New to shadowing/freezing the harddrive for the home computer

[FPG]

Hi everyone. I'm new to the scene of freezing or shadowing your hard drive for security purposes and I've been doing a lot of research into the area as to which program I should go ahead and choose. I realize that there are similar threads like this (Deep Freeze vs. Shadow Defender vs. etc.) and if this needs to be locked or moved sorry about that, but I didn't see any that quite fit the bill for my problem. Unlike most users (I assume), I'm wanting a program specifically for a single home computer or a small group of computers on a home network instead of a business scale solution.

I'd like to purchase/download (I have no problem with free software if it works) software that will allow me to essentially 'refresh' my machine on restart while allowing me to select certain folders (i.e. The desktop, My Documents, and certain application folders [Thunderbird, Firefox]) that remain 'unshadowed' or 'unthawed' so that they can receive updates and email without me having to remember to boot unshadowed.

Unfortunately (and I guess fortunately) I've found a plethora of software solutions to my problem and I have no idea which program would be best. I've recently downloaded the trial copy of Deep Freeze Standard. It seems to fit the bill in most cases, except that it provides a challenge when I want to keep certain folders unthawed that are a part of the frozen partition and I see no way to fix this except by doing folder mapping or messing with the registry. That and I hate having to reboot after setting the drive to thaw/unthaw.

Since I know a lot of you have been using various programs, do you guys have any recommendations on software that you've liked for your personal computers? Is there a program out there that allows me to 'whitelist' certain folders that stay unthawed or am I going to have to break down and find a workaround for Deep Freeze? Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

- FPG

[farmerlee]

You could take a look at returnil, i believe that can do what you need.

[MrBrian]

Returnil should work. If you can put the folders/files you wish to save on a separate partition, then the free version would suffice.

[FPG]

Thanks Guys, I've heard of Returnil, but I haven't tried out that software. I plan on reformatting my computer before installing so a partition would be easy enough to create for folders, however I rather enjoy having the ability to have certain folders to remain unthawed. I'll try out their free version (or trial version of the premium software if they have it). Thanks for your advice.

[EASTER]

Weighing in with some support for RETURNIL myself for that particular purpose. I also have DeepFreeze and although a great paralyzer, the Mapping Tool doesn't serve for me as well as just using Returnil's Virtual Partition to save programs and files, etc. while in it's shadowed state covering & protecting your system.

So sounds like Returnil as already mentioned would be best for you. Plus i found it's virtual partition mounts/dismounts in a flash.

[Einsturzende]

You should try Shadow Defender, you can make exclusions of files/folders inside shadowed/defended partition very easy (see screeny) if you wish you can make change (save any file/folder on protected partition "on the fly"), also SD does not suffer from low-level disk access problem and does not have need for "B" partition to protect "A" partition, only thing which missing is registry exclusions...

203214

[FPG]

I was looking at Shadow Defender and it was that same screen shot that made me consider it. I like the list of exclusions. I'll have to try both of those out to see which I like best and which functions the best in my situation.

[farmerlee]

If you're looking for something a bit more powerful you could take a look at rollback rx/eaz-fix which can do what you require plus they have a few more advanced features not found in most other programs.