Drive Snap: Drive Snapshot Frontend

What markymoo has developed is unique. There is no other imaging software that allows the user to easily create an automatic restore CD. None.

What do the regular Snapshot users feel about this CD?

 

ABSOLUTELY STELLAR!!

Gotta luv it, most useful addition ever seen for a QUALITY image system especially of the likes of DS!

EASTER

 

Now this start to look worth of 39EUR

 

I think the price frightens people away. The Drive SnapShot web site hasn't been updated for a year and the site typos detract from a professional application. You can buy the full TeraByte bundle for less than 39 EUR. Acronis TI and Norton Save and Restore are cheaper.

Pity. It's a very clever app.

 

I VOTE FOR THAT

 

Totally true. I'm still thinking...

 

I have used them all ; terabyte ,acronis , Ghost 2003 ,all versions after are unreliable.
I have used DS for years ,never had one failed restore.
Problem is ,the"others" have big marketing savvy websites, and they get writeups in pc mags,people just wouldn't think such a tiny executable ,which doesn't even need installing works much better than this bloatware.
Another problem is the archaic restore method in dos , or having to make a PE cd.
This is great about Markymoos solution, finally giving everyone the means using DS to its full potential !

Lin

 

Hi and Thanks. I had in mind helping the technically impaired get there system up and running again with little effort. At the moment the Automatic Restore CD restores back to an existing partition but there's also the option in Drive Snap to create a restore CD with a menu. This is good as automatic as you only have to press a couple of keys. The 2nd option in the menu restores back the partition structure and then it restores back the image straight after, so good option for new drives, drives missing an MBR or Vista and also does the first track as well.

 

Thank you again well done.

Gary

 

Hey markymoo,
an update of my testing.
the verify slow down at 30percent seems it was caused by kaspersky 7.0 125 running. since temporary disabling kis7.0 my computer runs alot faster.
but if i have kaspersky running at 30percent verify computer slows to crawl.
if i disable kis 7.0 at that point it takes to close and still slow after closing.
so i dont know what is up.

 

Update

It is now more of a no brainer. There is now 3 Automatic System Restore CD options. You click once and it makes the CD. No questions asked.

I done away with the option to create a menu CD as it become superflous with the new options plus i will improve on it. I have done alot testing and this is very reliable now.

Create Automatic System Restore CD - This is automatic image restore to an existing partition. If you system goes down but the partition is still ok.

Create Automatic System Restore CD - MBR - This is the automatic image restore to an existing partition but also restores your MBR as well in one automatic action. Needed for boot managers. Eaz-Fix, FDISR.

Create Automatic System Restore CD - New Drive - This is a automatic image restore to new drives or for Vista. It will create the exact partition structure over the entire drive. If you have existing partitions of a different size then they will be gone and the image partition size will be in place. If you restore this and you still have the same sized primary and logical partitons as when you took the image, they will be still there and any data other than the primary will be ok. This option will also restore the MBR. Your internal drive have gone down, you fit new drive and luckily you stored your image on an external USB this option will restore it.

Everyone's a winner. That's all the bases covered.

I can add in a verify option after the image is restored to check your data is restored ok.


other updates
If you have enabled graphics then if you do a seperate verify it will also be in graphic mode. The suppress key option for console mode now works for Create Checksum Hash and Verify as well. If you encrypt images then you won't be able to verify, create hash or mount them unless you supply and enable in the password box under options. Again if the image is encrypted restoring in DOS you can type in the password at the DOS prompt.

 

Oh Kaspersky thats a right system hog. It's checking on every file in the system. Imaging can be high on cpu and hard drive resources, as Drive Snapshot writes to the drive faster than most other imaging software, it may have more of a strain on your system. Kaspersky sounds like it's working overtime. I use NOD32 and alot lighter and use other security measure that don't need a heavy protection like Kaspersky.

As i say once you click Backup in Drive Snap it's still using 0% resources. The only background task is the detection of Drive Snapshot finishing and this is tiny resource. I would remove Kaspersky or disable it while imaging. The reason for that bug before was certain windows have the same identity so if you had windows of other softwares at the same time it sometimes detected the wrong one. I had left it until later to fix. It all ok now.

 

I decided to try this and am having no luck at all.

a.) Virus identified Worm/Autoit.AYB

b.) Would you like to force a dismount on this volume? (Y/N)

c.) Building only a 1.8 MB ISO file without the images.

d.) Tried booting CD and get bad command or filename ?

e.) Leaves me at the command prompt.

Tried on a virtual machine without antivirus software with the same results.

What are the requirements to use this to build an automated restore CD/DVD ?

Version info:

File name Drive Snap.exe
File Version 0.98.0.18
File size 883,853 Bytes (864 KB)
Date created 5/17/2008 9:28:47 PM

rrrh1 (arch 1)

 

rrrh1,

Which AV program do you use?

That's expected.

It works on my 10 year old P3 computer.

 

I have tried it in a virtual environment.

after booting the CD...

Drive letters:

E: is now C:

C: is now D:

E: is now nonexistent, this is the drive where the image files were under windows.

Could the problem be that the image files to be restored are on a FAT / FAT 32 partition ?

The last line of Autoexec.bat is:

run

run what ??

This is where the "bad command or filename" message is coming from.

Is something missing here ?

Which AV program do you use?

AVG 7.5

Since there is no antivirus software on the virtual PC this should now be a non-issue.

rrrh1 (arch 1)

 

@rrrh1

Hello, The av alert is a false positive. Certain exe compressors get flagged as a virus. I suspect you using AVG. I would disable the anti-virus and download it again. The av might of prevented being copied right to your virtual pc and something is missing for it to work correctly.

I have tested it on FAT32. C being the FAT32 system partition or whole drive and D being the image location of FAT32 and it still works. The only configuration so far it has not worked is when the system partition is not C.

Certain configurations don't work. I can emulate your system then i can see why. If you getting a bad command sounds like something is missing from the ISO. As long as the system drive is the first drive in the boot priority it should work. Give more info on you Windows configuration, How did you setup the virtual pc drives/ptn's ? The ISO is 1.45Mb on NTFS or FAT32. You maybe using a different cluster size perhaps.

 

@rrrh1 i now know your problem. no need to post anymore info. i will sort it. thanks for reporting this problem.

 

Windows architecture and the NTFS filing system structure will still be around for a very long time and so won't go out of date. Drive Snapshot been updated to work with Vista.

yes cheaper, but in the end the more issues and bigger chance of failed restores ends up being alot more costly namely there data, and then they end up buying twice for a better image backup.

 

@rrrh1 try this new update out 0.98.0.24 it should work now. The problem was an issue with FAT32. let me know how you get on. This should resolve issues for those who didn't get it working before.

http://artco.adsl24.co.uk/markymoo/Drive Snap.exe

 

Tried the latest cd , first made an image ,burnt as " plain " auto restore ,disconnected my boot drive , put a new 500 sata on channel 0 ,partitioned in : primary ntfs C: and Extended data partition .
this wouldn't restore ; should i have used the " New Drive " option ? i did not want to do this , i guess this option would have destroyd my data partition?

I then rebooted , switched off again put my original boot drive on again an did the autorestore : this went ok , but after rebooting i got this:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3138/2501396447_bb7710b996_b.jpg
i had rebooted a few times after making the image , no chkdsk,
So this must have something to do with the image ?
Lin

 

You inserted a new drive and made a primary and extended partition. it didn't restore because you choose CD standard option. it's for existing partitions exactly the same size as the image, or if the data gets messed up but the partition is ok. you created one a different size so it couldn't restore. New Drive would of recreated your partitions but as it a new drive thats the whole point. my question is why did you bother to format and create an extended partition first? maybe you was storing the image from the original boot drive there. having the original boot drive would of been safe enough. if you choose New Drive option it would of restored the primary and then you could of resized if you wanted different. are you saying you copied important data into the extended partition first that you be worried you lose it? if you did you did it the wrong way round. put the image back first. you would not of lost the data if you make the extended the exact same size as the one in the image before but this is not the way to do it as you got to match the exact byte.

You made it more difficult than it should of been. 'New Drive' was the way to go and not to bother creating any partitions.

It sounds like you have a bad cluster(s) and its recovering files from the bad cluster(s) it good policy to run chkdsk before you image. drives are that big now users don't bother doing a full format and do a quick format and find out later on it's bad drive. i would run HDTune over it and maybe ChkDsk /R. It may of been a bad image but unlikely as DS is very reliable. Did you use the verify option? If you make an image and theres bad area before or faulty files then it will be evident on reboot. The image is probably putting the damaged files back in a good area of the disk and Chkdsk then finds them faulty as there were once in a bad area and repairs.

I would run chkdsk over the original boot and take a image again to see. good to see the auto restore working. lodore had errors after running ChkDsk only showed restoring with DS which after restoring with original Paragon DB image that didnt declare an error he found errors. The moral is run ChkDsk more often.

 

The new update will now restore from USB drives detected in the BIOS either NTFS or FAT32.

 

Indeed i should have done it the other way round ,new disk ,resize , put the data on.

I just restored the same image from vistape without your gui ,same result, also chkdsk.
I think i know the answer ,before restoring i disconnected my data disk , so maybe windows saw some missing file acsociations and ran chkdsk ?
Lin

 

No Joy !!

Still errors when booting...

The above is a screen capture of the DOS window...

I am going to reconfigure the virtual machine to use a NTFS partition for both and see what happens.

rrrh1 (arch 1)

 

I done a Dir (command) on drive a: and found run.exe is missing from the disk.

Tried an older version 0.98.0.0
run.exe is on the disk but it won't restore goes directly to a reboot countdown after saying the restore is completed.

Snapshot version:

1.38.0.13402

Just downloaded again.

rrrh1 (arch 1)