Drive Snap: Drive Snapshot Frontend

markymoo,

I was testing the Exclude Folders option in Drive Snap. I found image creation time was markedly increased. Is this your experience too?

With less to image, I thought it should run faster.

 

Thanks!

 

Looking forward to running it thru some paces this weekend myself. Completely overlooked the "exclude folders" feature.

That is really gonna be a jewell now and decrease time for both my restores & images with DS.

 

No, On the contrary. It does run faster. Here is witness. Excluding 477MB knocked nearly a minute off the backup time. The Documents and Settings folder is excluding Desktop files. What are you excluding?

 

@markymoo

First, again thanks for your effort. This is a milestone of sorts because front-ends like this are rarely given such attention, so it's obvious you've been inspired by DriveSnapshot's excellent reliablity.

Question: Regarding Differentials, is there a reasonable limit in your opinion to how many of these to make? I assume their only limited by adequate space available to store them?

EASTER

 

markymoo,

Your results are what I'd expect. Maybe I was too harsh on Drive Snap. I excluded the whole Windows and Program Files folders. A test!

The backup image was only a few hundred MB yet took 15 minutes to create. I'll try a realistic exclusion.

 

No there is no limit on the differentials. If you have more then scrollbar appears in any images lists in Drive Snap so you can see them all.

 

Excellent forethought.

It's clear that you took the effort to equip it as fully with most every conceivable feature that is reasonably useful and that's a credit to your interest and talent that you put into it for us DS loyals.

EASTER

 

Yes, there's a good reason for that you trying to exclude lots of files that are in use, protected in the Windows folder and you need your Windows folder anyway. If you had just tried it excluding the Program Files it would of been faster. Of course you need the Program Files folder or just certain folders in there but i'm just showing you that it's because of Windows system files in use. I have knocked off another 2 minutes by excluding the same as before but excluding the Program Files folder as well.

 

I have found an inaccuracy in the

"Done 100% total time used line"

It doesn't start timing until the excluded scanning is done. So it's not the true Total time of the process. The true total time is when Snapshot starts until it finishes. Scanning is part of this process.

I imaged my C: drive and timed by my watch and by the log window at the bottom of Snapshot. Total time was 2:31 and this was the same as the log time and watch time.

I excluded Documents and Settings, only 300 MB. Total time was 2:30 according to "Done 100% total time" but my watch time and log time was 2:58. Clearly longer than the basic image. The second backup image was 150 MB smaller than the first.

Looking at your screen shots, although I can't see the full log, I suspect the same is happening.

 

I've just completed an image where I excluded Program Files.

Total time according to "Done 100% total time" was 1:40 but the actual Snapshot running time according to my watch and the log was 11:24. Five times longer than a full non excluded image.

Excluding Folders is a good feature in creating smaller images but it does increase Snapshot running time.

 

It's not so much an inaccuracy it just doesn't start timing until it starts backing up. If you excluding many files and deep folders it just takes seconds more.

Because you told it to exclude the Windows folder it had to work crazy hard to exclude many files and folders in protected use. In real life use you would not exclude the Windows folder and so the scanning exclude time is small. The exclude scanning time of the 4 folders of the results i shown above took under 20 seconds. I am using RAID 0 on 3 drives so you probably get a longer scanning exclude time but not much more.

Ok so the scan exclude time took another 27 seconds. Don't overlook the beauty of excluding files and folders from your image. The main relevence and importance is you excluded many MB or GB from your image resulting in a smaller faster restore which will probably save you minutes less either which can also mean viable is the oppurtunity to put the image on DVD's even. You win in the end.

 

It also depends on the speed of your computer Brian and hard drive speed and how fragemnted it is. Sounds like it dramatically longer there but I would try it in a real life test like certain folder Windows is not dependant on. It is always good practice to run a cleaner over your PC like CCleaner to empty the temp folders. There is a Common Files folder in Program Files folder that Windows need to run right. If you forget to run the cleaner using Drive Snap to also exclude certain temp folders is a good idea. Say I have a cluttered desktop or ISO files or folders in the root of C or i know where some big files hang out in a folder that i don't want it's good to exclude and only add on seconds.

I be more content with my image not having to backup that data, like i said you win especially when you come to restore it back faster and the unneeded data is not even there and being lighter and so less fragmented too.

 

I think it's a great feature and I'm not really concerned about the extra time. My test was artificial.

 

Right thanks, i did put some effort in as i want efficiency for myself backing up. Doing everything from a central place is key. 99% of the options are in Drive Snap. There's only about 5 options or less missing from Drive Snap that are in Drive Snapshot that are little use and won't have a bearing on backing up. The number of Drive Snapshot users i think could be small from the amount of replys from the same users or i could be wrong. There's still room for improvement on my end.

 

You'll find what needs perfected i'm sure. LoL

I like to echo something markymoo alluded to. This alone can boost speed, such as, at least in my case run RESTORATION to finally flatten already deleted files followed by a conscientious effort to perform a quality DEFRAG, and then IMAGE.

Does this sound like a beneficial practice to even better image a system and thus gain some speed potential when time comes to image?

EASTER

 

It could be you don't have anything to exclude right now and stuck what to exclude. You will later and if you do it's a boon. It is hard work to construct a command line quickly with Drive Snapshot to exclude what you want and then having to keep changing it. Some won't even try to attempt. plus making scheduled differentials and other useful options you not bother to use because they were not in the Drive Snapshot interface but wanted to, with Drive Snap they are there and make it easy.

 

Absolutely correct. I'm careful not to add any data files to my C: drive. Everything in the C: drive needs to be imaged. But I see friend's computers that have a LOT of files and folders that can be excluded.

 

This is one reason you should continue to use Drive Snapshot ...along with Drive Snap. Backing up the same C partition of 10Gb within seconds of each other. For the test i enabled writeback cache feature on Shadow Protect and also enabled High Compression. No verify was used. Exclude folders was turned off in Drive Snap. I timed it seperately just in case the write slowed down any timer and gave a wrong time and result was same time.

The image size for each were

SP: 6.82GB
DS: 6.86GB
IFW: 6.94GB



and the test with the latest version of Image for Windows set on Standard compression which is the hiighest compression ommiting swap file and page file.

 

There is no doubt DS is the fastest. The differences are even more marked if you include verify times. Shadow Protect has the slowest verify process of all the apps I've tried. Image/verify of my C: drive with DS is 4:24. SP takes 9:27 and it's the verify process that accounts for the extra time. The imaging times were similar, with DS slightly faster.

You don't need to twist my arm.

 

No twisting i was simply showing some results.

 

DS is not only the fastest that refuse to choke or error but it's batting 1000% in my use of it. No failed restores at all, and the system restored returns as if nothing ever happened, becuase it overlays on top of whatever is left and doesn't misss a beat.

 

another test few mins later with Drive Snapshot again but this time excluding the 3 folders i did earlier with Drive Snap. This brought the image time down considerably. but not the image size. Image size was 6.38GB but it's in relation to what i excluded. It only took 5 seconds to scan the exclude folders. Having RAID 0 must help giving a faster transfer rate. On all tests nothing was running in the background apart from NOD32.

 

The word SP has been faster from its results from a few months ago and i was in agreement as SP equalled DS in a test but doing this test again DS had a bigger lead over SP. I was assumption they were equal as SP caught up but DS is still the rocket.

 

I meant I'm on your team.