image/backup software - acronis, drivesnapshot?

[Shankle]

Have you all seen the other thread in this section called: "drive snap: drive snapshot frontend"? A fellow by the name of Markymoo is in the process of writing a GUI for DS. I wonder what you all think of that and is it an addon or will it be incorporated into DS?

[Aaron Here]

@Shankle,

As I understand it, Drive Snap is a DOS front-end for DS that eliminates any need for cryptic DOS commands. In any case, it's still in developement and will be sold for 8UK£ (about 12US$) by markymoo as a DS add-on.

I'm sure others here will correct me if I'm wrong about any of the above...

Aaron

[Brian K]

On my test computer I have DS installed to a bootable partition on the HD. It takes 6 seconds to boot into DS DOS and one second later the restore batch file is running. Quite efficient. Much faster than booting to BartPE.

As 99% of restores aren't for HD failure, this works well.

[Aaron Here]

Originally Posted by Brian K

On my test computer I have DS installed to a bootable partition on the HD. It takes 6 seconds to boot into DS DOS and one second later the restore batch file is running. Quite efficient. Much faster than booting to BartPE.

As 99% of restores aren't for HD failure, this works well.

Hi Brian,

That's a great idea for starting up into DS very quickly, but would you mind sharing how you get around having to mess with DS' cryptic DOS restore commands?

If this is too far OT, please PM me.

Thanks,
Aaron

[Brian K]

Aaron,

The DS website could be more helpful. OK, make a DS boot floppy from the "Create a Disaster Recovery Diskette" choice. Convert this to a boot CD if you like.

Boot from one of the above disks.
Choose "Yes" to load a DMA driver if you have IDE HDs. Choose "No" if you have SATA HDs.
Choose NTFS if you have NTFS partitions.
Your NTFS partitions will be assigned drive letters which probably will be completely different from their Windows drive letters. Remember, this is DOS. Look at the list and decide where your backup image resides. It will most likely be in the second HD (0x81:x where x is a partition number). Let's assume this corresponds to G: drive and let's assume your image is named aaron.sna and it's in the pig folder. Pig pen. Navigate to that folder. At the DOS A:\> prompt, type...

G: (and press ENTER)
CD \pig (and press ENTER)

You are now in G:\pig. (Remember G: is the DOS drive letter)

Let's test the image. Verify. Type...

snapshot test aaron.sna (and press ENTER)

A verify is performed.

Let's restore an image. Type...

snapshot restore HD1 auto aaron.sna (and press ENTER)

You will be asked for a Yes confirmation before the restore commences. Just type Y.

That's it. Easy. All you have to change in the above are pig and aaron.sna. The command lines will be the same each time. If you can't remember the image names you can type DIR at G:\pig to find the names so you know which one to enter in the command line. Even easier is to always have the same name for the most recent image. eg the most recent image is always named aaron.sna.

Try it with a Test (Verify) and let me know if you think it is easy.

[Aaron Here]

Brian, thanks for the tutorial - I'll give it a go tomorrow (today is "turkey day" in the USA).

Here's wishing all US members a Happy Thanksgiving!

Aaron

[Defenestration]

Originally Posted by Brian K

On my test computer I have DS installed to a bootable partition on the HD. It takes 6 seconds to boot into DS DOS and one second later the restore batch file is running. Quite efficient. Much faster than booting to BartPE.

As 99% of restores aren't for HD failure, this works well.

What's the restore speed like in DOS compared to when running on Windows ?

Been having a little play with DS and am very impressed with backup/restore speed, although verify speed is the slowest of all apps tested.

[Brian K]

Defenestration,

Results are from a small WinXP partition. About 1 GB of data. On a 7 year old computer. Restored in Windows from a dual boot.

DOS: Verify and Restore= 70 and 178 seconds

Windows: Verify and Restore= 30 and 122 seconds.

DOS is slower. If you don't enable UDMA in DOS (if you have IDE HDs) the times are three times longer. A huge difference.

[Defenestration]

Thanks Brian.

[Aaron Here]

Brian,

Your instructions were what I needed in order to try your 'automated DS (DOS) restore method' and it worked!!!

Still, I just don't have the comfort-level that I do using the DS GUI in a Windows environment. Furthermore, restoring my 18GB system partition was dramaticly slower using DOS! And since I always create a maintenance-mode backup (in order to preserve EAZ-Fix), the full 18GB of my system partition is imaged with every backup.

So while I appreciate having your method at my disposal, I just don't see any advantage over a DS-GUI restore (by booting into an external Windows OS). Yes, it does take about 2 minutes of bootup time before I can start a DS (GUI) restore, whereas you boot into DOS within a matter of seconds, but I more than make up for those 2 minutes (a few times over) by the much faster Windows operations!

Thanks,
Aaron

[Brian K]

Aaron,

Thanks for letting me know my instructions were OK for your computer as well.

Before Defenestration asked his question, I hadn't run a comparison on restore times with IFD. The images in my test computer are small. The largest is 3 GB and I did a comparison last night using that image. The DOS method took about 15% longer than the GUI method. As you point out, for even larger images the total (including the BartPE boot time) time to restore would be less using the GUI method.

If you have IDE HDs and you don't use UDMA in DOS for a DS restore, the restore time is 300% longer.

[Aaron Here]

Originally Posted by Brian K

...The images in my test computer are small. The largest is 3 GB and I did a comparison last night using that image. The DOS method took about 15% longer than the GUI method. As you point out, for even larger images the total (including the BartPE boot time) time to restore would be less using the GUI method.

If you have IDE HDs and you don't use UDMA in DOS for a DS restore, the restore time is 300% longer.

I'm sure that your small partition/image is key to realizing benefits from your DOS method. In my case, with my 18GB system partition, I wind up with about a 12GB compressed image (using maint. mode), which resulted in a DOS restore (UDMA mode) that was about 60% slower than a corresponding Windows restore!

[Shankle]

Hi Aaron Here,
I noticed you were on the other thread about Drive Snap Frontend.
Is access to the Drive Snap Frontend a privileged site?
I went on "artco" and it wants a username & password.
I have registered on the Artco site but when I execute a link from the
other thread it requests the username & password but will not accept
the one I registered with.
At this time I cannot download Drive Snap Frontend.

[raakii]

I too have never been able to access the link

[Aaron Here]

Originally Posted by Shankle

Hi Aaron Here,
I noticed you were on the other thread about Drive Snap Frontend.
Is access to the Drive Snap Frontend a privileged site?
I went on "artco" and it wants a username & password.
I have registered on the Artco site but when I execute a link from the
other thread it requests the username & password but will not accept
the one I registered with.
At this time I cannot download Drive Snap Frontend.

Shankle,

Sorry, but I can't convey any more info about Drive Snap than I did in my previous reply to you (post #27). Personally, I'm no longer interested in markymoo's front-end (assuming I correctly understand what it does) because as I discovered using Brian's method (above), using DS in DOS makes for an appreciably slower restore (and I have to believe that would also be true of backup) as compared to using it's Windows GUI. Therefore, no matter what is made available to facilitate using DS in DOS, I will continue to use the DS GUI for both backup and restore operations.

Aaron

[Shankle]

I did a test run of the test version of Drive Snap.
This is what it put on my external drive:
Sna1 through Sna6 and sns.
Haven't tried a restore and at the present time have no recovery CD.
I guess I need to spend a week with some help files.

[pidbo]

Originally Posted by Shankle

I did a test run of the test version of Drive Snap.
This is what it put on my external drive:
Sna1 through Sna6 and sns.
Haven't tried a restore and at the present time have no recovery CD.
I guess I need to spend a week with some help files.

Although this post was a while ago

I think what you are seeing in Windows Explorer is DVD size chunks
If you make a Bart PE bootable cd with the main executable of Drive Snapshot (registered) snapshot.exe included
(you could use Bart Pe Builder to make your Bart PE cd)

when you boot from your Bart PE disk you and run snapshot.exe you will see that it sees your saved sna1 to sna6 as one unit.
I think that's how it worked for me anyway (from memory)

[osip]

If you have sna1 to sna6 it means that you got your image splitted. If you intend to store the image on ntfs drive I suggest you to change the proposed size in settings to 0, then it will be just 1 sna file.
Also, the best way to make BartPe is to do it with returnil on...You can then through trial and error make it with the plugins needed, when fininshed burn,store the iso file on another drive and reboot...no sign of the bartpe building folder and as a result you have a bartpe disk and an iso file which you can by the help of ultraiso update with updated plugins (IFW,DS ) when needed in the iso, i.e replace upgraded imagew.exe and/or DS.exe...