First Defense snapshot

[WWS]

After installing FDISR, the list just says Primary.

Next, you copy/update, you now have the Primary and Secondary.

Now, 5 days later, you copy/update the Primary to make a "new" snapshot and name it No. 3.

Now, you've got Primary, Secondary and No. 3.

Where should the green arrow be pointing?

And say you want to make a "new" snapshot every 5 days, which one should be the "source" snapshot?

[Acadia]

You do not need to keep making new Snapshots. You can simply update them. Whenever you update a snapshot, the updated snapshot and the snapshot that you used to update it, are now identical. The green arrow simply tells you which Snapshot you are currently in. Good luck.

Acadia

[WWS]

If today, the 21st, I update No.3, which was made on the 3rd, I wind up with a snapshot named No.21
And you say they're both identical?

Then I wouldn't be able to boot to the 3rd anymore because now No.3 and No. 21 are identical.

I don't get it yet!

[Acadia]

Whenever you update a Snapshot you do not end up with a new Snapshot. Updating simply does just that, brings that Snapshot up to date, makes it identical to the Snapshot that you used to update it. You now have two Snapshot that are perfect twins. If you hose one of them with a bad software install or contract a virus, you can use the other one, the clean and pristine one, to update the other and they are now both clean and pristine.

Whenever FirstDefense is too complicated to figure out, I usually recommend GoBack to folks. I prefer FirstDefense myself because it can do more, but GoBack is "set and forget".

Acadia

[WWS]

OK. How's this?
If I prefer to be able to revert to the 3rd or the 21st, then I do have create a "new" snap, not an update, using No. 3 as the "source."
Then I'll have two different, not identical, snapshots to boot to.

On the other hand, the "updating" you just explained is sounding more and more attractive as I think about it.

Yes, I like that. Thank you.

Also, I too prefer FD over GoBack. Using an imaging program, I uninstall FD entirely to keep the image one size instead of imaging FD snapshots, too. FD always has uninstalled fully for me. GoBack very seldom uninstalled fully which forced me to reimage just to get rid of its history. So, I quit that.
Should FD or the hard drive fail, I've got the external images to fall back on.

[Peter2150]

Hi WWS

I only keep one additional snapshot which I update when I know nothing strange has happened or if I am about to make a significant change to my system. I have timed the difference of imaging with the snapshot in place vs removing the snapshot, imaging, and then reinstalling the snapshot. While true your image is bigger, I find it quicker just to leave FD in place and image.

Pete

[WWS]

Got it now.

Have my FDISR down to just 2 snaps, updated. Lot faster to update than to make a new snap.

Made a drive image (I use Acronis TI). Took 11 min, 10.4GB total.

Your right Pete. It's not worth it to uninstall FD before making an image and then have to start over. It's far faster to go for the big image.

Thanks, guys...I'm glad I asked.

[crofttk]

Well, I know this is an old thread but I just stumbled across this collection of FDISR threads. I just wanted to add, for the sake of completeness, that although you may want to limit the snapshots you keep on your system drive to limit the size of backups, you can ALSO archive snapshots, i.e., copy a snapshot to another drive, in compressed form (this a relatively new feature that some "old-timer" FDISR users may not be aware of -- I found out about the updated version's capabilities only a few months back!)

So, while you may only keep a daily or weekly snapshot copy on your system drive, for instance, you could keep any number of archived snapshots on another drive, internal or external, limited only by available hard drive space.

Gee, I'm happy I finally stumbled across a group of FDISR users in these forums !;) (Just in case you were wondering why so many FDISR threads floated up over the last day...)

[Peter2150]

Glad you found us. We are indeed addicted. FDISR is fantastic. Wait until it has saved you from disaster, or you install something that doesn't remove well and you want it gone.

Pete

[Acadia]

{QUOTE-> We are indeed addicted. <-QUOTE}
Just two examples of what I am doing at this very monent.

1. I normally use Norton2005 as my AV. I have experimented with 4 other AV's in the past several days in a Snapshot that I have named "Experimental". So that I do not have to uninstall NAV each time I want to "change" AV, I have created another Snapshot called "Norton Free"; it has no AV what-so-ever. Whenever I want to change AV, I update "Experimental" with "Norton Free" so I don't have to go thru the grueling process of uninstalling Norton each time.

2. I also created another Snapshot so I could experiment with creating a second User Account, so that I can play around with using a Limited account for surfing the Internet. Each time the settings go astray from what I want, I simply boot back into my Primary, refresh this experimental Snapshot with my Primary, and start over again.

I'm doing this all at the same time, since FirstDefense allows me to have 10 different c:drives. Fun time.

Acadia

[crofttk]

Hehe... I get the feeling FDISR users may be cut from the same cloth, or, if cut from a different "swatch", at least they're from the same "mill".:D

Case in point: I've been having the dickens getting PerfectDisk to do offline defrags lately alongside of having some problems getting USB drive letter assignments to stabilize. So, I've spent the better part of this evening updating my clean XP snapshot-- and, incidentally updating FDISR too - thanks Acadia and TonyW for the heads up on the new build. That snapshot I have only FDISR and PerfectDisk (yes, build 46 ;) ) installed on top of Windows - well, Adobe Reader, too - and PerfectDisk is offline defragging fine with that.

So, now, I'll be copying out my clean snapshot into a test bed and will start adding applications to see where PerfectDisk and/or USB drive letter assignments start going downhill. I have a sneaking suspicion, based on Raxco's knowledge base, that Zone Alarm Security Suite's antivirus (uses CA's antivirus engine) may be the culprit on PD offline defrags -- if so, that's gonna tick me off.

Believe it or not, I think this kind of troubleshooting is fun :P but, hey, at least I DID make sure I gave Google and AltaVista a work out and came up dry before I began playing !