first defense questions

Hi

this product does seem interesting to me.

1. can someone show me some screenshots?

2. does it create the snapshots in windows?

3. once i have created a snapshot do i just press a certain button at bottime and it comes up with the first defence recovery menu? then i just click on the working snapshot and im backing and running?

thanks in advance
lodore

ps im not sure if i wanna trial it yet. i want to ask questions and see screenshots first.

 

Re: ffirst defence questions

sir you go to the site and you can view the movie provide to it.

 

Re: first defence questions

1. Too much work to take screenshots. Take a backup of your actual system partition as precaution, install FDISR and look at the screens. Each action is supported by wizards.

2. Yes, FDISR stores all its snapshots (max. 10) in Windows, usually on system partition [C:]

3. Yes, on reboot FDISR shows a splash screen with F1-key and pause bar, before Windows starts.
The F1-key shows a list of all available snapshots (max. 10) and you can reboot in any of these snapshots.
The absolute minimum = 2 snapshots : primary snapshot for daily work and secondary snapshot as a rollback snapshot,
in case something goes wrong in the primary snapshot.
The primary snapshot can also be the rollback-snapshot, while the secondary snapshot can be the working snapshot.
It doesn't matter because each snapshot is independent.

 

Re: first defence questions

The working concept of FDISR is to copy all the files of current state into a special protected folder, and optionally compress it using NTFS compression. When you choose to boot into a different snapshots, basically, the directory structures are altered in the way that all files of current state will go into another folder, and the directory structure of the files in the snapshot that you are going to boot are restored into the proper structure and you will be able to boot into the new snapshot with almost no significant boot delay.

An example to explain this will be:

At Current State, you have:
C:\abc.txt
C:\123\def.txt

When you take a snapshot, it is stored in:
C:\$ISR\0\abc.txt
C:\$ISR\0\123\def.txt

So, now you messed with your current state and it becomes:
C:\ghi.txt
C:\456\jkl.txt

At the boot screen, you choose to boot into the snapshot you took earlier, so the hard disk will look like this:
C:\abc.txt
C:\123\def.txt
C:\$ISR\1\ghi.txt
C:\$ISR\1\456\jkl.txt

This is my own observation of how the program works, and I welcome any Leapfrog personnel to correct my mistake if there is any

 

Re: first defence questions

Steve, I do not believe that the bootable snapshots are compressed in any way, they may be in a future version of FD. The snapshots may be smaller in size but that is because four files are NOT copied: the paging file, recycle bin, hibernate file, temp files. Like I have said many times in this forum, even the exceptions, with this excellent program, make sense.

Acadia

 

Re: first defence questions

I thought NTFS compressed folders/files are in BLUE.
I don't see any FDISR folder in BLUE, they are all black.
I could be wrong, but as a newbie+ I can make mistakes.

 

Re: first defence questions

Please read the manual of the latest FDISR from Leapfrog website. It is stated that:

Ability to create a compressed snapshot using NTFS file compression for a significantly smaller snapshot.

I tried to take a snapshot and it is actually compressed.

 

Re: first defence questions

If you are using the latest version yet you are able to see the blue colour, it is very obvious that either Windows is not protecting you from deleting system files or your system has been compromised

 

Re: first defence questions

Where did you get your FDISR ? From Leapfrog or from Raxco ?
Raxco doesn't resell the Leapfrog version until it is tested and approved.
And no my system isn't compromised and my FDISR is working properly since I bought it.
Afaik the Leapfrog version has compression, but that's NOT an official version for public use, that's a test version for resellers without support.

 

Re: first defence questions

I'm trialing the I18N build from leapfrog, and the $ISR snapshot subfolders aren't compressed, and fully writeable. Used the wizard to make the secondary snapshot.
My bad?

RE

 

Re: first defence questions

I thought the compression wasn't automatic, you have to specify it, but I'm not interested in the Leapfrog version and don't visit the website either. I can wait until Raxco announces the new version of FDISR.
I'm not saying that Leapfrog version is bad, I just don't work with non-official versions.
FDISR is supposed to save ME and I'm not supposed to save FDISR.

 

Re: first defence questions

Oh, ok, Steve, I didn't realize that you were using Leapfrog, they are one version ahead of Raxco.


Acadia

 

Re: first defence questions

Obviously that is not a test version.

http://www.leapfrogsoftware.com/product_info/first_defense/download/

If you are lazy to register, you can get the exactly same file here.

http://www.leapfrogsoftware.com/support_info/updates/

 

Re: first defence questions

Anyway, how come that everything be writeable under the snapshots folders?

RE

 

Re: first defence questions

I'm not sure which version you are using, but you can try the latest version from the link I provided. It is perfectly protecting the snapshot files. I even tried some brute force delete tools yet still cant delete it inside Windows.

Not really know what happened to your program, but you shouldnt be allowed to alter the snapshot or else that will have defeated the purpose of having snapshot.

 

Re: first defence questions

I do agree with you that software support is an essential part for a working solution. However, my personal preference has been to evaluate the quality of a software excluding its support. Because I do not like a poorly written software with a superior support service. Moreover, isnt the main purpose of using FDISR is to have immediate system recovery without tedious technical support? That's just my own opinion though

 

Re: first defence questions

I got an official version from another vendor. I don't know if this is ok to mention Raxco's competition here...
I18N is a prerequisite for me, and Raxco's latest version doesn't support it.
Cheers,

RE

 

Re: first defence questions

One thing is sure : Raxco doesn't seem to be in hurry to release a new version of FDISR. I hope the developer included some improvements of our wish-list.

 

Re: first defence questions

Could it be that I added special privilieges to my windows account? Like, those needed for system debugger and likes?
Or some service I disabled?
How are the snapshots files protected exactly?

RE

 

Re: first defence questions

The protection is similar to the protection of "System Volume Information" folder under your system root.

 

Re: first defence questions

How can I check that this mechanism is working properly on my box, without actually deleting important files of course?