Drive Cloner Version 6 Delayed; New Beta Being Rolled Out

Discussion in 'backup, imaging & disk mgmt' started by Kurtis Smejkal, Mar 26, 2015.

  1. Kurtis Smejkal

    Kurtis Smejkal Registered Member

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    OK Froggie, update for you.

    So from what I was told, we had seen that conversations between the developer and yourself had taken place regarding this issue in Jira. I don't have access to what you're posting on Jira, so I wouldn't know if it's any different from that forum post. For the sake of consistency (and again, if this is not already the case) try to keep everything contained to Jira; simply because we then start to wonder if things on the forums haven't been posted to Jira, or if it is. So to answer your original question:

    Yes

    I hope so! :argh: We were told this is the one project most people want. So we're trying our best. I mean, it's not going to replace something like an SCCM or VM for testing Windows Updates (and I'm sure these big companies have something I don't know about to back their drives as well) but for the end user the goal is that this will fix a lot of problems. So for all those issues talked about on here, we're hoping this will fix them.
     
  2. bgoodman4

    bgoodman4 Registered Member

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    I really do not understand this. On the one hand you say the majority of your users do not have issues with Rx because they use SCCM. So these folks will not be interested in DC,,,,right. You also say that a small number of users of Rx do not use SCCM and all they need to do is check with HDS before doing a MS Update,,,,,,,so who is the "most people" referred to in your post?

    And again I would ask you,,,,,if Rx can recover from any conceivable issue, why would someone need DC? Makes no sense Kurtis, so how about explaining it.
     
  3. Kurtis Smejkal

    Kurtis Smejkal Registered Member

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    Because it's natural to want to back up something important in the unlikely event that things go south. Not to say they will, but it's good.

    It's the same logic I use when I have a savings account
    Or insurance for my truck

    We want insurance and that's what Drive Cloner's Version 6 will provide.
     
  4. appster

    appster Registered Member

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    Kurtis, I think (hope) you can end all of this quibbling if you will just say that Rollback Rx cannot recover a system from every conceivable issue.
     
    Last edited: Apr 24, 2015
  5. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    Kurtis,

    When Drive Clone 6 is released what should it be able to do?
     
  6. bgoodman4

    bgoodman4 Registered Member

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    The problem is that many/most new to Rx think that Rx is what is meant to do that,,,,that is, provide insurance. They are told that Rx can recover their system from any conceivable problem,,,,,,,not that Rx will, most of the time, recover from most problems. No one (other than non-HDS staff) is telling folks that it is a good idea to protect against the failure of the protection system. So basically you now are suggesting that people buy insurance to protect against the failure of their insurance.

    Maybe I should get "home insurance failure" insurance, so that when I need my home insurance provider to do its job (my home just burned down) I don't have to worry if my home insurance provider will be able to pay out the claim for my home.

    So in your example of your truck

    1: you have a truck and want to protect it ----- so you buy insurance (RollBack Rx)
    2: when you talk to your insurance broker (HDS) he tells you that the plan you have for your truck protects you 100%
    3: then he tells you it might be a good idea to get "truck insurance protection" (DC) in case the first insurance policy fails to protect your truck.

    This is too bizarre but that is what you are advocating..
     
  7. Peter2150

    Peter2150 Global Moderator

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    I can't help laughing. The last time this recover from anything issue came up Kurtis responded to a remark I made, Kurtis you make a remark that obviously it couldn't include hardware because what happened if someone took a hammer to the computer. A couple of days after that I happened to be cruising the Storagecraft site to see what was new. They open with the same bold statement... recover from any IT disaster. But guess what. As you cruise the site, they can indeed recover you quickly even from a hammer attack.:eek:
     
  8. Kurtis Smejkal

    Kurtis Smejkal Registered Member

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    It can't, but we have ways to address them.

    Imaging program that can capture RollBack Rx snapshots. As for it's current status you'd have a better view as a beta participant :thumb:

    You can quibble all you want about changing our marketing but you're wasting both of our time.
     
  9. pandlouk

    pandlouk Registered Member

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    Actually, is a bit worst situation than your example.
    You get home insurance to protect you from a fire. The home insurance installs a fire alarm in your house... and that fire alarm is the main responsible for the fires that happen in most houses covered from that insurance company and the insurance company does not pay you back.
    Then the same company sells you fire extinguishers to protect you from the fire alarm, that they installed in the first place, because they already know that the insurance and the fire alarm that they sell are worthless...:isay::confused::rolleyes:

    Panagiotis
     
  10. appster

    appster Registered Member

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    Such as... ?

    How will DC6 differ from all of the other imaging programs that can do this (via a cold sector-by-sector backup)?

    Actually it's wasting (almost) everyone's time!
     
  11. zapjb

    zapjb Registered Member

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    This thread should be moved to the Lounge (does Wilders have a Lounge?). Or locked because it sounds like one of the participants is insane.
     
  12. Peter2150

    Peter2150 Global Moderator

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    No this thread serves value. Any newcome wondering about Rollback and HDS, gets a good picture here.
     
  13. manolito

    manolito Registered Member

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    It seems pretty clear that this is leading nowhere...

    bgoodman is a little obsessed about HDS' misleading claims about Rollback, Pandlouk even suggests that it is Rollback itself which causes most of the disasters, and Kurtis is adamant that HDS will not change its marketing. And this has been going on for weeks now...

    I am not too familiar with the US consumer protection laws (European laws concerning false and misleading advertising are quite strict), but from my frequent stays in the US I have the impression that this is handled in a more relaxed way across the Atlantic. Consumers just do not take it too seriously if a company claims that their product is simply the best of all. If my impression should be wrong, why isn't there a consumer protection organization which takes HDS to court for their advertising?


    I do have a more technical question about why RBrx is vulnerable to certain Windows updates which alter the MBR (or PBR or whatever). All these updates take place under the control of the Rollback low level driver (which loads before Windows). This driver virtualizes all disk writes, so why is it not possible for Rollback to just block anything which damages the Rollback MBR and its subconsole? Rollback would not even have to fix these updates, it would be enough to tell the user that there was an attempt by some software to alter the MBR, and if this was some legitimate software like a Windows update, just tell the user to uninstall Rollback, run the update and reinstall. Sounds feasible to me, or is there something else I did not think of?



    Cheers
    manolito
     
  14. TheRollbackFrog

    TheRollbackFrog Imaging Specialist

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    Appster, at this point (and I don't know where it's gonna wind up), in it's special RBrx Snapshot Mode, it RAW images (HOT, not COLD) only the portion of the protected partitions that are in use by both the CURRENT SYSTEM STATE Windows file structure and the Snapshot space in use (to look at it another way... the Baseline image and all hidden snapshot data after that), nothing more. In essence, it's imaging only a RAW "used sector" version of the above space utilization, not the entire partition. This, of course, makes for a much smaller image to manage and the imaging can occur while the system is up and running.

    In this mode, it only images protected partitions so if the entire disk isn't protected, it cannot be used for Bare Metal Restore (BMR). You'll have to have a complete system "regular" disk image (which at the moment can't be restored to an operational state without twiddling the MBR) AND the special Snapshot included partition image to do a BMR. Basically, two successive restorations would be required to wind up at a Rollback protected functioning BMR. This may change before the BETA is all over but I have my doubts.
     
  15. appster

    appster Registered Member

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    Froggie, thanks for the insight. DC6 sounds very cool to this Rollback Rx user. BMR aside, it should make backing up a Rollback Rx system far more convenient and faster than other image backup programs. Hopefully it will be 'packaged' with Rollback Rx Pro.
     
  16. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    I have a good idea of what the beta can do but I've never been told what the final DC product should do. My guess is the RollBack Rx snapshots will be captured in the images so if you have a HD failure you will be able to restore the partitions to a new HD and the RollBack Rx snapshots will be functional. So the new HD will be functionally the same as the old HD. Windows will boot and the snapshots will work. Am I on the right track?
     
  17. bgoodman4

    bgoodman4 Registered Member

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    You may feel you are wasting your time (you are but not for the reasons you seem to think) but I do not feel I am wasting mine. What you are accomplishing BTW is the further erosion of HDSs reputation.
     
    Last edited: Apr 24, 2015
  18. bgoodman4

    bgoodman4 Registered Member

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    You do have a point here, I stand corrected.
     
  19. Keatah

    Keatah Registered Member

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    Any basic drive imaging program worth anything will include the following information prior to a restore operation.

    1- Source file/archive(s) name, location, time, date, size, filesystem type and backup type(incremental, full, sector-by-sector, differential, file, sync)
    2- Destination disk's hardware name, volume name, disk #, capacity, space available, space free, existing partitions, filesystem type, backup type to restore, files to restore(if applicable) and unallocated space.

    Anything less is asking for trouble.

    Something I learned early on was to never trust disk numbers or drive letter assignments assigned by the restoring portion of the backup software. to some extent they've either been missing or arbitrarily incorrect. Some programs beginning the count with "0" and others at "1".

    I learned a long time ago to always include the drive letter within the volume name. For example "HDD_0_(C). There is no question this is drive 0, and that it is C:\. If your system is of the home-user type or homebuilt rig with several drives you can always make a paper chart with that information, what the bios reads, and what ports are rigged to what drives.

    If your drive is mechanically borked and you're replacing it. Good practice says to disconnect the other drives while effecting restore on the new replacement.

    Hey maybe it's overkill for some. But it's part and parcel of being thorough when testing and developing a backup procedure.

    Overall it would boil down to the old adage, "With great power comes great responsibility". And if we're to use these kinds of tools we need to be educated (not mis-led) in their proper and appropriate use.

    Companies which take the time and trouble to do that earn my respect and recommendations.
     
  20. Kurtis Smejkal

    Kurtis Smejkal Registered Member

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    This is it's intended purpose; because as it stands RollBack Rx can withstand many different attacks, but for the handful it can't withstand (particularly a Windows Update) then this will protect that. We have had internal discussions on bundling Drive Cloner (or a stripped down version of it) with RollBack Rx but the problem then becomes that we'd have to increase the cost of RollBack Rx. There's a lot of people who will get a lot of use out of RollBack Rx, but a lot of people won't, and charging them for those features is partially unfair to them. So for now at least it's being kept separate. Although If you'd like to ever talk to me I can always work on some reduced pricing options. That goes for all users.

    Hi Brian, yes you're correct. The snapshots are encoded in a way that most imaging software won't pick it up let alone decipher it once you restore to that hard drive. So this product is able to encode and decipher those snapshots. Aside from that, it's basic imaging software. I would imagine there's imaging software out there with a larger feature set, but Drive Cloner is for exactly the purpose you described.


    This much is true, which is why I chose to ignore those two users ;) it was starting to be an excessive waste of my time.

    My job here is simple, to look at possibly incorrect information, and correct it. To make a long story short, those two users want us to change our marketing. We won't. Instead, if you have an issue, we ask that you submit a ticket. We'll occasionally build custom builds for people, so in that sense: no problem is outside the realm of fixing.

    It could be because we have means to support a possible issue, and again, it's not about false advertising. All software is going to have issues at one point or another. It's about addressing that. So I would hope that instead of going through the hassle of taking someone to court over software malfunction, that they would just submit a ticket, call, or chat with us.

    The Windows Update issue is partially three-fold, one is older versions of the software. Some of them simply aren't as up to date. I see support tickets for people using Version's 8 or 9 still, and in a lot of cases the most recent version (10.3) has fixed that issue. The other part is simply how unpredictable Microsoft is with their releases. Even if we were to attempt to get into that game, people are constantly coming up with new ways to attack the MBR, and from a logistical standpoint, for us to try to keep up with that would be a nightmare. We're always looking forward, so who knows really, we could definitely do something like that. For now at least, we just aim to protect RollBack Rx and your system through other means.

    Cheers,
     
  21. TheRollbackFrog

    TheRollbackFrog Imaging Specialist

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    I guess I have a few issues with this position...

    First of all, Drive Cloner used to be included with Rollback v8 (and maybe earlier) and although it didn't image the entire RBrx system, it did allow for a Rollback user to restore his last CURRENT SYSTEM STATE to a bombed drive/configuration/etc... in v9 that disappeared (no idea why). So the product has a history of built in disk protection.

    Now, 4+ years later HDS finally decides that it really needs to protect its very own protection system against the things it's never been able to protect itself against. Along comes Drive Cloner v6, and to date, no explanation from Devs as to what it's really supposed to do. I'm guessing at this point that the only major improvements to the app are the Rollback-related capability. Based on that, why would anyone who has been using Drive Cloner as a system imaging solution for their non-Rollback system, be interested in this major update (and most likely additional cost)? My guess... no one (unless there's capability for non-RBrx users that provides significant product improvement).

    If all that's true, this "thing" (hybrid DC) should be a Rollback-only addition (possibly in its "snapshot only" form) and be provided with the Rollback product just as it was 5-yrs ago... except this time it really does do the complete job needed by Rollback users. Your marketing Gurus really need to re-think the introduction of this new capability... and, most likely, its cost.

    Hmmmm... maybe it should be a MAJOR update for Rollback instead of Drive Cloner :D
     
    Last edited: Apr 27, 2015
  22. Kurtis Smejkal

    Kurtis Smejkal Registered Member

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    Discussions are always ongoing and shifting (look at Drive Cloner Version 6's release date) and we'll always be conversing about these things. Best thing you can do is voice your opinion and I can forward those to the right people.
     
  23. bgoodman4

    bgoodman4 Registered Member

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    Well my complaint is that you are not in any way doing that so you are not doing your job. You admit that Rx cannot correct ALL CONCEIVABLE PROBLEMS but then say that the marketing is correct and it will not be changed.

    Boo on you.
     
  24. bgoodman4

    bgoodman4 Registered Member

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    Is this not the whole point? If folks were made aware of what Rx could not do they could protect against it. If they were made aware and chose not to do anything then that becomes their problem not HDSs. As it stands, given HDSs marketing, users are mislead into believing they are 100% secure when they are not.

    I have no problem with Rx or even its so called shortcomings. I defended it strongly against criticism in the past (Aladdin/Mohamed for example) and even used to recommend it (but with caveats). It works as its designed to work and its not designed to, not can it, protect against certain types of problems. My issue is that through false advertising folks systems are put at risk. To me thats just wrong. Why more folks here are not incensed by this than appears to be the case is beyond me.

    I will continue to post regarding my feelings if for no other reason than to keep the threads on HDSs failing front and center. Hopefully this will serve to alert at least some potential victims from the peril they face by using Rx and not understanding what they need to do to protect themselves.
     
    Last edited: Apr 27, 2015
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