FirstDefense-ISR Versus Acronis TI

I read some of the threads in the paragraph "FirstDefense-ISR" above in this forum and wondered if this program is not similar to the Secured Zone of Acronis TI
If so why this program has so much appreciations (compared to TI which seems to have more features)?
Where is it possible to see a manual of this program?

 

They have nothing in common.
FD-ISR is more similar to the Acronis OS Selector (Installing another Windows on the same partition option).
In fact FD-ISR is a multiboot, an OS backup and an instant recovery program. No other application comes even close to the possibilities offered by FD-ISR.


Panagiotis

 

Yes,Good ol FDISR is like a twinkling STAR in the otherwise dark universe.
Other similar applications are more like fireflies confronting the sun.
It was/is one of a kind (happy to have FDISR on all my rigs),a really white raven in this gloomy cyberworld. Thanks Todd for his creativity to bring this jewel to us.

 

FirstDefense-ISR allows a person to make up to ten regular snapshots of a PC's C drive and to store them on the C drive. An unlimited number of archive snapshots may be stored on a different hard drive. To switch from your current to a different snapshot, all you have to do is reboot your PC and select which snapshot you want your system to start up in. The process of switching snapshots is much faster than restoring an image using ATI or similar backup imaging programs. Unlike imaging software, however, FD-ISR only protects your C drive. A person can't reboot directly into an archive snapshot; an archive snapshot would have to be copied onto a regular snapshot and that snapshot selected after restarting.

Besides protecting your C drive in case of some disaster, FD-ISR is great for testing software. You can trial multiple antivirus programs in backup snapshots, experiment with registry cleaners, evaluate new programs, etc. without exposing your primary snapshot to any risk. Used properly, FD-ISR is the ultimate uninstaller as you can install and test as many programs as you want in a snapshot and then simply remove or copy over it and all traces are gone as if they'd never existed.

IMHO, there is no more valuable program than FD-ISR. It's a Crime Against Humanity that the full version of FD-ISR is no longer available for purchase, just a stripped down version (FD-ISR Rescue) which only allows a single regular snapshot and no archive snapshots.

The closest thing to a "manual" I'm aware of is FD-ISR's help file which is available as a 60-page PDF.

 

Well complimented and true.

Nothing is more revolutionized Windows the way good ole FD-ISR did even if it was only available for a short while.

I too, still keep it on a lot of my rigs, it just can't be defeated, IT'S LEGENDARY PERIOD!

#1 to LEAPFROG & Todd!

 

You know every time I see you guys/gals discussing Firstdefense-ISR I wish I had been paying attention. Because if I had it would be on my PC right now. I would purchase this software in a heartbeat. To bad it can't be put back on the open market for 30 days or some thing.

Instead all that is offered is a stripped down version. Well don't I feel special. Not!

 

How does the original full version differ from the stripped down one? Also, what was it called specifically (version name and number please)?

 

You can say that again. I brushed it off at first as just another hype app but Peter2150 with the notorious assistance of Eric Albert kept tooting out their horn over it so often i had to take a peep anyway, then brushed it off again. Then i got a PM from member Dallen with a simple question if i had looked into FD-ISR.

Well, that did it, i read so many Pete & Eric posts and followed all the rave reviews so often i gave in and man alive, i really hit paydirt and understand now why they flailed away so often over this MAGNIFICIENT ISR.

It literally changed my entire outlook and behavior plus security in how i approached windows in using this ISR and to this very day couldn't be more grateful for this lump of Gold fashioned by LEAPFROG!

I could never bring myself that any developer could actually form a method to add 10 different systems on a single disk let alone save the archives off-disk for later use. Heck, it eventually became my most trustworthy imaging app

EASTER

 

If there was ever a program I'd happily pay an annual maintenance/support fee for it's FD-ISR.

What, I didn't give a decent summary of the two in my previous post?

Leapfrog Software (Todd) is the developer. The same core program was marketed by three different resellers under three different names. The most common was FirstDefense-ISR sold by Raxco. The version sold by Software Pursuits was called Bootback. I forget the name of the third one.

 

bgoodman4, Skytrooper gives a good explanation in the quote below.

FirstDefense-ISR Rescue stripped version.

Leapfrog site for Firstdefense-ISR.

FirstDefense-ISR Forum.

Any body out there want to sell me your Firstdense-ISR. I'll pay a reasonable price for a used second hand product.

 

Will you offer $1,000.00 for this ? Remember this is a gem and some won't even sell you for $10,000

 

Now now now. This is a used product. I would not go a cent over $999.99.

 

Sorry but as I read this its a description of the original program with no reference to how it differs from the stripped down version. I guess if I had been less lazy I would have just gone to the publishers website and taken a look at what the current stripped down version offers.....which is what I will do now.

EDIT: I just watched a video on the Leapfrog website and it seems to me to be what you described above. Sounds awesome by the way. Mind you there was no mention of you being able to store snaps on external media. Is this whats changed? Just curious since the original version is no longer available. Also (and I think this was mentioned before somewhere but I would rather not have to search for it) is this program compatible with programs like GoBack and RollBack Rx and would a ATI image of the c: drive backup the snapshots it has created? If not an image of the C: drive would a sector by sector image do the job. Personally I would like an auto snap feature but this program does sound awesome.

 

This paragraph bgoodman4.

 

Sorry, I was looking at the publishers website and then editing my post above while you posted the comment (but I clearly did miss the sentence you highlighted).

In the video it definitely shows a number of different snapshots (up to 10) that can be saved so I guess the difference is the ability to store snapshots on external media. If this is the case it would appear that my question in the edited post immediately above (and reproduced below) is no. Is this correct?

 

I'm glad someone is paying attention.

Archive snapshots can't be stored on a C drive, only regular snapshots. I store some archive snapshots on a second internal hard drive and others on an external drive (you can't be too careful). The full version of FD-ISR allows you to have an unlimited (IIRC) number of archive snapshots and up to ten regular snapshots; there's been no change. The FD-ISR Rescue version has only a single regular and no archive snapshots. You can switch from your designated archive locations by opening FD-ISR and going to Tools > Options > Archives.

I believe Peter2150 once experimented with FD-ISR and Rollback Rx installed on the same PC and had them working OK for awhile. Other than for the sake of pure experimentation, I'd regard installing both on the same PC as a Really Bad Idea. While they're both ISR programs, they function using drastically different methods. IMHO, Rollback Rx has a couple advantages over FD-ISR but, overall, Rollback Rx has so many negative points I decided not to fiddle with it even though I had a free license.

From my personal experience, ATI, Paragon, and Macrium Reflect all make perfect backup images including regular FD-ISR snapshots. I suspect that's true with any imaging program.

FD-ISR is awesome. You might want to write that down.

 

You could store as many snapshots as you wanted to external media plus the 10 snapshots on C:drive.

As to being compatible with goback, rollback rx, and to whether ATI would image the snapshots I could not say. I was on 98Se with goback installed when it first came out and did not think I would need it. Silly me.

By the time I got XP and realized goback did not play nice with it, at least on my system, Firstdefense-ISR was off the market.

 

I just bought a RollBack licence so I hope I have not made a mistake doing so. Like many programs there are folks who swear by them and others who swear at them. Supposedly ATI 11 is very buggy but it has worked flawlessly for me. Only time will tell if Rx is good for me or not. C'est la vie.

I will take your suggestion regarding RollBack and FD very seriously and will not try them on the same PC. If I have problems with Rx I will give FD a try but I hope thats not nec. Would be nice to have the multiple systems thing though. Thanks for the info Skytrooper.

EDIT: As if proof were needed re the swear by or swear at thing - GoBack has been fine on my XP systems (3 dif PCs over the years) and it was not fine for Basic. I guess the only way to be sure is to try it (whatever it may be) and keep your fingers crossed. Oh ya, and backup frequently, especially just before you install some new program.

 

It's times like this I feel so lucky to have bought this awesome bit of software. I read many of Peter2150's, Easter's and Eric Albert's posts and had to try it out. I never looked back. I hope one day, someone will have the initiative to develop a similar product, but I think it'll be a long time. I know many of us go on about it being the best piece of software ever, but I feel for once it is justified. I think in a few years we'll look back and say, 'It was a great bit of innovation that has never been replicated.'

I think I'll just gaze lovingly at the icon in the system tray for a while.......I might even send it a Velntine's card today

 

Maybe we should start a petition and try to get Leapfrog to resurrect the program. If its as good as you say it should be a big seller.

I am still not clear as to why the original was so different from the current version. If the major dif is the ability to store snaps on external media and you can accomplish this using imaging programs then the current version should be quite sufficient, especially since anyone with the smarts to have a program like this is also very likely to have an imaging program as well. I had looked at the program sometime during the last month or so and rejected it I think because it did not take scheduled snaps. RollBack does so I went that route. Are FDs snaps much larger than Rxs? Is that why there is no schedule set up available? Seems to me like it would be a basic feature for any imaging rollback type program. Mind you if you have snaps of multiple systems there might be a problem with a schedule. I am a bit confused how this works. Do you setup a system, take a snap of it. Change the system to some other configuration, say for gaming, take a 2nd snap, change it again,,,,etc. If so I could see where there are no incremental snaps and thus no need for a schedule. Is this correct?

PS: the valentines card comment made me smile. Thanks

 

Here are the advantages Rollback Rx has over FD-ISR (IMHO): It only takes a few seconds to create a snapshot. How long it takes to create/update a FD-ISR snapshot depends on how much C drive space is filled and the speed of your processor. On my PCs it takes around 30 minutes or so to create a new regular snapshot and several minutes to copy/update an existing one. Archive snapshots stored on an external hard drive will take longer if connected by a USB or firewire cable.

By their ... ah, peculiar ... nature, Rollback Rx snapshots take up extremely little space so thousands may be stored for use. Compared to Rollback Rx, FD-ISR snapshots are huge. Snapshots on my Vista PC are currently around 23.5 GB in size; my XP snapshots are around 13.5 GB. If you rely heavily on archive snapshots, you can get by with a single regular snapshot; I usually have two regular snapshots. Since they're stored on your C drive, they occupy space there; this increases the size of your backup images if you use backup imaging software. If all your hard drives are extremely large, this is no big deal. If not, maintaining a bunch of regular snapshots and numerous backup images and/or archive snapshots could be a factor.

Here are some of Rollback Rx's disadvantages in my non-expert opinion:

If you want to use backup imaging software along with Rollback Rx on your PC, you're stuck with the one integral to Rollback Rx (which I understand won't even be present on the about-to-be released version). That's nearly a dealer breaker for me.

You have to use Rollback Rx's defragmentation utility. As far as I know, you may use any defragmentation program with FD-ISR installed. The reason why you're limited to Rollback Rx's utilities is due to the radically different nature of Rollback Rx's snapshots compared to FD-ISR's. FD-ISR snapshots are akin to backup images; you can locate the regular ones on your C drive and transfer archive snapshots around like they were regular files. Rollback Rx snapshots are so different in nature to FD-ISR's that the term snapshot or image scarcely applies. With FD-ISR, you may use whatever backup imaging software you want, even multiple imaging programs, without any conflict.

I may be wrong, but I don't think Rollback Rx snapshots can be stored on anything other than your primary hard drive. Some folks on Wilders have claimed FD-ISR can't restore a PC in the event of a hard drive failure; imaging software would be required. Perhaps that's true for people who divide their hard drive into a bunch of partitions. My PCs are both HP Pavilion desktops. The primary hard drive consists of a C partition and a much smaller D partition which contains HP's recovery feature.

If I suffered a complete hard drive failure, here's how I could restore my system using FD-ISR: I'd replace the dead hard drive with a new one. Then I'd use my HP Recovery DVDs (which contain the same files stored on the D partition) to transform the new drive to the same condition the old one was in when it left the factory. Next, I'd install FD-ISR and create a regular snapshot (let's call it Alternate). Then I'd copy my latest archive snapshot onto the Alternate snapshot. After rebooting, I'd switch from my Primary to the Alternate snapshot. Done. My system would be back to the state it was in prior to the hard drive failure, assuming the archive snapshot had been kept current. I don't think a person can do this with Rollback Rx.

I seriously think having Rollback Rx and FD-ISR on the same PC would likely constitute a Disaster Waiting to Happen.

It sure would. If you ever do try and run both ISR programs on the same PC, please get back to us with the results.

Don't tell RAD & Company. They get really annoyed when ATI actually works.

I'm not sure if you're fuzzy about the differences between them or why the full version of FD-ISR is no longer available. FD-ISR Rescue only allows you to have a single regular snapshot and no archives. If this is the only system (actually C drive) backup on your PC, you're out of luck if your hard drive fails. Also, a single regular snapshot limits you to restoring your C drive to just one point in time. I like to have at least two regular snapshots and a few archives. This allows me to maintain snapshots made on different dates and greatly increases my ability to use snapshots for experimenting with other software, plus allowing me protection in case my primary drive fails. While still useful, FD-ISR Rescue is a pale imitation of the genuine, full FD-ISR.

As to why it's no longer available, I'm not sure Leapfrog Software ever issued an official, detailed explanation. As Peter2150 mentioned, sales evidently weren't sufficient to offset support costs. Each of the resellers had their own support team and it's possible Raxco and the other two companies didn't think FD-ISR/Bootback/et al. sales were high enough. While FD-ISR was, and is, deservedly popular (nay, beloved) with its users, word of its greatness apparently never reached the unwashed masses of PC owners. I have a hunch what another reason was but I'll keep it to myself since I suspect a moderator would quickly delete it.

Since FD-ISR Rescue is so limited in functions compared to the original, presumably the support costs are minimal. I hope this information helps you.

 

I'm pretty sure that Leapfrog are aware of the following FD-ISR had here at Wilders and I'm sure many of us pleaded for anyone who would listen for the program to remain in development. But it might well be worth a try if enough people want to try it again?

I do kind of agree with you here and I'm probably not the one to give you the best technical answer - I'll leave that to Peter2150 or Easter if they are around - but the original version would store up to 10 different snapshots whereas the latest version only stores one if I remember correctly (and no archives?). So although this seems a great idea, in theory it kind of defeats one of the beauties of the program. For me, what makes FD-ISR so awesome is the ability to have different snapshots for different scenarios. I used to have one snapshot for gaming, for example, so it had barely any software installed but tweaks for games. On another I had no security apps installed so I could use it to test security software. And, of course, I had my working, or current, snapshot. I could boot into whichever one I wanted and know it was independent of the other, therefore if I installed some security software and it didn't work well with my configuration I could boot into my working snapshot, copy a clean snapshot over the one I'd just used and bang! - brand new clean snapshot to try a different setup. You can't do this with an imaging program (that I am aware). I do use imaging software, too, but restoring an image takes longer than restoring a snapshot, and it compliments FD-ISR beautifully.

Yes, they are larger and take much longer to create - however, they are quick to restore. Not sure if they are quicker as I never used Rollback for long and each time I did, I had problems losing snapshots and corrupted snapshots - never with FD-ISR.

Yes - each time you take a snapshot it takes the entire drive - not just the changes. This obviously causes larger files (which can be compressed into archives), but if you have the space it's ok.

I'm not sure if I've answered your questions well enough and I'm sure others will add more detailed and better answers, but I hope I've helped in some way.

Always glad to make someone smile

 

Incredibly larger; like comparing a planet to an electron.

The full version of FD-ISR has a scheduler. It's located on the GUI between Actions and View. Having said that, the one time I attempted to schedule a snapshot, it didn't work at all. I mentioned this to Raxco support as I was working with them ("them" being one Raxco employee who essentially served as an intermediary between Todd and myself) on some FD-ISR bugs I was experiencing. A new version was eventually released which fixed my non-scheduler problems. Raxco never got back to me on the scheduling failure and I never followed up because I decided scheduling FD-ISR snapshots is a bad idea. Here's why:

At the conclusion of creating or updating a snapshot, there's a window which gives you some information; the most important detail IMHO is whether any errors are present in the snapshot. Actually, there are two places on this window where errors are reported; it's not unusual for one place to say zero errors and the other to display some. Plus, you can access the activity log which will detail any errors (and it can be a laborious task locating them). I've never had any problem with any backup image made by any imaging software I've used so I've come to rely on scheduled backup images. I've lost count of how many FD-ISR snapshots I've seen reported with errors.

If a person can get their FD-ISR to successfully create scheduled snapshots, the only way they'll know if there are or aren't errors present would be to check the activity log. I prefer manually creating each snapshot so I can immediately notice if there's any errors and try to determine the cause.

Some types of security software have to be disabled when creating snapshots or errors will occur since these programs deny FD-ISR access to certain files. ProcessGuard is just one example. A person can hardly use a snapshot scheduler if someone has to be present to temporarily disable one or more programs before running FD-ISR.

As I posted months ago in the FD-ISR subforum, I'm one of the people whose PCs have a conflict between FD-ISR and NIS 2009. Some other members had the same problem; other FD-ISR/NIS 2009 users didn't. By monitoring my snapshots' creation, I discovered this issue in time to save me from purchasing a NIS 2009 license.

When Microsoft released its monthly Windows updates in January, there was a big one for NET Framework 3.5. As soon as that update installed on my two PCs, I was unable to copy/update existing snapshots without getting four errors. When I created entirely new snapshots, regular and archive, no errors occurred. That was the only time a Windows update had this effect, but I wouldn't have noticed it (at least on a timely basis) if I relied on scheduled snapshots.

 

As I understand it if you want to avoid having to "fix" the MBR when restoring you need to use the RollBack imager but you can still use 3rd party backup programs. NO snapshots will be saved unless you do a sector by sector back up but if you are not concerned with this you can restore the PC to whatever state it was in when you imaged the drive. This issue gave me a lot of headaches until I finally got a reply I could understand. (Thanks Chris)

Yes, thats a shame but I can live with it if my system is protected in the manner I want it to be.

As noted (but I have not tried it) if you do sector by sector backups you do get to save the snapshots. At least thats what I was told somewhere on this forum.

Very slick, great workaround for sure.

I am not the adventurous kind, unless I know I have a reasonable chance of success I won't try it. Life is complicated enough without looking for trouble.

So I have noticed

Definitely and thanks.