Dedicated FirstDefense Forum

[Flack]

I was wondering if anyone know about a dedicated portion of a forum board to FirstDefense.

I just discovered this product to my great delight.

I am going to be using it along with True Image for my bare metal back-ups.

Cheers,
Flack

[Blackcat]

As far as I know there are no OFFICIAL forums for FD.

BUT just carry out a search here and you will find a number of threads; here and here for example.

And there are a number of long-term users here such as Acadia who I am sure will offer help if needed.

I am also a newbie to FD and still trying to get my head around the different snapshots.

[Peter2150]

Hi Flack

Good choice. It is amazing how much First Defense has made my life easier. If you test software it is great, as you can totally remove things like no uninstaller can. I wouldn't be without it.

Pete

[Flack]

Hi Pete/Blackcat,

For me, it helps in so many ways. First, I have taken a snapshot of my core OS install with updates and the basic programs of Microsoft Office. I will then go on to load all my other programs. It will save so much time if I ever want to come back to this basic install. I will also take a snap shot of my computer after everything is installed but before I really start using it.

I will update this snap shot over time with the latest programs or updates I have done (probably trail it a little in time to make sure the programs are safe). This way I keep a fully clean version of my system going in parrallel track to the one I am actually using. To me, this is the only way to handle all the crap like Spyware, stuff that just collects on your system, and malicious code.

The other method of trying to "clean" your system of it while also running a whole host of programs to prevent it just seems like an arms race with each side pushing forward but all of us in the middle never really winning. And, it takes up way too much time. I will still install the basic stuff for this, but I am no longer going to chase it hard.

I can just take my pristine snapshot that never sees real use and place it over my current active desktop so I am to replace my active one so I am back using a system that is like I just freshly installed everything.

This also handles what most of my family and friend complain to me about their system now "running too slow". In my work, I see people buying new computers all the time because of this. If they just re-installed their programs, they would be amazed at how fast the computer is again. They blame the hardware when it is just the software that has become bogged down.

The final thing I love this is what you mentioned, Pete. Not only can I test without worrying about messing up my real desktop, but I am also not locked into the 30 day reality that most test software limits. They place pieces of code on your computer that would be nearly impossible to find (unless using a program specifically designed to track the install process) which prevents you from reloading their software again to test another 30 days. This is not an effort to get around for paying for software I actually use. I really do pay for software I use because I believe you should support those providing real value.

My problem is that I am testing so so much software that I hate being limited to the 30 days. Many times I will be researching a whole category of software products for my job where I will be loading 8 to 10 different similar programs. I want to be able to tinker with these programs at my own pace. Usually, I am also testing more than one category at a time.

I can go on a bit about this. I don't know if it is healthy psychologically to say you are in love with a piece of software or not, but I am coming real close.

A software that provides this capability should really have its own forum space. It might not be appropriate for for Wilders, but I got to believe it fits inside someone's forum categories.

I am going to have all my family load it. I tend to have to fix things/save the day when things go wrong so it will save me a ton of time with everyone else's computers.

Cheers,
Flack

[Peter2150]

Originally Posted by Flack

Hi Pete/Blackcat,


I can go on a bit about this. I don't know if it is healthy psychologically to say you are in love with a piece of software or not, but I am coming real close.


Cheers,
Flack

I know what you mean, and it can become a quick love affair. I had a friend who is a network "specialist" over recently to give me hand with a network issue. He saw FDISR and a few other things and said he didn't believe in all that junk. A few minutes later after tinkering, he rebooted my computer and it came up with a missing system file message. He groaned and said I hope you have your system disk and that we might be here a while. I just said watch, and did the 5 minute FDISR fix. He just asked where you get it, and now has it on his machines. Oh yeah, you can fall in love with this baby.

Pete

Peter seems hard to argue against a backup solution. But he still thinks all the other stuff ("few other things") on your software are junk correct? Just curious what are those things?

[Acadia]

Flack, while your idea is a good idea, I think that it would be asking too much of Paul to host a dedicated FD forum. Unfortunately, FD is just not all that popular yet (it is truly an undiscovered gem) so I don't know how much use the forum would see. Plus, Raxco tech support still remains very good at this point. Some of the dedicated forums were needed, well, in my opinion anyway, because some of the software companies tech support (I will not name names because I'm sure that it does not apply in all cases) left much to be desired. While I am hoping that FirstDefense's popularity grows because of all the folks that it could help, I am hoping that Raxco does not become another Norton as far as tech support goes; I can remember the days when Norton tech support won awards and I never waited more than 24 hours for an answer!

Acadia

[Peter2150]

Originally Posted by deviladvocate

Peter seems hard to argue against a backup solution. But he still thinks all the other stuff ("few other things") on your software are junk correct? Just curious what are those things?

Hi Devilsadvocate

Not sure what you mean of if you think I am arguing against a backup solution. Quite to the contrary. First Defense in the traditional sense doesn't help in a hard disk failure. The new archive feature does start to change that. Just so there is no doubt, backup is also crucial to me in that I use Ghost 2003,Acronis True Image, and Retrospect to backup. Its just all these backup solutons do have restore issues at time, and then there is the time factor. None of them can restore a drive in 5 minutes. So for anything short of hardware failure First Defense is the champ.

Pwrw

[WWS]

Originally Posted by Acadia

FD is just not all that popular yet (it is truly an undiscovered gem) so I don't know how much use the forum would see.

Acadia

Besides, what goes wrong with it. Just look at this post that Flack started...nothing but praise for FDISR.
For me, there were instances where I wasn't using it right and/or didn't understand something or other. And now, I just plop down in the secondary and download/experiment with anything knowing I can recover just by rebooting to another snapshot.
And now FDISR has gotten better with the abilty to archive a snapshot on another drive.
I also use Acronis True Image. In the last 3 years I have only had to use it once because I misused f-disk and wiped out my primary. Now if I need to use True Image again and it fails, I've got a FDISR snapshot on the 2nd HDD to back that image up.

This is the first I've heard about FirstDefense. Can anyone answer a couple of questions about it?

Is FirstDefense like Norton's GoBack?

What is the memory footprint on it?

Thanks

Originally Posted by Peter2150

Hi Devilsadvocate

Not sure what you mean of if you think I am arguing against a backup solution.

Huh? I'm not saying or thinking that at all. I'm saying your friend is still not convinced about the other stuff on your computer yes?

[Blackcat]

Originally Posted by Farq

This is the first I've heard about FirstDefense. Can anyone answer a couple of questions about it?

Is FirstDefense like Norton's GoBack?

Well yes in the fact that they are roll back programs.

But there are major differences between the 2 products and they are listed here.

One of the main differences is that GoBack is continually working in the background, monitoring all writes to your hard disc. So system performance can be considerably affected, particularly on older machines. In contrast, FD simply takes a snapshot(s) of your hard drive and there is no continuous monitoring. Therefore, memory/resource usage is minimal, as stated below.

What is the memory footprint on it?

Only 1 running process; ISRService.exe taking up only 632k VM!!!!! A very small footprint!!!

Thanks Blackcat. The memory hogging issue of GB was a major concern. One more question please.

Can you schedule a snapshot or does the program snap the image unannounced?

Thanks again,
Farq

"The more you know, the more you know there is more to know" - Anonymous

Disregard my last post. Found the answer on the link in Blackcat's post. Silly me.

[JW Clements]

Originally Posted by Farq

Thanks Blackcat. The memory hogging issue of GB was a major concern. One more question please.

Can you schedule a snapshot or does the program snap the image unannounced?

Thanks again,
Farq

"The more you know, the more you know there is more to know" - Anonymous

You can schedule it or run it manually. If you have PG, then you'll have to do it manually, because you have to shutdown PG in order to copy the PG files, which you'd want if you're testing. And remember to turn PG on in both the Primary and Test snapshots before doing anything else.

And for HDD failure, copy to another HDD weekly and/or use RAID 1 for your system drive.

Get FD, it really is great. I've used it for over a year now to provide a secure testing environment. If I don't like something, I just copy the good snapshot over the test one. If I do like it, I install it in the Primary.

Jim

[Peter2150]

Originally Posted by deviladvocate

Huh? I'm not saying or thinking that at all. I'm saying your friend is still not convinced about the other stuff on your computer yes?

@Deviladvocate

Sorry about that, I misunderstood your meaning, and yes I suspect you are right. But thats okay.

@farq

This is one big difference between GoBack and FDISR. To illustrate, I use a spreadsheet in my work, and it gets resaved frequently. Do to the way Goback worked, I could retrieve multiple versions of that file as far back as the history permitted. I don't have this feature with Goback. My solution to this was a program called AJC Active Backup. It monitors certain specified directories and file types, and when one of them is saved, it archives it. Allows me to find previous versions of the same file. Inexpensive(not free) and virtuall no overhead.

With Goback and found virtually no overhead, but what I didn't like is if I did something like a defrag, and forgot to suspend it, poof all history gone. That was the killer factor for me.

Pete

[JW Clements]

Originally Posted by Peter2150

@Deviladvocate

Sorry about that, I misunderstood your meaning, and yes I suspect you are right. But thats okay.

@farq

This is one big difference between GoBack and FDISR. To illustrate, I use a spreadsheet in my work, and it gets resaved frequently. Do to the way Goback worked, I could retrieve multiple versions of that file as far back as the history permitted. I don't have this feature with Goback. My solution to this was a program called AJC Active Backup. It monitors certain specified directories and file types, and when one of them is saved, it archives it. Allows me to find previous versions of the same file. Inexpensive(not free) and virtuall no overhead.

With Goback and found virtually no overhead, but what I didn't like is if I did something like a defrag, and forgot to suspend it, poof all history gone. That was the killer factor for me.

Pete

Hi Pete, I think you meant that FDISR doesn't have the feature, but, having said that, NTIUS also has a real-time backup program called NTI Shadow. Also not free, but they had a promo for $0.99USD which is quite close to free.
Jim

[Acadia]

If you use the Wilder's search feature, you will find at least a couple of lengthly threads comparing FD and GoBack. Let's be fair here, one bad thing about FD, and possibly the only bad thing, is that it will take up even more hard disk space than GoBack will, in fact, probably substantially more ... other than that, I prefer FD to Goback, and I am a GoBack fan.

Acadia

[Peter2150]

@Jim

Yup you are right. FIngers and brain got disconnected.



I am in the same camp as Acadia. I really did love GoBack. Thing that scared me was I had a friend install it, and she felt good about it. Updated Zone Alarm at a time they were having problems, but was unconcerned because of Goback. BUT... her hubby processed some huge photo files, and that blew away all the goback history. Fortunately she didn't have any problems. That scared me and when I saw FDISR, there was no looking back.

[TonyW]

Originally Posted by Acadia

Plus, Raxco tech support still remains very good at this point.

I might be wrong, but it looks like Raxco isn't the originator for FirstDefense. A company called Leapfrog Software Inc. (http://www.leapfrogsoftware.com) seem to be the originators, and companies like Software Pursuits, which produces BootBack, are using versions of the same software it seems.

[Acadia]

FirstDefense-ISR was a co-development effort between Raxco Software and Leapfrog Software, Inc.

Leapfrog Software, Inc. (LSI) was founded in November 2001 and incorporated in June 2002 after an extensive marketing and development effort for FirstDefense-ISR.

The core code was developed by some guy named Lear and is now distributed through several partners, including Raxco under the ISR First Defense Label.

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articl...mark1657172532

http://redmondmag.com/reviews/articl...itorialsid=523

Acadia

[hollywoodpc]

I too , am a user of this great program ! Support CAN be good depending on who you deal with . The program is excellent !

[Peter2150]

Fascinating read about what is clearly my favorite program. Support I guess is relative to your perspective. When I've had problems I've just picked up the phone and called my favorite tech, Jason Claiborne. I usually have no trouble getting him, and then the help is A+++

Pete

[Reve_Etrange]

let's be fair here, one bad thing about FD, and possibly the only bad thing,

What about 'no localization'? Is it, like, it's not worth it, or all develpment is frozen?

-RE

[Acadia]

Yo, Blackcat, is that a built-in MS program that gave you the usage information, or is that a third party software? Kind of looks like Windows Task Manager but I could not find those particular screens. Thanks.

Acadia