MrAnyone try Drive Cloner Rx

Understood but the fact remains it would be nice to find (or have) a solution that would not make it nec to do a sector by sector backup. I hope (but am not optimistic) that the new Drive Cloner may provide that. If I do take the sector by sector route I probably will wind up backing up less frequently.

I am a bit confused by something that I think is central and if it has been answered already please excuse me as I am overloading on information. Does an image from within Windows made with RollBack Rx on the PC fully capture the state of the drive apart from the snapshots? If you reinstall this image what is it you are getting? For me this is the most confusing and troubling aspect of my understanding of Rx. You cannot backup snapshots from within Windows (and according to the Horizon website its at a min questionable if you can backup any Rx files), but Rx as I understand it turns everything into a snapshot. The PC is actually (again as I understand it) running in the last snapshot somehow (a virtualization type program would be my closest understanding of whats happing here). Thus, if backup programs like TI cannot understand Rx files as has been stated by Horizon what are you imaging when you image this drive?

As was said earlier somewhere in this forum I need to get my head around Rx in order to feel comfortable with it. I just cannot seem to accomplish this and the more I read here and on the Horizon website, much of which to me seems contradictory, the less comfortable I get. If it were not for the obvious high regard that many here hold the program in I would probably walk away from it even though it sounds almost perfect except for the Backup issue.

If I cannot get backups that I can be reasonably confident in then there is no point. I know no program is perfect, I know TI has "issues" but it has worked for me and I take steps to give myself wiggle room. I have more than one TI rescue disk (disks sometimes do not work or go bad), I keep more than one copy of backups (but not duplicates of every copy), I maintain copies off site, etc. So I am quite confident that in an absolute worst case scenario I will be able to restore my system to close to its most recent "good" state. At this point given my confusion Rx is sort of dangling just out of reach. I really like the sound of it, but ,,,,,

Also I am sorry to be so thick headed here, I really do appreciate the time and effort you folks have provided regarding this subject. It really is not a question of "insist on backing up from within Windows"' I just do not really see why it makes a difference. I don't care if I get every snapshot in the backup (it would be nice to get 24 restore points per day but...). If I am backing up daily then I have plenty of restore points to select from. Right now apart from GoBack this is what I have, daily backups. All I want to do is replace GoBack so that the time frame between daily backups is for the most part covered. Rx will not cover this period quite as well as GoBack but its close. At most I will have at risk 1 hours work (other than in the event of a hard drive melt down), thats more at risk than with GoBack, but close enough, and Rx is not a Symantec product (a big plus in my books).

 

Yes, doing that will capture the current state of the system and upon restoring that image you will recover that state; however:

a) RB will no longer be installed and all of your older snapshots will be gone.

b) You will either have to perform a FIXMBR or recover a standard Windows MBR from a previous system backup before RB was installed.

c) You will have to reinstall and reactivate RB.

Doing a sector-by-sector backup from outside of Windows circumvents all of the above issues!

or

You can choose to uninstall RB (to the current snapshot) before making an image backup from within Windows, which will also leave you with the current state of your system and a standard Windows MBR. Upon restoring your image RB will have to be reinstalled and reactivated.

Hopefully, this is now understandable - I don't know how to make it any clearer.

 

So after fixing the MBR I would be able to take the image that was made while RollBack was installed and then restore the PC or would the MBR have to be fixed after the restore? By the way my installation files are on the PC in a 2nd partition so I would not be able to fix the MBR using the installation disk. Are there any simple 3rd party programs that will allow me to backup or fix just the MBR or does this have to be done either with an image (say a TI image) made without RollBack installed or from the installation disk?

This is really new territory for me, I am just a typical PC user with no technical background what-so-ever. What little I know has come from experience with issues and trying to get these issue resolved as well as from folks like you who take the time to provide guidance and information. I want to say how much I appreciate the help. Thanks.

PS: I have a 2nd PC that did come with a Windows CD but it says on the disk that it can only be used on the PC it came with (a Fujitsu tablet PC). Could I use this disk to get to the recovery console on my HP desktop or should the warning on the disk be taken seriously/literally?

Edit: If I was to do a full image with RollBack uninstalled (say once a week) and then do the daily incrementals with RollBack installed would this work so that I could restore and not have to fix the MBR. I am thinking that I would first restore to the full backup and either simply copy the data files from a mounted incremental, or possibly, once the full backup has been restored, then restore the last (or whichever) incremental. Is this a practical approach?

 

Same problem here, download stops at 14MB where is should be 44MB or something. I have notified HDS using their contact form. We'll see...

 

Sorry, I just reread your post and now, having had some sleep, I can see that installing an image taken with RollBack installed will mess up the MBR, which means I will have to have a way to repair the MBR after the restore. How can I do this if I do not have an installation disk?

Mind you it may be a moot point as I am very frustrated with Horizons lack of support. Live chat is fine but the contacts there have very limited knowledge and I have been waiting since as long ago as Jan 30 for an ans to questions from a technician. The oldest ticket's have simply disappeared and the latest ones have been sitting since Thursday and Friday. If this is how they treat you before you buy the program I can't imaging how they would treat you after you pay and they already have you cash.

 

As I already suggested, if you have a TI backup of your system partition before RB was installed you can always recover just the MBR from that backup. If you would like to avoid the MBR issue, you can simply uninstall RB (to the current snapshot) before doing each backup. Using either of these 2 methods, RB will have to be reinstalled and reactivated.

Since you do not want to do a sector-by-sector backup from outside Windows (with RB installed), the above 2 choices are what you are left with (for performing a 'normal' backup from within Windows).

 

Do you by chance have a working download link ? Thanks. HDS' is broken (well the downloaded file is).

 

Thank you and again sorry for being difficult here. This is too critical an issue for me to just assume I have it correct. How often would the MBR be changed? If I do a pre RollBack image and a year from now I need to do a restore because of a hard drive failure or some other event that RollBack itself is unable to deal with, will the MBR on the pre-RollBack image be worth anything to me? I am also concerned with old images becoming corrupted and not being available when I need them.

Uninstalling RollBack before each backup is one option but since I do backups daily its a bit of a nuisance. Having to do this would make scheduled backups useless no doubt leading to backups not being done regularly.

Mind you the regime I outlined above would probably take care of this concern (uninstall RB once a week and image the drive, reinstall RX and do incremental backups for the rest of the week. --- does this make sense or would appending RB present incrementals to a pre RB full image likely cause problems).

 

It should - just be sure that any replacement drive is as large or larger than the one that failed.

This broaches entirely different subject(s), which is really OT here. If you want to discuss these issues, you should start another thread.

 

I understand but it is an issue regarding the suggestion that have been made here. The longer you keep a file the more likely it is to become unusable. If the recommendation is to keep a pre-RollBack image "forever" as was suggested earlier (or possibly in another thread) by (I think) Jo Ann then this is relevant.

Still no response from Horizon and I have called their service manager to let him know of the total lack of response regarding my questions - he has not gotten back to me either - if I wanted this kind of support I could stick with GoBack, Symantec support is about as good. Is there another RollBack like program other than GoBack and EZ Fix that I should be looking at? Preferably one that will not have the backup images issue if possible and that provides decent customer support?

 

Have you tried http://www.horizondatasys-forum.com/ this is their new forum as of this weekend. Can you please repeat your question that you have asked HDS support and I will try to help you.

Thanks,

Chris

 

I had looked at the forum and about 99% of the posts are unanswered. Not much value at all.

Thanks for your offer re outstanding questions to Horizon Tech Support. I will post them individually below by oldest first.

 

1/30/2009 9:52 PM PDT

In chapter 7 of the users guide it says

"For details on how to backup snapshots and restore snapshot backups, refer to Rollback Rx Snapshot Backup Help."

where do I find this?

I have not yet installed RollBack Rx on my PC as I have been using Norton GoBack and would have to uninstall it and, according to the information on your website, fix the MBR before installing RollBack Rx. I would like to be sure that the program is right for me before doing this. A major concern of mine is being able to keep off site backups of my entire PC. I have been using Acronis True Image to do this but I gather that there are problems using both TI and RollBack on the same PC.

 

OK I read all the posts before they were deleted but it appears that they did answer your questions. I am going to pm you something in case you are still interested in Rollback. I think you will like it. If I missed something and your questions were not answered please post them back here excluding the emails from HDS.

Thanks,

Chris

 

Yes, they finally did ans some of my questions, I still have some (3) that they indicate they are working one, one of which has been reopened since they never did ans it at all. The notes said "answered by chat"" when the chat support person indicated a tech would have to deal with the issue.

Also thanks for your PM, I did reply to it.