PHYLOCK or VSS in Image for Windows?

Boot from the UFD and on the first screen choose Maintenance. This will not install BIBM. I think you will see the Maintenance choice but if you don't then click NO if you are asked to install. I have BIBM installed so my choices may be different.

 

Hi Brian,

If you remember, I tried it on all my personal computers (not family), two desktops and two laptops, all had Windows 7 then, and all have Windows 8 on them. We couldn't install on any of these four machines. In the end, I had to make a CD/DVD and then I gave up.

Since now I have Windows 8 on them, I will try later.

On a brighter note, all three computers of mine with Windows 8, two laptops and one desktop, with the new settings of IFW (PHYLock), I got the following results:

2 Machines > locked in 14 seconds and the imaging started.
1 Machines > locked in 6 seconds and the imaging started.

Many thanks once more dearest Brian for helping me out and others.

Best regards,

Mohamed

 

Hi Brian,

What is UFD drive?

Mohamed

Edit: LOL! Got it! USB Flash Drive (UFD). Dah me!

Will give it a try later.

 

Mohamed,

Excellent.

I assume you saw my BIBM instructions on the previous page. Ver 1.20 should be fine on a UFD.

 

I just looked at the Userguide. Click Cancel on the first Setup window. You will see OK for Maintenance mode next.

 

In the manual - Bottom 2 paragraphs on page 38 (my emphasis)

" Exclude Files To Not Backup – If you have configured the VSS
FilesNotToBackup registry key, you can enable this option to exclude those
files/folders when creating a backup image or copying a partition. This option
applies only when Use VSS When Available is enabled and VSS is used. "

Since the difference in backup size is 2.5GB I conclude that with phylock, the files are included in their full (but compressed) form, whereas with VSS they are included empty. I also fancy, from some odd behaviour, that a restore of a backup which was created after VSS locking did not include something quite important. Specifically, my desktop settings for Classic Shell seemed to be lost, and some other software seemed to revert to 'just installed' condition. But I am not be brave enough to claim this was not just coincidence. There is quite a long list of exclusions in my FilesNotToBackup registry key, and I have never touched that.

There is yet more ambiguity in the existence of options that seem to say both VSS and phylock will be used. See the options :

Use If Locking Fails Attempt a normal lock and only use PHYLock if a normal lock cannot be obtained.

Use and Release Lock Attempt a normal lock then use PHYLock whether or not the lock was obtained. If a normal lock was obtained, it is unlocked after PHYLock is enabled.


Volume Flush Attempts forcing an additional flush on the volume.

Nothing is said about how those options are affected if VSS option is enabled or disabled. Anybody care to indicate the 'best' combination to use? Good software should interactively enable or disable options which are dependent on each other.

On balance, I am now tending to think disable VSS and enable phylock, and this is why : MS own the OS and tend to be very high-handed (and close-mouthed) about how it works, and they can and do change things fairly often without necessarily telling anybody. A good example is that partitions created under Win7 may or sometimes may not be acceptable to XP (or vice versa).
Terabyte know exactly what their phylock process does, and so it may be better to rely on that rather than run the risk of MS screwing them over by a silent change to VSS processes.

 

You are both right, but it is a bug Brian. It has nothing to do with something actually writing to the HDD for 10 minutes straight. Reducing it to something like 3 minutes makes it start much quicker...nothing else needs to change on the PC whatsoever to make that happen.

Now, that being said, reducing the Write Free Time also helps, but that is unrelated to the IfW "bug" default of 10 minutes. I can confirm aladdin's issue on my PC as well.

 

interesting i do not this bug on 9 systems i tested this morning. ill try the others in a bit and see if any show me this behavior

 

Those VSS "exclude" options are basically there to force the exclusion of the VSS exclusions since VSS will do a "best effort" attempt to exclude them. In other words, they may still end up being backed up. If you want to make sure they're excluded you can select those options.

It's possible. You'd have to check the list and make sure it wasn't excluding anything you needed. This is another example of why I prefer PHYLock. I don't want any surprises about what gets backed up and I don't keep up on the VSS exclusions that get added by Windows or various other programs.

Those are all PHYLock settings and don't affect VSS, except if VSS fails and IFW uses PHYLock instead. VSS currently only has the two "exclude" options. The options are grouped on the Settings screen of IFW. The "locking" referred to in the PHYLock options is the standard Windows lock you can put on a drive (this type of lock won't work on the system drive and may not on other drives). As an example, a standard Windows-type lock is used in WinPE where VSS and PHYLock aren't available. Flushing the volume just attempts to make sure everything is written out before beginning.

 

Thank you MudCrab for your comments on phylock and VSS which clarifies some of the ways it is possible to interpret what terabyte have written. I dare say if they follow these discussions, they may get some ideas on how to improve the documentation, or even the software.

I think you have convinced me to use phylock exclusively for hot imaging....thanks again.

 

Hi Valnur,

You are correct. I installed IFW on a fourth machine and left the time to 10 minutes and set the "Write Free Time" to 3000 ms. No lock happened for 5 minutes. Reduced the "Write Free Time" to 2000 ms but still no lock happened for 3 minutes. Then changed the time to 3 minutes with "Write Free Time" to 2000 and the lock happened in 20 seconds.

I used to be amazed how people can achieve imaging in a total of 7 minutes on their XP system, where at least most of the time I had to wait 10 minutes for locking to take place. Back then all my machines were Windows 7 and not Windows XP, so I thought it had to do with the type of Windows I had on machines.

Best regards,

Mohamed

 

Hi ZFactor,

What type of Windows you have on these machines. Please see my above post to Valnar.

Best regards,

Mohamed

 

valnar and Mohamed,

Thanks for that info. I'll test it.

 

I ran a test. Write Free Time was the default of 4250 ms. Max Wait Time was 10 minutes. I didn't get a lock by 90 seconds so I aborted.

Write Free Time was the default of 4250 ms. Max Wait Time was 3 minutes. I didn't get a lock by 90 seconds so I aborted.

Write Free Time was reduced to 3250 ms. Max Wait Time was 10 minutes. I got a lock after 6 seconds.

That's just one test so I'll repeat it later but I accept your results are different from mine.

 

Hi Brian,

If you repeated the test on the same machine, right after each other, then it eventually will lock.

Run the test on default settings. See what happens. If you abort, then restart the computer and run the test again. Between each test you need to restart the computer.

Best regards,

Mohamed

 

Hi Mohamed,

do you always run the backup after the system is started?
Can you run the backup on a laptop with the AC power unplugged, and post how much time did it take to lock?

Panagiotis

 

Hi Panagiotis,

No, I don't usually run the backup after the system is started, but this was only for Brian's test, as Brian was testing the locking right after each other. What I meant that for each restart, he needs to run one test only. He can wait or do things for a long time after each restart, but then run the test once.

My laptops are more than 1 years old, so they are always plugged in the AC power. I can test the locking on one of them as it can last for almost 15 minutes without being plugged in AC power, but it can be run only once, and the I need to plug it in the AC power. Even, when the laptops were new, I never tried to backup without the laptops being plugged into the AC power. Always, with AC power.

1. Do you still want me to try without being plugged into AC power?
2. And try, with default settings?

Best regards,

Mohamed

 

1. Yes, but no more than a minute or two. 60-90 seconds should be more than enough to achieve a lock.
2. Yes the default settings.

ps. I suspect that you have a service or a scheduler of a program that reads/writes very often on the disk. Usually those apps (at least microsoft schedulers/services) are configured to stop their activity when on battery and unplugging the AC power of the laptop is the quickest way to verify.

Panagiotis

 

Hi Panagiotis,

You just proved that there is a bug with default settings.

Ran the test twice with AC power unplugged and with default settings. First time after using the computer for a long time and the second time right after restart. In both times the PHYLock locked in about 65 seconds.

Scenario 1: Now here is the kicker. For an average user, he uses the default settings which he considers the optimal settings with the AC power plugged in. He careless what is happening in the background as he is not aware of. Most of the time the locking takes 10 minutes.

Scenario 2: When the same average user, changes the default settings to 3 minutes from 10 minutes, usually the locking takes place within 90 ~ 120 second. He hasn't changed anything else from Scenario 1, but the "Max Wait Time" and everything else stays the same.

Scenario 3: Based on the experts, the same average users, reduces the "Write Free Time" to 3000 ms, now the locking takes place almost in 15 seconds. Nothing has changed from Scenario 1, but the "Max Wait Time" and "Write Free Time", and everything else stays the same.

Best regards,

Mohamed

 

all but one are running windows 7 either 32 or 64 bit the other is running windows 8 x64

 

There's no way any two PC's can be expected to generate the same results over 'time to lock phylock' - just too much difference in hardware, software and multiple combinations.

One argument might be that the default times suggested by Terabyte should reduce in step with the average perfomance of average hardware, but I don't think even that helps much, since hard disk latency and write speed has not increased by even a single order of magnitude over the last 5-10 years, although processor speed has.

What is going on in terms of reading and writing to a HDD is mostly down to numerous monitoring services going on in Win 7 and 8 which were never there in XP. If you look at event viewer, open applications and services branch, then Microsoft, then Windows, and lo ! the list of potential or actual monitored events runs to hundreds

For the average user, who is totally unaware of event logging anyway, that is gross overkill, but it keeps the little red light blinking on your PC case (HDD activity) more than once per second all the time.

 

It is HOT imaging and not COLD imaging, and the default settings of 10 minutes is overkill. Who can sit idly at their machines for 10 minutes for the lock to happen. The get yourself coffee argument doesn't work either, as it is HOT imaging. The VSS lock with the other programs with the same machine (the same configuration) doesn't take long to lock.

10 MINUTES IS OVERKILL FOR DEFAULT SETTINGS. If it is reduce to 3 minutes on the same machine (the same configuration) the lock happens within 90~120 seconds. GO FIGURE!

 

Mohamed, in a new/clean windows installation the test that you did above would/should achieve a lock in max 10-15 seconds.
You probably have installed a program on all your systems that writes very often on your OS partition.

Use DiskMon to see how often you have"writes" on your disk and then Process Explorer to find out which program is to blame.

Panagiotis

 

1) See my post where it doesn't matter. It starts quicker by changing the default wait time. It's not really some program writing to the disk.
2) People install programs all the time. Nobody has a default Windows installation.
3) It happens to more than just Mohamed.
4) VSS and other backup programs don't have this issue. If something were writing to the disk, wouldn't VSS also wait for it?

 

I do not say that there is not a bug neither I say that there is (since I have not seen this behavior).
The fact that it starts faster could be very well a placebo effect; since you cannot test both settings at the same system at the same time, how can you tell that phylock locks faster because of the settings and not because that the moments that it does lock faster simply no writes were happening for 4,25 seconds? Unless you perform the tests with the two settings hundreds of times you cannot really tell.

I never said the opposite. But when troubleshooting you should start with minimal configuration and start adding programs until you find the responsible for the problem. Or you install a monitoring app and start investigating.

I don't doubt it.

VSS waits only 10 seconds to prepare the disk for locking.
http://blogs.technet.com/b/josebda/...cs-of-the-volume-shadow-copy-service-vss.aspx

Other programs drivers, e.g. drivesnapshot's, start the locking almost immediately and this is why windows performs a chkdsk after the restore (=for fixing any consistancy problems that were created during the backup)

Panagiotis