I Would Use RollBackRx pro Now But...

Pete,

No, I did not at the time becuase I just wanted to see the size and time stats. Also, when I enabled the advanced option of includ free space, I noted the text that said it would include all sectors of the volume. Anyway, next time I do this will try to restore and see but sounds promising at least.

Also again did not have Rollback installed.

Gary

 

Graham, when you return I would appreciate clarification on the above quoted paragraph...

Have you actually determined that it is necessary to delete and wipe the old partition before restoring? ...and what do you use to delete and wipe it?

You say that you restore the MBR first... Why isn't it good enough to just simply restore the entire partition (with the Maintenance Mode image)?

Thanks, pv

 

Have a read through this thread again and you will see the learning curve I went through to come to these conclusions .

I guess it must be to do with the way RB retains the data but I found that unless the partition was wiped (I use Acronis Disk Director, btw) then the previous installation could crop up in unexpected ways.

As far as the MBR is concerned, Drive Snapshot doesn't automatically restore the MBR and so I normally do that first. Kenjin kindly enlightened me that I could do this in the DS GUI by right-clicking on the drive in the DS display to get a context-sensitive menu.

Graham

 

To all,

Have been to the edge and back I think? Generally followed Graham's procedure and created an image that appears to have retained my RBRx snapshots. here's what I did and thanks again Graham.

1. Installed RBRx Pro 7.2.1 and created 3 locked snapshots and there were 5 snapshots created by the program - total of 8.

2. Took a screenshot of the Snapshot management widow and filed on my separate data partition so I could compare what I saw in the preboot and the Windows GUI after the hopeful restore.

3. Rebooted to ShadowProtect Recovery CD and took an image of my C system partition with the option Include Free Space selected under advanced options, copies all sectors of partition.

Took about 14 minutes to do 8.4 GB sized image to external USB HDD.

4. Booted with BING CD and deleted partition with some adventures there. Checked the Wipe Partition option but did not check the Clear Boot Sector option.

5. Rebooted to ShadowProtect recovery CD and restored the image, right-clicking the free space and telling it to make exact primary partition.

Took about 7:30 to restore.

6. Rebooted and held breath and stopped by the RBRx preboot and checked that there were 8 snapshots shown. Exited and proceeded to Windows.

7. When in Windows, open RBRx and saw 8 snapshotes with exact properties of my screenshot I had take before.

Will continue to monitor the satability fo my computer but that is enough adventure for now. Hope this helps someone out there and thanks again Graham. yes it takes time but it is like restored 3 different images or even more depending on snapshots. Outstanding!

Gary

 

Pete,

Used space 7.17 GB
Free space 6.49 GB

Image size 8.34 GB

These stats for my C drive containing Windows and programs. Data in other partitions that will be imaged as normal and defragged by PD as normal. Hope this helps.

Gary

 

Pete,

Used space 7.17 GB
Free space 6.49 GB

Image size 8.34 GB

These stats for my C drive containing Windows and programs. Data in other partitions that will be imaged as normal and defragged by PD as normal. Hope this helps.

Gary

 

Who says that space is the final frontier......they've obviously never imaged their drive.

Well done doing that and it is good to confirm that other software can be used for the imaging.

You are probably fine not restoring the MBR so long as you are replacing like with like. If you were going from an image that didn't have RB installed to one that did then restoring the MBR would certainly be necessary but it is quick enough to do.

One thing which came out of the other thread on this is that (with Drive Snapshot at least), if free sectors have data written to them and that data is then deleted, DS will still see those sectors as used and will back them up regardless.

This means that if you fill up your C drive with stuff, even temporarily, then the complete image will contain most of your drive from there on. As I say, this is the case with DS but may not be so with other software. This is not a problem for me as I keep my C drive fairly small.

Anyway, well done again!

Graham

 

Graham,

Again, thanks for the work on this. For clarification, I did restore the MBr and first tract of the drive on the restoring of the image. But, in BING when wiping partition, I did not check the clear boot sector option. I will have to look that one up and see what that means. Was sort of afraid to do that. But I think I fooled with the partition enough that it did not show up as partition anymore for sure. Thanks again to all.

Gary

 

This is from the BootIt NG manual. I chose the Wipe Partition option when deleting and left Clear Boot Sector unchecked so I guess it owrked to clear all sectors.

Delete a partition or volume
1 On the desktop, click Partition Work.
2 In the Partitions list, select the partition or volume that you want to delete, and then click
Delete under Actions.
3 In the Confirm Delete dialog box, you may complete these optional tasks (that cannot be
undeleted or reversed):
• To clear several boot sectors at the beginning of the partition, select the Clear Boot
Sector check box.
• To clear all sectors in the partition with zeros, select the Wipe Partition check box.

Gary

 

After I posted that, I thought.....nah, that's not the exciting bit.

Graham

 

Regarding the large size of these all sector images, size is kept down also by splitting data into other partitions, keeping the system drive fairly small. Don't want to get off into a partitioning discussion but having multiple partitions does give the side benefit of not having to image a large amount of free space sectors from one partition.

I have nothing against having one partition but just referring to all sectors image sizes here.

Gary

 

This is interesting. From what I'm reading here, it seems that both DS and PS are capable of compressing a raw image, whereas TI and Paragon will not compress a raw image!

It also seems that a raw image created by just about any disk-imaging program will capture all RB snapshots, but the restore process requires wiping the target disk before restoring, and depending on the program, an MBR repair and reinstallation of RB may also be required.

Do I have that right?

 

Jo Ann,

When I restored with ShadowProtect, I had wiped the partition with BING previously and then along with the image I restored the MBR and track 0 on disk. I did not have to reinstall Rollback at all. It was all there in preboot and in Windows, completely fuunctional and activated as it had been before I started the process.

I beleive it has been pointed out before that raw images do work but some programs seem to handle sizing them differently.

Gary

 

Yes, that seems to be the case.

 

The next restore I do Pete, I will remember that and test that one out. Sounds good and gets me down to just a Recovery CD which is great. Thanks for that.

Also looking forward to SP 3 down the road and what it will bring.

Gary

 

Does that definitely wipe the partition? I only ask as I found that deleting the partition in Acronis Disk Director and re-creating it does not, which is why I ended up using the wipe facility.

Graham

 

As Gary has said, there's no need to re-install RB. The MBR restore may not be necessary under all situations. For example, if you are writing back an earlier image of the RB you've just wiped then it shouldn't be necessary. However, as restoring the MBR is only a 10 second operation then it seems worth doing anyway to make sure you've got the right one for the image.

Graham

 

Graham, do you mean wriiting zeros to all sectors of the partition?

Gary

 

I don't have a definition for it, it's just something I get Disk Director to do.

However, according to the Acronis manual:

"Wiping unallocated disk space means multiple writing of special data to hard disk sectors. Acronis Disk Director Suite features a rather simple wiping algorithm. During each pass, a symbol sequence or logical zeroes (0x00) or ones (0xFF) is written to unallocated space sectors. Only logical zeroes are written during the last pass. The more passes performed, the more complete the wiping will be."

As I only ever do one pass and the last pass is always zeros, then I guess that wiping, in this case, equates to zeroing the disk (or that section of it).

If I just select the normal 'delete' operation then it happens almost immediately and I guess just updates the partition table without erasing any data.

Having read up on it, it now seems that way.


Graham

 

Thanks for the info. No, the issue is with restoring images of RB over previous RB installations. If the partition isn't 'wiped' it seems that RB can get confused with the previous install. I had the situation where I deleted a RB partition which had 5 snapshots and then restored an image where there should have been only the one. On rebooting, there were the previous five snapshots showing. I couldn't boot into any of them but it was a bit of a surprise to see them.

Graham