Image for Windows PHYLock taking 10minutes

MudCrab,

I did uninstall and reinstall PHYLock. No help.

I don't think it wrote a log but I'll check when my wife finishes watching the current movie.

 

I uninstalled and installed the latest IFW. No change.

There were a log entries for each PHYLock failure....

Deleting incomplete or failed backup.
Operation Completed with Error Code 68
Stop

 

Can you post the log or send me a PM or email with it?

 

Done.

 

So much good points in this Thread. Need to look deeper in this unfortunately don't have the time right now.

For now just:

@Pandlouk: Honestly i don't know what Mainboard i do have. It's an Acer Travelmate Notebook. Sisoft says "Tavelmate" but that's of course not really it. I attached you 2 pictures of the mainboard i took when i replaced cooling liquid (in case you are interested).

@puff-m-d: Thanks for this very sharp and thoughtfull analysis.
@mudcrab: thanks for the info too...

https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=224CFD7E5EA518EB!361&authkey=!AB0zEwxbjwU-QM0
https://skydrive.live.com/redir?resid=224CFD7E5EA518EB!362&authkey=!ADHHgCxwZ6YJWtY

 

If you are on version 2.82 just use vss, it will produce the same image with phylock without excluding any files (unless you use the /uftnb /uftns options).

Panagiotis

 

Did ver 2.81 and earlier exclude files when using VSS?

 

2.79 and earlier did.
For 2.80-81 I don't know because I skipped them but probably yes.

Panagiotis

 

VSS must be omitting other files compared with PHYLock.

I did a series of differential images, VSS alternating with PHYLock. The VSS images were always around 40 MB smaller than the PHYLock images. No VSS exclusions selected. Any idea why?

 

Maybe PHYLock includes a shadow file (vss excludes them by default); shadow files are placed inside "System Volume Information". You can mount the two images and use DiffMerge to compare their directory trees.

Panagiotis

 

Panagiotis,

I found DiffMerge overwhelming but one example I found was the C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution folder. The VSS image showed this folder to contain 10 folders and 1 file. The PHYLock image showed this folder to contain 10 folders and 10 files.


Edit.... The VSS image showed the same C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution folder whether the two Exclusions were selected or not.

 

That VSS images contain the same files in C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution with the feature enabled or disabled is to be expected in some cases because "filesnottosnapshot" is on a best-effort basis function (it will try to exclude those files but not always can succeed), this is why I wrote earlier that is better used in combination with the "filesnottobackup" key so those files will be deleted after the restore.
For verifying if it really works put 3-4 files, each of 50mb or larger, inside that folder and test it again.

The fact that PHYLock and VSS (with the option /uftns dsabled) images produce different results (for that folder) could mean that there is a bug in ifw.

Panagiotis

 

I put 3 files (larger than 50 MB) in the C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution folder.

The PHYLock image contained the files. Neither VSS image contained the files.

 

Then it is a bug in the new options of ifw.

Panagiotis

 

Brian,

version 2.82a stills suffer from the same or is it fixed?

Panagiotis

 

Panagiotis,

The same. David and I are exchanging emails.

 

The images created with VSS work fine. No problems with restoring. I'm just trying to understand the various VSS Options.

 

check your pm. The correct description of those settings is the one of the help file

Consider them as an enhanced exclusion of vss. Similar to the way windows backup uses the key filesnottobackup (IFW will zero the files that vss cannot exclude and delete them after the restore)

Panagiotis

 

Yes and Yes. To the OP, find out first what is causing disk activity. Make sure ANY motherboard monitoring tool is shut down, including Speedfan. I also tend to go into Services.msc and shutdown things which have no business running before a backup, like all those VMware Workstation services I run. I end up doing a reboot afterwards anyway, so it all comes back fine.

In the IFW settings, I change this:
Up the Memory slider one notch to the right (so second from the highest)
Phylock wait time to 3 minutes. If it takes longer than that, something is wrong.
Change RAM cache size to 16384
Disk Cache size to 680

 

My settings are:
Up the Memory slider one notch to the right (so second from the highest)
Phylock wait time to 3 minutes.
Change RAM cache size to 131136
Disk Cache size to 1112

I believe that PHYLock for 10 minutes has a bug. Suffered long time, until I realized this. The 3 minutes times, gets the lock faster, usually in less than 2 minutes.

Best regards,

 

On my W7(x64) laptop, I have noted the following differences using Phylock as compared to using VSS:

On average, Phylock takes 90 seconds to do its thing and for IFW's imaging process to start, whereas VSS never takes more than 5 seconds before the IFW imaging process starts.

On average, using Phylock my backups take 2 minutes longer to complete as compared to when I use VSS.

When I restore IFW backups made with Phylock vs. those made with VSS I am unable to distinguish any time (or quality) differences.

So that prompts me to ask, why use Phylock over VSS?

TS

 

PHYLock is good, if you have Rollback Rx installed, as it can do lots of things VSS cannot do.

Best regards,

 

Rollback Rx? ...no thank you (been there, done that)!

 

I did some testing;
If I run a program that uses VSS then some time later I run IFW phylock will take about 5 minutes to lock the drive before it starts the backup; Disk activity was really high and would slow down down "$logfile (ntfs volume" was going nuts even after the other program was stopped for awhile;


on the other hand after I reboot and wait awhile or after the reboot run IFW PHYlock take approximately 3-10 seconds to lock the drive.


Chris