FirstDefence-ISR?

[Rilla927]

Hi everyone,

I'm going to purchase FD & PD. I was wondering if one should be installed before the other? Or if it matters at all.

Also their site didn't mention if you can restore a snapshot from an external drive. I apologize if this has been answered before.

Does anyone have BootIt NG installed a long with FD?

This sounds like an awesome program!

Thanks Rilla927

[Peter2150]

Originally Posted by Rilla927

Hi everyone,

I'm going to purchase FD & PD. I was wondering if one should be installed before the other? Or if it matters at all.

Also their site didn't mention if you can restore a snapshot from an external drive. I apologize if this has been answered before.

Does anyone have BootIt NG installed a long with FD?

This sounds like an awesome program!

Thanks Rilla927

Not sure the order matters, but I'd install FDISR first, that way PD will pick up the exclusion it needs. You can archive to an external drive, and refresh back from an external drive, but you can't boot into anything on an external drive.

Also not sure at Bootit NG as it does modify the MBR. Todd might shed some light on that.

Pete

[dallen]

I can not add any substance to what Peter2150 has said. However, I just want to give my opinion on FD. With many programs they may seem cool at first, but as you use them over time you usually uncover flaws or limitations with the software. My opinion with FD is that the longer I use the program the more awesome I realize it is. This is the sign of a really well designed piece of software.

By no means am I suggesting this software is perfect because I'm sure that other users would be quick to point out the flaws or inadequacies from their perspective. I am just saying that FD gets better and better the more I learn about it capabilities.

My only wish is that Todd would drop a hint about what he has in the pipeline (to borrow a pharmaceutical term) and when we should anticipate finding out.

[crofttk]

Originally Posted by Rilla927

...Does anyone have BootIt NG installed a long with FD?...

Yes, I do. What worked for me was to install BootIt NG first and then install FD-ISR. FD-ISR now owns the MBR.

If I want to boot into BING, I simply disable FDISR's pre-boot function by checking off "Disable Pre-Boot..." in FDISR's "Actions" menu. Upon reboot, you'll then have access to all of BING's functions.

I prefer this setup because I indeed use FD-ISR as my "First Defense". Then, if I want to do maintenance on my partitions or reconfigure something, I give control of the MBR to BING, do my thing, reboot, and then re-enable FD-ISR's Pre-Boot. I've successfully restored system drive backups made from both BING and Terabyte's "Image for Windows" with no problems.

FDISR has come up with pre-boot disabled after these restores of course, but I simply re-enabled it from FDISR's "Actions" menu, rebooted, and FDISR was then back in control.

I've installed FD first and PD second and I've also done it in the other order. It made no difference whatsoever in PD's ability to automatically detect the presence of FDISR and exclude $ISR.BIN from movement.

All of that being said, I can't guarantee how this will all work with your system -- I don't believe ANYBODY can with 100% certainty -- so DEFINITELY have a known restorable backup ready if you want to start experimenting with things and until you know for sure how everything shakes out on YOUR system.

P.S. I have managed to trash the program install portion of FDISR before, can't recall how, but, as long as the C:\$ISR structure is intact, I've always been able to reinstall FDISR and pick up where I left off.

[Rilla927]

@Peter2150, Dallen, Crofttk

such positive comments that's great! Peter I will try the install with FD first.

I have IFW, IFD, BootIt NG and I think it's a great product but it takes me a little over 3 1/2 hours to image 48gig and it works flawless for me.

But when I seen the time you can save with FD I couldn't believe it, so I thought they would make a great combo.

And yes, I do have my back up image on DVD (9 of them). I just put a fresh image on about a week and half ago and I have been running all my scanners every other day so I make sure I'm clean before I do this with FD. I've been running Hijackthis a lot just to confirm. Call me paranoid, ha!

Crofttk, boy am I glad you posted about BootIt NG and FD. I was really worried I couldn't have them both and I wasn't going to try it until I could get a confirmation, thanks a million!

I have tried many times to install BootIt NG and when it comes to the question for a dedicated partion to install BootIt NG on I choose yes and it says it can't find one so it always sends me by way of installing manually, why I don't know. Then I noticed I couldn't get to safe mode after it installed so I uninstalled it and will try another time.

That's easy enough disabling the "preboot option for FD". Are you able to get to safe mode with the both of them installed?

Thanks for all your comments and advice

Rilla927

[Longboard]

..HHHMMM...
feel like I might be arrested for stalking the way I'm following these threads.

Good simile; the threads make up the weave....

This is interesting again.

Maybe the rollback we become a side issue.

@Rilla927
agree Boot ti is great app.
You know of course that unless you want the mult-boot edit menu you can do most anything with the boot floppy.

That image seems like a long time, IFW takes about 30 minutes for me to USB HD for about 24Gb.

Good thread again.

Regards.

[Rilla927]

Hi Longboard

I thought the same thing, but the only thing I can think of is because I validate each and everyone and from what I understand that takes longer of course.

Other than that I don't know. I have never had a bad image, always works for me.

Rilla927

[crofttk]

Originally Posted by Rilla927

...I have tried many times to install BootIt NG and when it comes to the question for a dedicated partion to install BootIt NG on I choose yes and it says it can't find one so it always sends me by way of installing manually, why I don't know. Then I noticed I couldn't get to safe mode after it installed so I uninstalled it and will try another time.

That's easy enough disabling the "preboot option for FD". Are you able to get to safe mode with the both of them installed?

Thanks for all your comments and advice

Rilla927

Hmmm..... yes, I am able to get into safe mode Rilla. I can't image that problem being related to or caused by a BING installation -- I more readily suspect a Windows installation problem or registry corruption.

I believe when you're installing BING, it's looking for UNALLOCATED drive space to create the dedicated partition from. See BING's manual, page 10, at http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/downloads/bootitng.pdf and check Step 4 under "Install BootIt NG for the first time", "...Installing BootIt NG to its own partition requires unpartitioned space and takes up one primary partition...".

You won't like my solution: I cheated by already having a copy of Partition Magic with which I moved my C: drive back a little bit to leave unallocated space at the front of the drive for BING. All I can say is that there are credible and free utilities for partition management out there which would make creating unallocated space from existing paritions much easier than backing up, FDISKing, and then restoring your existing system. For safe/credible recommendations, You might consider searching up some recent articles on free partition management software from Fred Langa's newsletter site: www.langa.com

I must admit however, that Longboard has a very good point in that you MIGHT be happy simply running BING from a boot floppy. I don't use multi-boot -- perhaps it's just laziness on my part that I run BING from my harddrive anyways.

A caveat I also should have mentioned earlier -- I did NOT opt to let BING implement the capability to allocate up to 200 (I believe) primary partitions - four is plenty for me, even including the BING partition. I fear you MAY run into problems running FDISR and BING together if you install BING with it's special partition management activated because it may be doing something funky with the MBR and or file allocation structures -- I'm just not sure -- but, forewarned is forearmed !

I hope that helped at least slightly more than it confused the issue.

[crofttk]

Originally Posted by Rilla927

Hi Longboard

I thought the same thing, but the only thing I can think of is because I validate each and everyone and from what I understand that takes longer of course.

Other than that I don't know. I have never had a bad image, always works for me.

Rilla927

In addition, someone can correct me if it's not so, I seem to remember that IFW is a good bit faster at backing up than either IFD or BING -- which way are you taking the 3.5 hours to back up and verify ?

[Longboard]

Yes

{Image from BING floppy took about 1 hour for 24Gb
{
{IFW with PHYLOCK set to "use and release" took about 30 minutes

:saving to usb2 HD (Toshiba 4200rpm with 2mb buffer)

I haven't tried IFD

Lbd.

[Rilla927]

Originally Posted by crofttk

Hmmm..... yes, I am able to get into safe mode Rilla. I can't image that problem being related to or caused by a BING installation -- I more readily suspect a Windows installation problem or registry corruption.

I think your right about the registry corruption part. I did find out I had a virus or something on there. Even though it was all removed I noticed other things weren't right either so I'm back on line with a fresh set of windows.

I believe when you're installing BING, it's looking for UNALLOCATED drive space to create the dedicated partition from. See BING's manual, page 10, at http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/downloads/bootitng.pdf and check Step 4 under "Install BootIt NG for the first time", "...Installing BootIt NG to its own partition requires unpartitioned space and takes up one primary partition...".

I understand it looks for unallocated space. I have two other empty HD'S, it could have used one of them. For some reasom it didn't detect them even when all HD'S were showing in the partion window.

I read the manual for three days in a row til my eyeballs fell out. When I installed it the one time I resized my drive with BING and it installed, but like I said the computer was acting weird at that time.

I will try it one more time and if it don't work I will run the program from a CD, that's what I used to make BING on.

You won't like my solution: I cheated by already having a copy of Partition Magic with which I moved my C: drive back a little bit to leave unallocated space at the front of the drive for BING.

How come you didn't use BING to do it?

A caveat I also should have mentioned earlier -- I did NOT opt to let BING implement the capability to allocate up to 200 (I believe) primary partitions - four is plenty for me, even including the BING partition.

I didn't either.

I fear you MAY run into problems running FDISR and BING together if you install BING with it's special partition management activated because it may be doing something funky with the MBR and or file allocation structures -- I'm just not sure -- but, forewarned is forearmed !

You are absolutely right!

You know what I noticed at the FD site, if you order the CD it's $40.00 and the download is $70.00.

I wonder why such a drastic difference!

I gotta get FD on here. I have an image backup of just the OS with no programs, and then I had the 9 disks with all my programs, but I have to trash them now because I ended up with that infection on there. So I won't be using those disks again.

If I need help with FD I will come to all you's that know FD well

Rilla927

[Rilla927]

Originally Posted by crofttk

In addition, someone can correct me if it's not so, I seem to remember that IFW is a good bit faster at backing up than either IFD or BING -- which way are you taking the 3.5 hours to back up and verify ?

I used IFW.

What do you mean- "which way are you taking the 3.5 hours to back up and varify?"

I like to verify the image so that's how long it ended up to be.

Rilla927

[Rilla927]

Originally Posted by Longboard

Yes

{Image from BING floppy took about 1 hour for 24Gb
{
{IFW with PHYLOCK set to "use and release" took about 30 minutes

:saving to usb2 HD (Toshiba 4200rpm with 2mb buffer)

I haven't tried IFD

Lbd.

Longboard that's what I'm using also, the IFW with Phylock set to "use and release".

Rilla927

[dallen]

Rilla927,
I thought the same thing about the difference in price. It seems that it would be the other way around (Download: $40; CD: $70). If I were a company, I would prefer that customers paid me online and obtained the product online. Why punish the customer for making your job easier?

One word of advice, ditch the disks and invest in an external HD. Adaptec makes a kit for around $50 that allows you to convert an internal HD into an external with USB 2.0. You can buy an external Western Digital HD for cheap.

[Longboard]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but, unless you plan to have mutiple OSs or more than 4 partitions per HD on your box, you don't really need to install the EMBR partition in BING.

Realistically all other functions are available from the bootdisc either floppy or CD;inthe "work with partitions' window. AFAICS the only options missing pertain to the direct boot management.

I am sure there are plenty of other high end user options I dont (and probably dont want) to know about.

??

LBD

[crofttk]

Originally Posted by Rilla927

I used IFW.

What do you mean- "which way are you taking the 3.5 hours to back up and varify?"

I like to verify the image so that's how long it ended up to be.

Rilla927

To rephrase, "With which program, BING or IFD or IFW, does it take you 3.5 hours ?".

Even with verifying, which I have nothing against, 3.5 hours does seem a little long for IFW.

[Rilla927]

Originally Posted by dallen

Rilla927,
I thought the same thing about the difference in price. It seems that it would be the other way around (Download: $40; CD: $70). If I were a company, I would prefer that customers paid me online and obtained the product online. Why punish the customer for making your job easier?

That's exactly what I thought Dallen.

One word of advice, ditch the disks and invest in an external HD. Adaptec makes a kit for around $50 that allows you to convert an internal HD into an external with USB 2.0. You can buy an external Western Digital HD for cheap.

I have a 200gig external.

Rilla927

[Rilla927]

Originally Posted by Longboard

AFAICS the only options missing pertain to the direct boot management.

What is AFAICS?

Rilla927

[Rilla927]

Originally Posted by crofttk

To rephrase, "With which program, BING or IFD or IFW, does it take you 3.5 hours ?".

Even with verifying, which I have nothing against, 3.5 hours does seem a little long for IFW.

Yes, it does. Unfortunately I can't speed up the process, as long as it works is good for me. That's why I want to get FD. When I'm imaging I don't use windows while it's doing it's thing either. I know it says you can but I don't.

Not to change the subject, but I bought PD and I love it. Diskeeper Pro is dust in the wind.

Rilla927

[dallen]

Originally Posted by Rilla927

I have a 200gig external.

Rilla927

Then why on Earth would you want to consume 9 DVDs for an image? Even if you do not want to have 30-40 Gb of space constantly consumed on your external by your image, I cannot see the need for using DVDs. I would probably invest in a separate external specifically dedicated for the pupose of housing images before I would use DVDs. If for some odd reason, DVDs are necessary, which I cannot think of one at the moment, I would use re-writable so that I could either refresh the image or redo it in the event of a problem. I'm not certain the IFW / IFD supports DVD-RW, but I think it does.

[dallen]

Originally Posted by Rilla927

Not to change the subject, but I bought PD and I love it. Diskeeper Pro is dust in the wind.

Rilla927

Another unrelated question, do you like PD better than Diskeeper Pro? I use PD and have never used Diskeeper. However, I hear so many good things about Diskeeper that I actually considered giving it a try. I have been reluctant though because I've also heard that PD out performs Diskeeper, not to mention that I love FD and do not want to risk anything conflicting with it. What better way to ensure compatibility than to use two products designed by the same people.

[Rilla927]

Originally Posted by dallen

Then why on Earth would you want to consume 9 DVDs for an image?

I had to laugh! I was wondering when someone was going to ask this.

Well, I did do an image once to my external and it was blazing fast, but when it came time to restore, it didn't work.

I read the help file and all that but I done something wrong some where and I haven't got back to it to try it again. I will figure it out. When your trying to learn so many different things at once you can fall off track a bit.

Not only that, the thought entered my mind "what if something happens to the external" then I would have no image at all. So better to be safe than sorry.

Rilla927

[Rilla927]

Originally Posted by dallen

Another unrelated question, do you like PD better than Diskeeper Pro? I use PD and have never used Diskeeper. However, I hear so many good things about Diskeeper that I actually considered giving it a try. I have been reluctant though because I've also heard that PD out performs Diskeeper, not to mention that I love FD and do not want to risk anything conflicting with it. What better way to ensure compatibility than to use two products designed by the same people.

I love PD! It blows Diskeeper Pro away. Don't get me wrong it works, but not near as good as PD.

I tried to defrag the page file with DK and I thought it was going to tear my computer up. It kept coming up with errors in the end.

When I read the statistics between DK and PD I was flabber gasted at how many files DK leaves behind. Also I found out if you have very large HD'S to defrag Executive Software suggests you buy the enterprise edition in order to do those drives. That's not to cool, so you have to pay more money because you have large HD'S. If I remember correctly I read this at PD site. I didn't know that.

Rilla927

[TonyW]

Originally Posted by Rilla927

What is AFAICS?

It stands for "as far as I can see".

[Rilla927]

Originally Posted by TonyW

It stands for "as far as I can see".

Thanks TonyW! I guess I have to learn some of this terminology.

Rilla927