EAZ-fix/Rollback RX and disk imaging

Discussion in 'backup, imaging & disk mgmt' started by wilbertnl, Aug 19, 2006.

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  1. wilbertnl

    wilbertnl Registered Member

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  2. Kapiti

    Kapiti Registered Member

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  3. Peter2150

    Peter2150 Global Moderator

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    I see in their knowledge base the same nonsense that Rollback had:

    Space


    1.a XP Restore backs up system files. It takes 10-20% of disk space.

    1.b EAZ-FIX does not backup files. It only takes 0.07% of drive space.

    That is a pure krock. By their measurement FDISR uses 0% of the hardrive.
     
  4. pvsurfer

    pvsurfer Registered Member

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    That's marketing for ya (LOL). Somewhere buried in their FAQ or KB they do fess-up to the fact that the .07% only refers to the snapshot indices and not the snapshots themselves. However, once you get past the sales hype, I'm pretty sure that 'snapshot for snapshot', RB still consumes quite a bit less space than FDISR.

    ~pv
     
  5. Peter2150

    Peter2150 Global Moderator

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    You are absolutely right. But by their marketing standard FDISR still uses 0:D
     
  6. wilbertnl

    wilbertnl Registered Member

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    I just now look closer at the messages on your screen.
    It appears that the OAK CDROM driver finds two CD/DVD drives and there things go wrong.
    The error messages don't seem to be related to SATA, but to not accessing the right CD/DVD drive.
     
  7. Kapiti

    Kapiti Registered Member

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    Thanks for the detective work Wilbert.

    I do have two DVD drives installed, any idea how to correct this problem?

    Just had a thought; Later to-day I'll retry EAZ-Clone and use different DVD drives.

    On one of the EAZ-FIX web sites, I came across this programme "AYGHOST" but can't download the programme, or the manual, from the site even though it shows a download path.

    http://www.k62.net/Products_CLONE.php#

    John.
     
  8. wilbertnl

    wilbertnl Registered Member

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    A quick fix in order to continue your test would be to disable one of the DVD drives in the bios of your system.
    Ayghost has a familiar look. :D
     
  9. Kapiti

    Kapiti Registered Member

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    Changed the DVD drive boot order in the BIOS, but on boot up using the AEZ-CLONE CD, still receive the same error message.

    Had another look at the error message and it points to A:\windows\ifshlp.sys as the file not found.

    Why would it be looking on A: when the boot up CD is in the DVD drive E: – Why is it looking in \windows\ for ifshlp.sys when the file is situated in the boot CD under makenet\bootdisk\ifshlp.sys?

    If you look again at the error screen I posted, you will notice that at the bottom it shows the A:\ prompt. Attempts to change the drives using the A:\ prompt are unsuccessful, just gives invalid drive error message. I can understand not seeing the two hard drives C: and D: because both are formatted NTFS, but can not understand why it shouldn’t see the DVD drive E.

    My next step was to boot up using a normal Windows 98 boot disk, but before booting I placed the CD with EAZ-Clone into my other DVD drive F: the boot disk complained about not see the two main drives (as expected), but allowed me to see the CD in the DVD drive.

    Once in the drive that contained EAZ-Clone I executed the Autorun.bat file and started the programme. Attempting to do a disk to image resulted in the error message “invalid drives” et cetera.

    Using a file manager to look at the EAZ-Clone CD I notice that there is in fact a manual but it deals with the operation, and not troubleshooting.
    There are also two batch files “autorun.bat and eazbat.bat” looking at these two files doesn’t indicate where the programme needs to look for ifshlp.sys, or what drives to look at on boot. Maybe there is a way to edit these files to point to the DVD drive at boot up, but I would require more information to do this (what commands to use).


    Wilbert, as mentioned before I have on intention of using EAZ-Clone (if TrueImage won’t work with RB I’m just not interested) but I would like to understand why it doesn’t work - my gut feeling is the problem lies either with my drives being SATA, or that the drives are formatted NTFS – Any further ideas?

    John.
     
  10. wilbertnl

    wilbertnl Registered Member

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    John,
    The CD has a boot area that acts like a floppy, when you boot from the CD it's normal that it represents itself as A: your existing floppy drive becomes B:. When you look at your own photo of the screen you notice the A:\> prompt. So far nothing wrong.
    I noticed the a:\windows\ifshelp.sys, but I forgot about it. That is definitely incorrect, according to my CD. The ifshelp.sys exists in a:\.

    When you boot from the eaz-clone CD, it expects to find the files in Z:\ and subfolders.

    Booting from a regular win98 floppy is a great idea. Even when you can't see the ntfs filesystems, I wonder if you can see the harddisks themselves. You can check that with fdisk. I you start fdisk and the disks are visible, that means that SATA is not the problem. Exit fdisk without making changes and you are fine. I hope that you can find fdisk on your win98 floppy or on the win98 CD.

    The message 'invalid drives' makes me think that the SATA drives are visible, otherwise perhaps no drive would show up. But I don't have experience with SATA. It is my understanding that if your SATA controller is initialized by the BIOS, it will be recognized by DOS.
    Since you have something that points to a:\windows\ifshelp.sys, I wonder if you have an older version of the EAZ-Clone CD?

    When you boot from the EAZclone CD, and copy a:\config.sys and a:\autoexec.bat to an empty floppy in B:, you will be able to send it to me. Then I can look closer at it.
     
  11. Kapiti

    Kapiti Registered Member

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    Fdisk see's the hard drive okay.

    Using the one you posted on this thread:-*

    I'll send them PM.

    Just as well I could still remember the old dos commands (at least the ones I needed to-day:-*

    John
     
  12. laqui

    laqui Registered Member

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    Hi.
    This is a couple of questions I asked the HDS support team and the reply I get to them:


    guest (Christian)
    2006-08-16 11:29:15 Hi.
    In which way the advance setting "GHOST=1" changes the behavior of Rollback?
    If, for example, I use Image for Windows within a BartPE environment, the image that I get, has all the snapshots or only the baseline?
    How can I get an image with all the snapshots?
    Thanks in advance.
    Christian.
    Andrew Shen
    2006-08-16 11:43:11 Rollback provides protection by monitoring and tracking hard disk sectors, sectors used by one snapshot do not appear as used in another snapshot. To get an image with all the snapshots, you would have to image the drive with sector by sector option.
    Ghost=1 option allows you to image the drive within a snapshot. For example, you want to image the snapshot 5, you would first restore to the snapshot 5. Press HOME to enter subsytem console, run "ghost=1", select Boot from floppy to go to command prompt, image the disk. The image will contain the data from snapshot 5. Thank you.


    Bye.
     
  13. Kapiti

    Kapiti Registered Member

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    Before installing EAZ-FIX I attempted to use EAZ-Clone as a standalone product and had problems getting the software to work with my setup (see message #16). The problem was not with the SATA drives as I first thought, but the software’s inability to boot while two DVD drives are installed.
    I tried this out on another computer that had very similar hardware, but only one DVD drive installed and things worked okay. I physically removed one of the drives from my machine and things worked in as much as the boot disk didn’t start with an error message, but still didn’t recognise my NTFS drive for destination purposes.
    Wilbert, came up with a number of suggestions, and modifying his suggestions slightly, I’ve been able make, verify, and hopefully restore using EAZ-Clone. I achieved this by partitioning my external eSATA drive making a Fat32 partition; EAZ-Clone can now see the Fat32 partition and I can backup an image to this partition.
    The full procedure used is:
    1. Press home when Subsystem Console starts.
    2. Go to “boot with floppy” section.
    3. Use a Windows 98 with CD support boot disk.
    4. Place EAZ-Clone CD into the DVD drive and change from the A: prompt to the DVD drive.
    5. Start Autorun.bat.
    6. Highlight the drive to be imaged.
    7. Highlight the destination drive.
    8. Start the process.

    To backup 7.59GB took 6 minutes (no compression).
    To verify the image took 2 minutes.
    Haven’t had the nerve to restore yet, still plucking up courage.

    Which brings me to the point – would I use EAZ-Clone for backing up images? If I can successfully use TrueImage there is no way I would use EC on a regular basis, the problem is, will TrueImage work successfully with EF?

    Before I installed EF I tried out RollBack Rx and using TrueImage made an image from within Windows. I restored the image from within Windows while RollBack was still active, and the restore completed with errors. However, Windows booted okay and as far as I could ascertain everything worked okay.
    I know that PVSurfer backs up from within Windows while RB is active, using TrueImage, but looking back though previous postings I can’t find any posting where he mentions restoring the image using TrueImage while RB is active?

    If you read this PVSurfer, would you be kind enough to go though the procedure (step by step) that you use backing up, and restoring, with TrueImage when using RB.

    John.
     
  14. Peter2150

    Peter2150 Global Moderator

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    John

    I sure hope you don't consider this to be a viable long term approach. To me what you went thru is totally unacceptable. There are to many other approaches where the software just works without all this mucking about.

    Pete
     
  15. Kapiti

    Kapiti Registered Member

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    Hello Peter,

    Thought I made it clear that I didn't intend to use this as long term, or even a short term approach as long as I can use TrueImage without problems.

    Not sure I understand what you mean by "other approaches where the software just works" could you elaborate a little more please.

    John.
     
  16. ErikAlbert

    ErikAlbert Registered Member

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    I'm using
    - Acronis True Image Home
    - FirstDefense-ISR
    - PerfectDisk
    for 5-6 months now without any problems and without mucking or workarounds of any kind. I use all three softwares in a normal way and my backups/restorations of system and data partition are exactly the same, only the source and destination is different.
    In the last three days, I tested several encryption softwares and I did 3 x 2 restorations (system and data partition) in total to remove all traces of these encryption softwares.
    Each time I had my FDISR-Pre-boot Screen and my 4 snapshots back and FDISR booted automatically in the right snapshot.
    That is an example of "another approach". :)
     
  17. wilbertnl

    wilbertnl Registered Member

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    John,
    Your procedure proves that there are basically no technical obstacles with your system and eazClone.
    The only problem is that the present start routine on the eazClone CD can't handle two DVD drives.
    Since you don't intent to use the network features of eazClone, you could actually live without the eazClone CD. Just copy eazClone.exe and eazClone.res to the FAT32 partition and after you boot from the win98 floppy, change to C:, from where you start eazClone.exe.
    Oh, you might want to copy and load mouse.exe too.

    What I'm trying to say is that you can work around the twin-DVD drives problem without making changes to your hardware setup.
    (I understand that TrueImage is your solution of choice, I'm just giving you a suggestion, because to my experience eazClone makes reliable images of all the eazFiz snapshots)
     
  18. Kapiti

    Kapiti Registered Member

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    Hello ErikAlbert,

    The difference is I'm not using FDISR, I'm using EAZ-FIX. There has been mention that TrueImage will not work with either RollBack Rx or EAZ-FIX hence the try out of EAZ-Clone.
    I notice that you can use Perfect Disk with FDISR. I attempted to use Norton's Speed Disk to-day but after half an hour of no action I aborted the procedure. Obversely there are differences between FDISR and EAZ-FIX so it seems pointless to think that because a programme will work with one, it will also work with the other:-*

    John
     
  19. Kapiti

    Kapiti Registered Member

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    Hello Wilbert,

    Thanks for your continued help - Can't find the file eazclone.res on the CD, are you sure that's the correct spelling?

    John.
     
  20. wilbertnl

    wilbertnl Registered Member

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    Oops :doubt: , I should have verified it first... Eazhighc.res.
     
  21. Kapiti

    Kapiti Registered Member

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    Thanks Wilbert,

    I'm enjoying EAZ-FIX and pleased that I can make an image using EAZ-Clone, at least now I have a means to make an image in the event that TrueImage has a problem restoring:-*

    John
     
  22. wilbertnl

    wilbertnl Registered Member

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    Hello John,
    When you feel comfortable that the eazClone image on your eSATA partition is reliable, then you will also feel more comfortable with putting the teamwork between TrueImage and eazFix to the test. I created a snapshot tree and watched how TrueImage was restoring that. Checking that by switching to each and every snapshot.
    And you can do the same with a single baseline setup.

    Because disaster is only a different word for unexpected. ;)
     
  23. ErikAlbert

    ErikAlbert Registered Member

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    FDISR can work with any defragmenter, as long the defragmenter allows to exclude folders, like the $ISR-folder.
    PerfectDisk automatically excludes this $ISR-folder, because PerfectDisk and FDISR are made by the same company.

    I've used Norton Defragmenter in the past and its the worst defragmenter, I've ever seen.
    It takes a very long time to defragment a harddisk with Norton.
    After the first defragmentation, I rebooted my computer and defragmented my harddisk again with Norton right after reboot.
    I thought, Norton would remember its first defragmentation, but it started all over again.
    I never had that experience with PerfectDisk or Windows Defragmenter.

    According pvsurfer RollbackRx and True Image work together, but there seems to be a difference between the Acronis Recovery CD and True Image under Windows.
    A restoration with Acronis Recovery CD makes your computer always boot in the baseline snapshot.

    Terabyte IFW/IFD and FDISR seems to work also according Peter.

    It doesn't matter to me what kind of combination you will use in the future, but I like to know if the combination works normally or not.
    I always like to have one or more combinations in reserve, if my combination doesn't work anymore. :)
     
  24. Kapiti

    Kapiti Registered Member

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    Hello Wilbert,

    Your little work around saved a step and worked well. The more I use EAZ-Clone the more I like it. The create, and verify take about the same time as TrueImage, though the restore is much slower (26 minutes to restore). Hopefully this should improve once your ideas are implemented in the new version.

    In regards the steps taken to make, or restore an image, they are no more than the steps needed to make, or restore an image using TrueImage.

    Didn't bother with the mouse option the keyboard worked just fine:-*

    John
     
  25. Peter2150

    Peter2150 Global Moderator

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    Sure. I have a 2 dvd system that is also Raid 0. I use FDISR for a "rollback" type of recovery program and image with IFD/IFW straight out of the box. No scratching my left ear with my right hand to make it work.

    Pete

    PS Erik uses ATI like you do, same concept.
     
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