Newbie Firstdefense questions

FirstDefense on a laptop presents special issues- mostly storage space and lack of a floppy drive.
- How dangerous is it to skip the MBR boot floppy creation?
-- Is it possible to copy the necessary info somewhere on the hard disk?
-- What about creating a bootable CD with the MBR info?

My laptop has an 80GB drive, and 19GB of that is tied up as a snapshot. The relatively large snapshot size is probably because I wasn't careful about files to be anchored.
- Is there a way I can update the existing snapshot after anchoring more data, so the size of the snapshot is reduced?
-- If not, how can I delete the snapshot so I can start all over again?
-- I probably don't have enough disk space to create a third snapshot, and I cannot "remove" the active folder. Can I remove the second snapshot (the one that was sort of auto-created during install)?

Are there hints and tips for using minimum-size snapshot files? I don't care about backup, since I backup to an external HD frequently.

I'd appreciate any tips!

 

FD weak point is the MBR if you cannot boot without the pre boot screen you cannont change snapshot --- that said unless you fiddle with the mbr you should have no problems - A drive image would always be a safety net.


You can store the mbr at other locations than a floppy - I'm sure it would be possible to build a recovery cd may be based on ubcd

If you just lost the mbr - and the snapshot was bootable - you could use the recovery disk from xp to fix the mbr and then just re install FD


I don't anchor any data - consider using archive to external media. Can you reduce you install size?

 

Don't worry too much about the MBR, FD-ISR is able to repair it when things go wrong.
Yes, you are able to store the MBR anywhere else, select the obvious network option.

I'm not sure what happens when you anchor data that is duplicated in several snapshots, but in general you are able to reduce the snapshot size by managing this feature.
You can simply delete any snapshot that is not the active (working) snapshot. Also the first.

Yeah, disk space is kind of an challenge with FD-ISR.

Allow me to suggest for that reason that you also take a look at Eaz-Fix

Now I sit back and wait for the flames of ErikAlbert.

 

LOL. No flames this time. This chapter is closed for me. I made my choices and it works properly. I have to move on with the rest of my plans.

 

Many thanks to everyone for your helpful answers! This forum, with its helpful participants, is a good reason to purchase FirstDefense.

I've decided FirstDefense isn't worth the disk space on a laptop. My laptop, anyway. I may install FirstDefense on my desktop, though.

Thanks again!

 

Say for example, I disabled FDISR Pre-boot. Later some thing went wrong and OS became unbootable. Now I want to go to FDISR console and fix MBR from there as there is no back-up floopy with laptop. Is there a way to do it? May be via BartPE CD or something else?
Any ideas?

Thanks.

 

There is reason. Multiboot OS for example.

 

I guess once the mbr is fixed (thks to bartpe, UBCD and co) and you can boot, you can fix everything up, no?

RE

 

Looks to me like Aigle is inviting trouble...

This is what I think, but I may be wrong:
When you disable preboot and the OS can't start, then repairing the MBR with the FD-ISR code will only work if it finds the $ISRBIN right away.
If not, the OS won't boot, and the MBR won't get corrected where it concerns the location of the $ISRBIN.

 

I believe you can boot to whatever you got in C:, then reactivate LeapFrog and boot again on the right snapshot.

RE

 

Are we still talking about this example?

 

Personally, I never touch the Pre-boot screen, not even for backup or restore, it's always enabled,
If you disable the pre-boot screen, you won't be able to recover your system partition outside Windows. In other words you turned FDISR in to Windows System Restore. I didn't pay $70 to get another Windows System Restore.
Of course Acronis True Image Home doesn't fool around with the MBR, like IFW/IFD does, but I don't want to discuss this anymore. I said it once and that's enough.

 

OK, thanks for the replies.
I personally think in case of a scenario I presented results might be different in different situitions and it is hard to guess on theoretical basis alone, unless someone really faces a situition like this( that ofcourse nobody will like).

 

Hi, Eric can u explain this for the beginners like me.

 

IFW/DOS doesn't restore the MBR, like ATI does.
If you restore a system partition with snapshots, using IFW/DOS, you have to ENABLE the Pre-boot screen yourself AFTER the restoration to recover the MBR and according my readings you even have to DISABLE the Pre-boot Screen BEFORE taking a backup of the system partition. Why is that necessary ? You don't have to do this with ATI.
Some members seem to consider this as NORMAL, I don't and I never will, because it doesn't feel right to me.

The basic principle of restoration : give you EXACTLY back, the way it was in the past and that is for me a HOLY principle, because that is how it is supposed to happen.

If each software requires special actions to make it right after a restoration, where is this going to end ?
This is unacceptable for me and I'm not going to change my mind about this.

The combination "RollbackRx + ATI" was even worse. ATI restored only the baseline or the current snapshot and all the other snapshots were GONE. What kind of restoration is that ?

 

I would thoroughly recommend FD-ISR for any desktop but I'd agree it is isn't really ideal for the more space-restricted laptop HD.
Laptops do present a particular problem to back up but I think you've the right solution in an external HD whether you use IFD/IFW or ATI.
If you are looking for a tool for trialling different softwares/ beta testing and you are thinking of using EAZ-Fix / Rollback Rx on a laptop, I'd be very careful........
I had to wait until build 7.2.1 of Rollback until I could even get it to work.
Admittedly it had a compatability problem with the memory system on my laptop and HDS tried very hard to get it to work.
Now it is working -I'm seeing regular snapshot corruption and huge boot time slowdown. HDS are trying to debug this but haven't seen any progress yet.
Rollback Rx/ EAZ-Fix may well be your solution but I'd say it is just not quite there yet and if you want to play around with different system configurations FD-ISR is your best bet.

 

I have been working on this issue since a couple weeks with Eazsolutions, and last Friday I got a test release that runs very stable.
It looks like defect snapshots will be history very soon...

 

Just enabling preboot again is not a big deal to me.
BTW, acc to post no. 106 here, the two9 ATI and EAZ-Fix/ RollBackRx) work together.

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=143872&page=5&highlight=eazFix/Rollback

 

Via BartPE I was able to run FD-ISR Control from start menu but when I gave command config boot I got the message

Unable to communicate with the service, service not running or not installed

So U can,t enable pre-boot via BartPE. Am I right? Can,t say about UBCD. I don,t have this yet.