raid restore success - eaz-fix snapshots all back

Theres no hassle. Theres lots if you prepared to look.

Active@ Disk Image
Paragon Drive Backup
R-Drive Image 4.0
Infamous DS
ShadowProtect
True Image 11(maybe, any takers?)

But if want an easy life use Image for Windows with its lock activated and backup within windows,xp and restore with Image for Dos or Image for Windows from BartPe etc.

 

@markymoon:

Ok, but you still have to use secinspect in that case,right?...If you back up with IFW in win to a DVD you will have an automatic IFD restore ...How do you trigger secinspect and MBR sectors 0-63 restore in this scenario? Is that possible ?

 

@osip

appster has trouble getting a BartPe to work thats why i said he doesen't need it anymore but he has to backup the mbr using a dos way and restore it after the restore of his image in dos which i haven't said how to do yet. secinspect wouldnt work in dos only in windows. so have to use another util for that. I suggest using BartPe everytime because you have 32 bit driver access for speed unless like appster you can't get it working then you have to use dos. I come up with a dos solution.

 

I plan to try Paragon HDM v8.5 this week and Acronis TI v11 as soon as my friend receives his upgrade. Stay tuned...

 

I was abit ambitious quoting all those without going into details. I should state and add that they have to be used in a Windows recovery environment like BartPE to backup the image first including the MBR. No image s/w can backup the right mbr in windows with e-f/rollback installed. Sorry if i mentioned that too much hehe. I quoted all those softwares to use with my backup/restore mbr method and for doing RAW image. I can vouch for ShadowProtect for putting back the mbr as it has that option to restore the entire MBR, but you still got to do it in a recovery environment. It great software yet expensive. I don't see paying for options i don't need when there cheaper software just as reliable and restoring the mbr is easy to do from a batch. So i use other high quality reliable software with fantastic verify alot cheaper aka IFW, is great i'm testing out there v.2. The images are even smaller and can do differential if need be and it so small and nifty not bloated or cumbersome. Another advantage it runs from dos which means i can restore the mbr at same time. The new version 2.0 of IFW~ restores the mbr now. No drivers needed to detect your usb, sata,raid,cd or ntfs. You can add extra drivers if need be. It loads very fast from dos. IFW is slick. Acronis boot times are kinda long.

It not necessary to boot into BartPE or Dos to do the backup now that i had success of being able to backup all snapshots with IFW in XP. Once i backup in windows, i jump into BartPe or dos and quickly backup the mbr with an automated batch. I only have to do this once in awhile. The other benefit now is i can use my windows while it does a sector backup so it not a concern if it takes awhile not that it does as its raid 0 with partition size of 100Gb. I moved away from DS now that ifw can do it in windows and has the great byte for byte verify.

Paragon is very reliable. There alot of in your face options and info i dont need. I couldn't use there boot recovery cd. It might be it didnt like my raid and chipset, i'm pretty sure. You probably have success outside of windows doing a full sector copy but i don't even have to leave windows to backup Try backing up your entire windows within windows with entire sector copy and then back up the mbr then restore the image and then the mbr and thoroughly check out all your snapshots if you can. I currently putting together some scripts to automate the backup/restore/mbr so it eases the routine.

I thought of another advantage Rollback has over First Defense-ISR. If you get virus and it infects files it wont damage your other snapshots because viruses these days attack files not sectors. Fdisr stores its snapshots in files and folders which can become infected. Rollback stores the data in hidden sectors so all your other snapshots are much more hidden under the surface.

 

Backing up with DS in maintenance mode in windows results in bad snapshots maybe except the one you in. It not a complete backup of the partition. Success is had using DS to backup all snapshots in BartPE type of recovery. You can't backup in windows all snapshots unless you use ifw.

The best ways i know of and tested

Best choice: scheduled backup in windows with ifw with raw,verify and phylock v.2 activated from a script and restore in dos with ifd(only way if you cant get bartpe working) or ifw along with mbr from bartpe both either from a script. you can make bigger backups while you work. restore in dos for 100g is quick enough.

Second choice: backup from bartpe using any image program that does raw image and backup the mbr manual way at same time all in a script. restore from ifd or ifw. it wont matter if image program dont backup the mbr, you be replacing it manually aslong as it does raw. ds is good for this as it fast and reliable. i would like to use shadowprotect for this ideally as i dont have to backup and restore the mbr manually neither with ds either. use whatever you trust as they all have access to the partition unprotected.

Third choice: do backup and recovery in dos console mode with image s/w like ifd or ghost or any other you trust ithat does raw mode. ideal for small partitions. compare the speed differences to bartpe. only really do restores in dos as backup can be slower. if it alot slower then give up and get that bartpe working.

 

So this is the most simple and reliable way to backup/restore all snapshots of RollBackRx/Eaz-Fix : Terabyte.

Backup :
- scheduled backup in Windows with IFW using a raw image.
- verify image with Psylock activated from a script.

Restore :
- in DOS with IFD, activated from a script OR
- with IFW + MBR from a BartPE CD, activated from a script.

Dumb question : script is a short program, like a .bat-file, is it easy to write scripts ?

 

@ErikAlbert

yes, i have tested that with success. as that method involves making the backup with ifw of course i have to use that to restore so thats why i suggested ifw or ifd for the restore and yes with the mbr. you have a restore.bat that restores the image and them immediately restores the mbr. hey presto.
when i said scripts i just meaning a good batch,ini or sometimes vbscript for xp and batch for dos. i just use the task scheduler in xp to run the batch. i maybe worded it misleading. i was meaning make sure phylock activated that was all. i run ifw from a batch that i keep in the ifw folder and a spare copy as backup. it runs all the parameters of ifw auto. theres options to include in ini.

are you a nightowl like me?

 

If you mean, I'm awake at night alot, then I'm a nightowl. Don't need much sleep.

 

the dos tool i best found so far is mbrutil for doing what i described and is free from powerquest(symantec) ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/tools/pq/utilities/head.zip

the commands needed are

backup entire mbr
mbrutil.exe /sh=mbr.dsk

restore entire mbr
mbrutil.exe /rh=mbr.dsk

note: this is for 16bit dos not 32bit dos in windows.

 

Did anyone try Easy Image by eazSolution yet?
I remember an older program, called eazClone, which is able to backup and restore a partition including each and every eazFix snapshot. (and no sector-by-sector, just data)
eazClone had a ridiculous pricetag though.

So, just wondering if this Easy Image is the reasonably priced successor of eazClone?

http://eazclone.eaz-solution-inc.qarchive.org/

 

I was thinking the same thing if it advanced into easy image. You can still get actual eazClone 2.0 of shareware sites I believe Ayghost is a clone and they both very expensive. It not necessary to pay silly price. I have a great alternative with lots of options and will backup and restore the entire mbr so i dont have to do the manual mbr restore anymore. I just bought it and am running it now. It so solid. It just quality at a great price without sounding like an advert i'm impressed. It's the upcoming soon to be released v2.00 IFW/IFD. I'm running v2.00 RC3 now. Check out these great options. Most i ever seen. Will also do differential. The console for ifw is dos style at moment but will be in windows gui style in final.

 

EAZclone2 is available here and the price couldn't be more 'reasonable'!

The new EasyImage 15-day (full-featured) Trial

 

I now tested EasyImage and my mistake it's not that expensive, $20 but you know what backing up in windows it still doesn't backup the real MBR of Eaz-Fix unless from recovery cd from boot so theres no advantage over others. You come to reboot and Eaz-Fix isn't installed. I knew this was going to happen as i looked inside the image and there was a standard mbr. It has very few options. It doesnt recognise it's own Eaz-Fix product. Next.

 

Also tested EazClone 2. It runs from cd at boot with network support or not. No windows support. It has the same menu layout as ghost but ghost is far superior. I surprised theres no variable options whatsoever except for backup partition or drive. This is very poor even for standard backup. Its way out of date. Stay Clear.

 

All true, but it supported eazFix 7.x without any failure. Maybe it supports 8.1 too?

 

@markymoo,

Would you please summarize the differences in the results you've obtained in using DS vs. IFW/IFD in backing up & restoring an EAZ/RB-protected partition?

 

I couldn't get it going from cd. It runs in dos and it didn't contain the right drivers for my hardware so it never could run except virtually, it didn't find my cd-rom. It ran virtually with 2 hard drives setup but when trying to backup it didn't see the other drive. There was no options to speak of. Even if i did get it going it will be slow backing up in dos compared to bartpe. I was in the process of building a good boot disk with lots of drivers when i stumbled on IFD and that detects my raid, sata dvd and usb with just one sys file loading up and it optimized for dos. If someone else can test it too. I test it more when i build a better boot disk. I will try again this week.

 

@appster theres info in this thread about that already.

i dont get you. you not made a bartpe disk. so what good is DS to you if you want to backup all snapshots? i already mentioned DS dont backup successfully in windows it fails. ifw works.

 

I now have UBCD4Win and, wonder of wonders, it sees all of my drives! I am able to restore my DS images using DS' Win GUI by booting up UBCD4Win.

Now that I'm able to do that I would like to know if IFW would offer advantages over DS in a UBCD4Win environment.

 

Ok some more testing, this time with ShadowProtect and with sp recovery cd. Fiddly time i had with no result.

I backed up all c drive including option 'freespace' with high compression in xp. Had 5 snapshots acquired by now. It backed up fine but of course not the mbr. I had previously backed it up before but wasn't going to use that but to back it up with the recent mbr to be recent with the sp image from sp cd to see how it be in a real situation of drives going down. Now before i rebooted i lauched mbrwiz and wiped the first 64 sectors of the hard drive with zeros for a proper test. mbrwiz /disk=0 wipe=2

I noticed it takes quite awhile to load up sp recovery. In sp winpe recovery i restored my image back fine. Now if i hadn't had a previous mbr backup i would of just had to load up sp recovery to save it for a future time which been a long process using sp just to save the mbr. I would just used dos for speed but i dont want to use floppy drive if i can help it so i have dos in a image on a cd. Anyways i selected the mbr restore options but there wasnt much point was there as you have to restore manually an mbr backed outside of xp for a success.

In sp recovery theres a file browser which doesnt give you the power of an explorer so it was ackward getting to my mbr utils, double clicking the bat files to make this easier and for speed the restore of the mbr didn't work at first. I had to browse to a cmd point on another drive from its system32 folder and run it as a command line. This was all very fiddly would of been even more so if i didnt have the commands setup in a batch. If i had shadowprotect in bartpe or more usable winpe it would been alot better to do this but i pick bartpe for faster booting time.

So i restored the mbr back and rebooted and failure to boot up same result as DS. I got hall32 error which can mean the boot.ini pointing to the wrong partition but in this case corruption was what was up. SO i left stuck without a windows. Sensibly i backed up with ifw also so it restored fine and i was back in windows with my 5 working snapshots. I like SP and is great but as i can backup in windows all snapshots with ifw reliably 100% i wont be using it, incidentally they both backup and restore in same speed around 29mb/sec.

I take comfort in that image for windows has more deeper backup power in windows at half the cost and is reliable and sturdy, runs from any folder and is no drain on resources and taking that bit more time doing the verify plus i cant crash the thing and has other nicetys.

 

Hi, Yes doing it in dos is a real ache. I was trying n dos because i use small partitiions and i use dos utils abit but there's no contest. I say no more about dos except for mbr stuff.

Wilbert, I strongly believe Eaz-Clone 2.0 won't backup just the snapshots in dos for a few reasons. Its dated long before Eaz-Fix new version was out. It has a poor driver support. Eaz-Image is there image s/w and theres no mention of Eaz-Clone intentional or not plus it only uses dos which is very slow. Even if it did backup the snapshot part it no contest to windows environment. I can backup an entire partition all sectors in a decent time in bartpe. In dos get 4mb a sec and that only because of raid. In bartpe i get 25-30mb. Putting faith that it will recognise new changing technologies is asking alot.

 

Glad you finally got it going. I suspect UBBCD4Win has more driver support for your success. It comes with some much installed. If you just want recovery for backup and alot faster bootup time then keep trying for a barebone bartpe with just your image s/w. It could be you just need your motherboard drivers on the cd. You don't have to use dos for the restore either thats great. Who uses all those apps at once. It overwhelming having so much. I only need a few.

As i continually improve backup and restore methods i make bartpe lauch ifw and restore drive0 automatically. Very efficient.

I made it more simplified. I take an image onto a external drive each day into a seperate folder mon,tues etc, when i backed up that day's image, i have it copy it into another folder called latest backup, so i know thats always the latest. IFW restores this backup. I not relying on one backup. If i get a problem down the line and find out i been backing up the problem i can fall back to a previous day.

I summarise over DS and IFW the main things. I favour IFW over DS because DS has stopped production where IFW is being improved on and has alot more features especially in v.2 If you buy 1.99 the key is going to work with the final 2.0 and you get IFD free with it. It don't matter DS is abit quicker because now that i can backup in windows IFW is the faster solution. It could be fair to say if DS does it quicker its not as thorough. IFW has byte for byte verify that gives reliability and more confidence in the backups. They both mount images. IFW has some good options for backing up to dvd/cds. They both do differentials. IFW has some number sequencing. Terrabyte provide great support too, known for there reliability. The speed difference between them is neglible. IFW 2.0 will have a nicer interface. If you need to restore in dos with DS you got to perfect a bootable dos disk and got to update it for different hardware. IFW works straight off the bat. No messy boot disk to perfect. IFW can encrypt the whole drive which is useful if stolen or for privacy etc. DS only gives you pw feature. They produce log files which is handy. They both can resize the partition structure, IFW has some new choices to do more on this. IFW has choice of compression, DS has one compression thats it. Useful feature of IFW is it can validate the image before restore and after backup. IFW can avoid backup of the pagefile and hibernation which result in smaller images and faster backup and restore alittle. IFW even has option to specify how many sectors you want to put back from the mbr. DS is free but for £20($40) you can have alot more options now and for future with IFW and the biggest plus for me it backs up all snapshots with less work. Having said all that i'm still a fan of DS just i embraced IFW and has more potential and it good to stick to one routine backup plan having all the options if need be.