on Rollback RX...

i've had RX for about a month, not really knowing how it works.
it's a great program, rock solid.


i re-installed RX last week and took a snapshot tonight.
the snap was over 1 Gb in size although all i did was surf the net during that time.
i've just come to the realization tonight that it's the "nature of the beast" in the way these type of apps work.

like i said, great program but it just does not fit my "small is beautiful" philosophy.

 

I tried Rollback RX for 2 weeks, and all my snap shots were only 400-450 mbs in size after the initial snap shot during the installation was created. That seems very high from what little experience I had with Rollback RX. I would probably still be using it if it did not conflict with Acronis True Image.

 

The size of your baseline snapshot is dependent on your hard disk size.
On a 250GB hard disk, the baseline snapshot is 166MB. What's yours ?

 

If you keep installing things, deleting things, creating snapshots, your hard disk will eventually crash due to lack of space. Unless, you very, very often create a new baseline snapshot, thus deleting all the previous snapshots.

Whatever you delete, it is there. And, for this reason you can go back and forth in time. If it is not physically there, then you cannot retrieve it. When you create a new baseline snapshot, then the things get physically deleted.

Therefore, the statement of moontan and Cutting_Edgetech is absolutely correct. Watch the remaining size of your hard disk and not what is reported by Rollback Rx.

Best regards,

KOR!

 

same.
i also have a 250 Gb HD.

but i wasn't talking about the baseline snapshot.

 

The only thing the snapshots do is to lock the sectors from deletion. Thus, on a 250GB hard disk, the baseline snapshot is 166MB. Imagine, this is about 1/8GB.

Best regards,

KOR!

 

I have no idea why your snapshot would be 1 gig in size but if thats what it is thats what it is. It does not mean that all snaps will be anywhere near that size. I am attaching a screen shot of my RX snaps page and this is pretty typical of the size range I get on my 55% full 125 gig laptop.

RollBack is, as you say, rock solid. I would suggest you give Rx a decent trial and see how large the typical snap is before you chuck it. Personally I would not be without it.

PS: for some reason I am unable to upload the attachment. Here is the snapshot size breakdown that you would have seen had I been able to do the upload.

Installation 80 MB 02/03/2011 12:57 Baseline
Scheduled snapshot 413 MB 02/04/2011 00:39 Restart
Scheduled snapshot 437 MB 02/04/2011 11:10 Restart
Scheduled snapshot 496 MB 02/05/2011 02:01 Hourly
Scheduled snapshot 235 MB 02/06/2011 23:56 Restart
Scheduled snapshot 93 MB 02/07/2011 00:03 Restart
Test 73 MB 02/07/2011 00:06 Restart
Scheduled snapshot 33 MB 02/07/2011 00:10 Restart
Scheduled snapshot 728 MB 02/07/2011 01:01 Hourly

 

Here is how the thingy works:

The major strength of Rollback Rx going back and forth in time is also it's major weakness, that one has to live with every expanding hard disk.

For example snapshots A and B are taken and then Microsoft Office Professional is installed with proofing thus taking up 2gb. Now as the time goes by snapshots C, D, E, G ....... M are taken. Now it is decided to delete the 2gb of Microsoft Office Professional.

One now has to have a razor sharp memory, to really delete this, one has now to remember and delete snapshots C, D, E, G ....... M, all of them. If one deletes only from snapshots E, G ....... M, the 2gb of Microsoft Office Professional is still there.

Best regards,

KOR!

P.S. Watch your hard disk space and not what is reported by Rollback Rx as the size of snapshot.

 

there was 2 snapshots in a week one of 802 Mb and one of over 300 Mb.
that is over 1 Gb for 1 week. that is a lot i think.

anyway, tnx to everyone for the input.
KOR makes some valid observations i think.

 

@ moontan,

Could it be that disk-defragging is the culprit? I believe that Windows 7 performs scheduled automatic disk-defrags by default. When using RB, you must disable disk-defragging as that will result in very large snapshots!

Aaron

 

all defraggers are disabled here.

try this Aaron: do not take a snapshot for a week then take 1 snapshot after the week is over.
i suspect that snapshot will be pretty large, at least 600-700 Mg...

 

Hey moontan,

Letting a week go by before taking a snapshot is something I personally wouldn't do. You see, I typically have 2 snapshots daily, then at the end of the week I create an 'all sectors' image backup of my system followed by an RB baseline-update.

It shouldn't surprise you that waiting a week between snapshots will result in a large snapshot - afterall, a lot of changes probably occurred over a week's time!

Aaron

 

you're right.

maybe it's just not for me.
i used RX rarely but was quite happy with the program when i needed it.
it does what it says on the tin and it's rock solid.

but if i'm gonna be using it only once or twice a month i might as well stick with imaging i guess.
it takes me about 11 minutes to restore a clean image from an USB 2.0 HD. (not counting the boot CD time)
i'll try restoring from a secondary internal HD just to see what difference in times i get...
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
tried a restore using an internal HD instead of a USB drive:
9 minutes instead of 11.
nothing to write home about...
mind you, this is a computer bought late in 2007.
not exactly a speed demon by today's standard.

 

Please forgive me for jumping in here, but since you claim to be a novice I will share my experience using "Snapshot" software after 25 months (I'm still a novice!). I had a free, one year AyRecovery license and with less than a week left Comodo Time Machine was released. I've had CTM on this XP desktop and a Vista laptop and couldn't live without it. Despite CTM's field for describing snapshots to help remember if there is a particular reason for taking it, I still only take them morning, night and before trying out applications or before MS patch Tuesdays and usually just keep three plus the Baseline. Point is, I should know within 24 hours if my machine isn't running correctly. If there is a problem I'll just go back one or two snapshots. Why would you want to go back a week or more ago? As I delete snapshots I use CTM's defragger. Once per month or somewhat sooner I uninstall CTM, run JK's defragger and then image with Paragon, then reinstall CTM. Had one instance about a year ago, just before I began the routine I've described (still can't recall what went wrong) when CTM messed up the MBR on the laptop but Paragon restored it. No trouble since. Anyway, take snapshots often but also don't keep many and defrag with RX.
p.s. One other point! The only reason I take snapshots twice per day or even daily is, should I have to restore I'd have up to date anti-malware definitions.

 

@ ratchet:
tnx for your input ratchet.
it puts thing in perspective.
it's nice to have people relate their experience as i find it can help learning new ways of using programs.

maybe i can create baseline snapshot often as suggested by KOR and/or just restart to the baseline to clean up the "dead weight".

 

Dear Ratchet,

That is too much work for returning back to baseline snapshot on daily basis and/or weekly basis. And, every time you uninstall CTM you run the risk of messing up booting from your hard disk. Add, to that if you encounter a virus the effects of that might not show up in a day/week when you already have deleted the baseline.

Here is what I do.

1. I have a very small C_Drive (system drive) about 100gb, which is for program only. I usually install lots of programs and it about 53gb occupied. I imagine this system drive once a month, and takes about 2 hours, with three imaging programs.

2. My live data is in Z_Drive, which get synced between my three laptops and a desktop. It is in cloud in Dropbox. They give maximum of 10gb free. So far I have earned 6.5gb. The advantages are:

a. If I change the live data on any machine it gets automatically synced to other machines.
b. The keep the changes for one month, before they are really deleted from their server. So, if I delete a file from my computers, it is still there for one month for me to retrieve it.
c. It syncs only the changes made into the Microsoft Outlook, between all computers. One has to buy a program to do just do that, do it manually and cannot sync more than two machines at a time. This is the best feature of Dropbox, which lots of people don't realize.
d. They give you 2gb free on sign-up. If one sign-up through someone already a member (say like me), they get .25gb free on sign-up, making a total of 2.25gb free on sign-up and I get .25gb for introducing the new member. So, anyone wants to sign-up, please PM me.

3. My static data is on NAS Server, with mirrored RAID.

Best regards,

KOR!

 

Clearly everyone has their preferred way of working and thats as it should be.

However I would like to point out a few things that you may find helpful.

I have RX set to take a locked snap upon boot and also once every hour. This way if something goes wrong with just about any aspect of my PC (other than hardware failure) I have a very recent snap to revert to. If that revert does not do the trick I go back 1 further etc. It is also comforting to know that once I get my PC back to a functioning state I can open the later snaps as virtual drives and recover any work that I may have done subsequent to the reverted to state.

At the end of the day I upload my critical data files to an on-line storage site, then I delete all the hourly snaps from the day and the oldest daily startup snap (I keep the latest 4 startup snaps). So at the end of the day I have 6 snaps on my PC, the baseline, 4 locked boot snaps, and the last hourly snap. THis total will seldom exceed a few gigs and is generally less than 1. Once a week I use the RX companion Drive Cloner to image my drive. Then, once a month I uninstall Rx, defrag etc, image with Paragon, and then reinstall Rx.

A key point here is that this is on my Laptop. Rx is especially handy when you are not docked. It is not at all practical to have to image to an external drive since the laptop is generally a fairly mobile device, and you certainly do not have the capability to save much to an external drive when you are on the move. Thus your laptop restore point is likely to be fairly old, at best a day old but likely more than that. Especially if you are prone to skipping an image session or 2 when you are busy. Rx removes all of these concerns.

In addition I really like the ability to manually create a snapshot in seconds so I can open an email I am unsure of, or test out a piece of software (or compare a number of contenders) and then when I am done I can simply reboot my PC to the manual snaps state. No fuss, no muss. There have been no mistakes or problems that Rx has not quickly corrected in excess of 24 months of heavy use. Thats quite a record and a darn useful tool IMHO ,,,, especially on a laptop.

I have been using ShadowProtect on my desktop for the last 2 years but really, the regime I have been following on my laptop is one I prefer to the ShadowProtect regime. Not that there is anything wrong with SP, its just that Rx is so much faster and more convenient. At least I find it so, no doubt others will disagree regarding SP on a desktop system. Again, each to their own.

As to the size issue, you must realize a full drive image will take up way more than any but the largest collection of snaps. Regarding the drive space that will be reserved by Rx if you delete a program from the drive you should keep in mind that as far as Windows is concerned that space is effectively empty,,,,,,which means if Windows is looking for a file or whatever it will not look in that apparently free space. So yes, you do not have all that free space to write too but the free space is only reserved until you reset the baseline. In the meantime new data will be written to the unreserved space (the truly free space) and it will do so until you reset the baseline.

The free space issue is another good reason to periodically image the drive and reset the baseline. Once you have imaged the correctly functioning drive (I keep 5 weekly images on an external drive just in case), there is no reason to retain previous snaps as you have all your data files and system files backed up so a baseline reset is in order and simply makes sense..

Of course some ore more cautious and others less so. For some 1 snap a day is sufficient, for others 1 a week. For still others 1 image a month is good enough. The thing is to decide how much protection you require. Would losing 1 hours work be an issue, how about a days work, or perhaps a weeks. In my case an hour is my comfort zone. I can cut that to 15 min with SP but the time and drive space, coupled with the lack of practicality for a laptop system makes it take 2nd place to RollBack IMO.

In fact, when RX 2011 is released I will be replacing SP on my desktop with it. I like Rx and its stability and performance that much.

But as I said above, each to their own.

 

Thanks everyone for their input.

Here is my questions:

I have paid versions of Keriver One-Clck Pro and Macrium Reflect. So on boot up, I first get the menu Grub4Dos menu of Keriver One-Clck Pro and then the boot menu of Macrium Reflect/Windows 7.

So, if I want to install Rollback Rx:

1. Do I have to un-install Keriver One-Clck Pro?

2. Do I have to remove Macrium Reflect from MBR?

Many thanks in advance!

Best regards,

KOR!

P.S. Dear Aaron, your expertise is required to answer my question. Best regards, my old geezer friend!

 

And, what are the differences between Rollback Rx PRO and Eaz-Fix?

Many thank and with best regards,

KOR!

 

Baseline change is only about once/month.

 

there's no difference.
it's the same product, but re-branded.

 

i'm no expert but i think you might run into problems.

you have 2 programs there that do basically the same thing; Keriver and Macrium.
i would get rid of one of them to start with.

 

KOR,

One old geezer shouldn't fool another, so I must tell you that I have no experience whatsoever with either K1CP or Macrium. Frankly, I would be hesitant to use any product that modifies the MBR with RB - is that really true of both K1CP and Macrium?

Aaron

 

macrium offers you to install a boot subconsole like RX.

and keriver only work with the boot subconsole.
i don't think it has a bootable CD.

i would be hesitant to use 2 products that modifies the MBR, less alone 3.

 

RB is a constant presence in a system. Since RB provides instantaneous backups and restores of the system drive (with little overhead), an RB user has to ask themself how frequently they feel it's necessary to also create backup images of their system. There are no rules, it's simply a matter of one's comfort-level.

As an RB user, I'm comfortable creating a backup image of my system once/week. Therefore, it wouldn't make much sense for me to carry the 'baggage' of any image backup program which has processes/services running all of the time!

So my point is that unless an RB user has an abundance of processing-power, that user should choose an image backup program (or method) which doesn't consume their PC's processing-power until it is actually being used.

Just my 2-cents worth...

Aaron