Using Archives Properly

[Chamlin]

While I've made archives and have them stored on an external drive, I've never actually used them.

Current challenge: My dvd drives (both) no longer write to dvd-rw disks. The drives work fine with everything else (dvd-r, cd-rw, etc.). So I wonder if there is a software or registry screwup somewhere.

My secondary snapshot is from around 5 months ago. Booting to that doesn't resolve the issue. So I want to go back further.

How do I use the archives? Do I have to convert them to snapshots, and if so, how do I do that? This would allow me to go back further in time.

[Peter2150]

You can do a copy update from archives to any snapshot just as you would from snapshot to snapshot.

I do this all the time. In fact all I ever update are the archives.

Pete

[Chamlin]

Thanks, Peter. If I have a Primary snapshot and one secondary snapshot, do you suggest making one additional snapshot to use as the "landing place" to copy/update the archive to?

[stapp]

I'm sure Peter will advise you on this.

In the past I have copy/updated primary to secondary.

Then booted to secondary and copy/updated archive to primary.

Then I have booted to primary to see whatever it was I wanted to see in the archive.

Then booted into secondary and copy/updated it to primary.

[Chamlin]

Thank you, stapp. Sounds like a reasonable approach as long as I keep a chart of "who is who".

I'll wait for a few more people to chime in with additional takes on this and then get started.

[Acadia]

You can do this any way that you want to. You actually only need two Snapshots, the Primary and another one to boot to for recovery. I usually keep a total of three. One of them is very small, just the original install of Windows with First Defense added. I usually use that one to boot to for recovery because it boots up so quickly.

Acadia

[Chamlin]

Thanks, Acadia. I've sometimes kept older snapshots around for extra security when I wasn't sure if I could tell a software was really working the way I wanted it to, but eventually just archived those.

Wish I had known about FDISR when my system was new to have a fast bootup option like yours!

[Peter2150]

Originally Posted by Chamlin

Thanks, Peter. If I have a Primary snapshot and one secondary snapshot, do you suggest making one additional snapshot to use as the "landing place" to copy/update the archive to?

You can. I just don't. I don't have any other working snapshots, just my primary. Secondary is strictly to boot to for working with Archives.