Returnil vs Rollback_rx, best one?

I am thinking of purchasing 1for my win7 system, but don't know which one is best.

I have tried the Rollback_rx but not yet tried returnil.

What are the advantages of the returnil over the rollback, if any.

James

 

Hi wildernow and welcome to the forums

First, you are looking at a comparison of an imaging solution (RBRX) and one that is based on boot-to-restore. The major difference here is that RBRX works to create images of your system and computer at specific periods in time that then allow you to overwrite your existing disk to make it return to the chosen state when that image was taken. The focus of boot-to-restore is to return your system to the state it was in when the virtualization was activated without overwriting your disk.

IOWs - one takes a "picture" of your HDD state and then overwrites your disk (RBRX and similar) while the other tracks changes and then either drops those changes or saves specific changes based on user preferences and drops the rest.

Other differences abound when you start looking at the wider range of features offered in RSS/RVS that are oriented towards security rather than the restoration focus a RBRX or similar solution has...

Mike

 

Hi Coldmoon,

But what is the difference between Returnil Multi Snapshots and Rollback RX?

Thanks,

 

The difference here is how the "picture" is taken and then applied. RBRX and other variants use a sector mapping technique that records the state of individual disk sectors and then overwrites those sectors to reestablish the state those sectors were in when the "picture" was taken.

Ex: You take an image right now before you perform a disk defragmentation, but make no other changes. After the defrag, something hypothetical happens where you need to restore to a previous image and choose the image you made just prior to said defragmentation. Once the computer is restarted, your disk is returned to its pre-"defrag" state.

IOWs, all the applicable sectors represented within the image are returned to that state so your disk is again fragmented as though the defrag never took place and any data within those overwritten sectors are gone as well.

With the RMSU, we use the same virtualization technology used within RSS/RVS to create a snapshot or series of snapshots that are focused on the changes between what is and what was which allow for features such as recovering specific files from the previous state of the system without overwriting the HDD.

There are pros and cons with each approach, but the one we use in the RMS Utility is safer and will allow more efficient (and probable) recovery of files from the previous machine state.

Mike

 

Thanks for that explanation!

I really liked RMS, it causes a lot less trouble in my system than Rollback RX and it is very fast in taking snaphot (as fast as Rollback RX), very reliable and very fast to recover from a snapshot (around 10 minutes)... RMS is very promising

 

what about defragging? rollback has its own snapshot defragmenter, but can you defrag with RMS ?

 

From my testing, you can't unless you have no snapshots... otherwise, defraging with a third party when you have snapshots seems to increase the snapshot cache uses (decreasing the size of the cache disponible to make snapshots)

 

Hi,
It is a Beta so some things may not be there and will depend on requirements going forward. The object at the moment is to test and get feedback on performance of what is there now and what the users/testers want to see in the future.

Mike

 

I also just looked over the entire returnil site and answers to several questions are unavailable such as:
1: do I disable Windows System restore
2: Can I defrag ( the answer I found yes and no), is somewhat like splitting hairs, either you can or you cant?
3: is it compatible with my existing anti-virus
4: windows sytem restore takes a large amount of space, how large are System Safe snapshots?

 

No, you can leave Windows System Restore points on. You will see them listed in the RSS Full Restore section after they have been created. Also, if you restore through Windows rather than through RSS, you will still get a notice from RSS with the resulting messages about being able to recover specific files (File Restore) from RSS.

Yes, as long as the Virtual Mode is not active in RSS/RVS

Probably. RSS is compatible with most 1st and second tier AVs, but users of CA should be aware of incompatibility issues that are directly related to the use of the F-Prot engine as part of the Virus Guard.

RSS is using the Volume Shadow Copy service so the sizes are comparable. The RMS Utility snapshots can also take room so be aware. The key priority of snapshotting and imaging is reliability, but we do our best to make the snaps as efficiently as possible.

Mike