a while, before the GUI became responsive again. Once in, the status of the job was "failed" and the log was as follows (machine info and Volume info removed in case of privacy issues):

29-Aug-2007 21:17:27 service 100 service (build 40) started job by incremental trigger
29-Aug-2007 21:17:27 service 300 trial period has 23 days left
29-Aug-2007 21:17:27 service 104 machine information: <removed> DEFAULT
29-Aug-2007 21:17:27 service 504 Volume {<removed>} was not found
29-Aug-2007 21:17:27 service 100 no need to get snapshot
29-Aug-2007 21:17:27 service 101 Cannot execute job (Unspecified error 0x80004005(2147500037))


Also, the Continuous Incrementals options has me a bit confused - What is the difference between the top "VSS Incremental Backups" and the bottom "Additional Incremental Backups" ?

Can someone explain how to set it up so I can keep on having continuous backups every 15 minutes, every day of the week, every day of the year ?


PS. The on-line help could do with a few tutorials using backup scenarios. <-QUOTE}


Wow, that's crazy stuff. Volume {<removed>}? machine information: <removed>? I've never seen anything like that. I suspect there's some amazing software on your machine, and it's not happy that you installed ShadowProtect. Hmm. It's also very strange that it apparently (according to your description) took a long time to connect the GUI to the service's DCOM interface. Normally, a local connect to the service is pretty much instantaneous. I'm not sure what to make of this. Do you have some kind of third party firewall installed that caused this? Or did an "Unblock port" dialog pop up an didn't respond to it for a while?

On to ImageManager question - the installer for ImageManager is available on the recovery environment CD. You have to request a full eval to get access to the ISO for this CD if you want to try this out. I'll see about have it posted so you can just download the sucker. Um, also, relating to the VSS vs non-VSS options within Continuous Incremental jobs - the thing is that when you take a VSS incremental backup, it's always at least a few hundred KB in size, whereas if you're not so concerned about VSS we give you the option (you can turn this on or off) to have many of your intra-daily incrementals taken without VSS, which results in smaller incremental image sizes as