Rollback rx

spm, thank you VERY much for posting this, very interesting info.

Acadia

 

Just a reminder, or if you missed it, FOR YOU FOLKS INTERESTED IN PURCHASING ROLLBACK, go to post number 43:

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=119215&page=2&highlight=rollback wilders

Again, thanks to BeetleJuice 69.

Acadia

 

Yes V good post and continues this good thread
I echo Bellgamins call for maybe sticking these threads together somewhere?
I have also had some E-mail contact with RBack support:
quick and helpful.

Now. as per Chris' post #66

Not concerned about Rollback running in event of HDD failure that would always be a possibility !!

I guess my strategy will be to have Image/Clone Copy on outside disc ie USB or 2nd HD

Sequence;
_normal opn with Rback installed
-uninstall rollback from current snapshot.
_image or copy disc to other drive say weekly?
_restart RBack and back to Normal

Then: if system failure in current set up: restore from RB preferably (or image and put up with data loss for that week, I keep copies of some Data files and exes on other disc and have second box at work with current work data that can be copied back)

:if catastrphic HDD failure have Image/clone on other disc.

Hows That?

ADD: ATI seems to have a lot of issues with USB drives, DOS level imaging will also probably not recognise USB drives. This is pushing me to Terabyte which has both options as well as highly rated partition manager. Any comment?

Will probably have to go for installing 2nd HD as best option and Usb as secondary storage and portable apps and presentations

LOL redundancy on the redundancy ad infinitum
Not counting spending hours with imaging apps running!

I know I harp on about the HDD burn out and catastrophic loss, but only because it nearly happened to me and I suspect is more common than not.

Might be useful to have a thread with people commenting on their experiences with longevity of HDD if it's not already here somewhere.

Once again I apologise for pulling this thread to my personal agenda.
I hope others are getting some good out of it.

Regards.
LBD

 

Unfortunately, that specific coupon is no longer valid. ....Regardless, I'm tremendously impressed with what I've been reading here (thank you all for your contributions), so I've decided to order a copy of RBRxPro.

However, as an ATI user who would still like to create a full-drive image (at least on a weekly basis) to provide for disaster-recovery in the event of a hard crash, I share the ATI concerns that have been voiced in the above posts. Frankly, I'm confused about the statements that ATI changes the MBR when it creates a full-drive image - so if someone can shed some light on this, I'd appreciate it. ....Finally, since I (and I presume most RBRx users) must rely on something other than RBRx in the event of a crashed system-drive, I'm wondering if any other imaging product (such as IFW) is more compatible with RBRx than ATI?

~pv

Edit:
Longboard, over my 25 years of being a (heavy) PC user, I've experienced two hard crashes. After the first (I was ill-prepared and suffered the consequences), I became a true believer in disaster-recovery backup systems!

 

You are right, it is not working. I checked as well. Although there is still a 25% discount offer. I wish I could get this 50% discount offer.

 

Me too RB is very good - do you have more than one copy the coupon is per email address

I would like to but TI version 8 does not appear to be able to image the partition with the O/S for me (SATA Drive). RB did add a boot option for Ghost if you have a floppy drive I don't. Peter has said that he can image with TI v9 - I guess in file mode.

RB are working on separate snapshot storage and integrated cloning - next few months?

 

Since talking with Horizon DataSys (see my chat transcript above), I have had the opportunity to evaluate Rollback Rx vs. FD-ISR vs. my needs. I'd like to share my experiences and conclusions here.

Of course, my requirements are unique to me, and hence my comments need to be put into the proper context:

1. I create disk images off-machine (across a network to external USB drives on a server), and store them offsite for disaster recovery in the event of hard disk failure, flood, theft, etc.

2. While I currently use Acronis TrueImage 8 for this purpose, I am happy to consider changing to another product (Drive Snapshot, probably) if it makes sense.

3. I evaluate and/or beta test software on a regular basis, and want to put in place local snapshot/recovery procedures to enable recovery to a determined system state. In particular, I wish to maintain two main snapshots:

a. A 'baseline' snapshot representing a known-good system state, that I will refresh on an infrequent, but periodic, basis. Rollback to the baseline snapshot will only be used rarely.

b. A 'primary backup' snapshot which I will create/refresh just before installing and beta testing/evaluating software. After testing/evaluation, I will usually rollback to the primary backup.

4. I have a single disk partition, with clearly identified folders that contain the majority of my data files (about 1.2Gb data out of a total 11.5GB used space). My data files should be unaffected by rollback, ensuring they are always the latest versions. In particular, my Outlook message stores must *not* be rolled back when reverting to a previous snapshot.

5. In the very dynamic environment I operate in, I have found disk defragmentation to be a significant factor affecting the speed of my computer. I use PerfectDisk at the moment, but am willing to consider alternatives if necessary.

6. For ease of use and system management (both locally, and from my server), I am looking for good command-line support for the snapshot software, which I can use both via (local) desktop shortcuts and remote scripting.

7. Snapshot and rollback performance is important, to minimise disruption to my working time.

8. Reliability is key: I will be entrusting my system integrity to this software, and I don't want to have to resort to image restore from my image backups as a result of my system being screwed.

OK, given all this I have been evaluating both FD-ISR and RBRx. Here are my considered pros and cons for each...

A. FD-ISR

Pro: FD-ISR has proved ultra-reliable throughout my evaluation, and seems a mature, well-designed product.

Pro: Snapshots can be refreshed reasonably quickly (about 5 mins on my test machine).

Pro: The data anchoring facilty fulfills my need to preserve data file changes across rollbacks.

Pro: Rollbacks to existing snapshots are quick and painless.

Pro: FD-ISR is compatible with defrag utilities and disk maintenance software (such as chkdsk), and is compatible with imaging software (though disabling/enabling of FD-ISR's pre-boot utility seems advisable while creating an image).

Pro: FD-ISR has comprehensive command line support.

Pro: Vendor support is very good.

Con: Given that FD-ISR snapshots are full copies of files and folders, snapshots take up lots of disk space (about 10GB each in my case).

Con: The increased disk usage significantly increases the amount of time it takes to perform my regular disk image creation.

Con: Initial snapshot creation is very slow (it takes about an hour). To be fair, in my scenario I dont have to create snapshots often (and, as observed above, snapshot refreshes are much quicker).

Con: FD-ISR doesn't seem to have a facility whereby I can selectively restore files and folders from a snapshot. this would be useful in some circumstances.

B. Rollback Rx

Pro: Overall, product reliability seems good (but I do have a reservation I report below).

Pro: Snapshot creation is very quick (it takes seconds, in fact).

Pro: Disk utilisation is much more efficent than FD-ISR, due to RBRx effectively only keeping incremental changes of data with its snapshots.

Pro: Disk images created with ATI (or other imaging software) are smaller than with FD-ISR. This is because ATI only sees the current snapshot. In my scenario, this is perfectly adequate (indeed, desirable). NB: Care needs to be taken to fix the drive's MBR when restoring an image.

Pro: RBRx does have the equivalent of 'data anchoring' (specified via its Advanced Settings page), and this also works well.

Pro: Vendor support is excellent.

Con: I find RBRx rollbacks very slow, overall. While a rollback only adds a minute or so to the (re-)boot time, after boot up and login has finished, RBRx synchronises the 'anchored' files and folders from the latest snapshot taken just before rollback. While this does correctly restore my data files to their latest state, the process takes almost 15 minutes, and I can't do any effective work until this completes. Indeed, since I have Outlook to autostart after logon it starts up with out-of-date message stores (because RBRx hasn't yet sync'd them) and I have to close Outlook and restart it only after RBRx finishes its sync.

Con: It's virtual drive mounting of snapshots is very useful, but I found it very flaky. For instance, when telling RBRx to mount a snapshot as virtual drive(s) it opens a window showing the tree of drives in the snapshot. At that time, Windows Explorer shows an unlabelled extra disk drive in its folder list, but that (virtual) disk is unusable. If I click on the snapshot name at the top of the RBRx's snapshot tree, the virtual drive disappears both from RBRx's tree view and from Explorer and I have to start over to mount the drives. If instead I click once on a disk in RBRx's snapshot treeview, the virtual drive goes into a usable state.

Con: RBRx is not compatible with defrag utilities or disk maintenance tools. To be precise, defrag utils will run but they will work contra to RBRx itself. I have not had the opportunity to test the effectiveness of RBRx's built-in snapshot defragger.

Con: RBRx has poor command line support. For instance, you cannot restore to a named snapshot (you can restore to the baseline snaphot, the current snapshot, or a snapshot nearest to a given date/time), and you cannot delete a snapshot. What I would like to do is to write a script which calls RBRx command lines to (a) delete the existing snapshot named 'Primary Backup' and (b) create a new one with the same name, and another script which restores the snapshot named 'Primary Backup'.

Conclusions

For my needs, FD-ISR is probably the way I will go. While RBRx is very efficient in its use of disk space and snapshot creation is a breeze, RBRx doesn't feel mature enough for me yet, restoring snapshots is slow, and command line support is weak. Overall, I will lose more working time with RBRx when using it for its main purpose (for me): snapshot-and-rollback around beta testing/software evaluation.

FD-ISR is mature and solid, and it does everything I want, but at the cost of high disk utilisation and lengthened drive imaging times. It may be that FD-ISR + Drive Snapshot will be the best combination for me, as DS, unlike ATI, has a facility to exclude folders from an imaging task - so I can exclude FD-ISR's data folder, for instance. I will test this in practice as soon as I can.

 

ANother great post!

@Pv Surfer;

Check Yuor messages: I have sent some info from Horizondata addressing your question about RBack and ATI which may help

Cant post here as lifted from personal e-mail.

I have also sent e-mail to Terabyte with some questions and hopefully will get reply soon.

What will probably steer me away from ATI is the series of problems users seem to be having with USB devices.

I have :
USB extra HD storage
USB wireless mouse and keyboard
USB Flash memory keys
Palm Pilot
Printer
Use USb for digital camera
All working flawlessly at the moment.

All of these seem to?may have some issues for ATI

Cant comment on other imaging apps

Also seems many "boot disc" solutions will not recognise Usb drives.

Terabyte apps seem to have built in support for imaging, cloning and restoring with USB devices. However Terabyte may also need some adjusting of the MBR if RBack is being used. Good manuals available on the home page.

I HAve no experience with imaging apps other than Ghost in the past.

Any comments from any users? New thread?

Admin:If allowed I would be happy to post response from Horizondata re compatability comments about Rollback?

Regards
LBD

 

This sounds good but why not schedule images everyday?

I think they are.

Thanks,

Chris

 

See the comments re USB drives and ATI
Still sorting out which imaging app might be the best
Not happy with "incremental" images which just seem to keep chewing disc space?

Where are you what time is it? 2400H here and soon to bed

LBD.

 

I understand the USB issue. I would download the trial and try to see if you can see your usb drive using ATI boot disk. If you can there shouldn't be an issue. I understand the incremental issue as well.

807 am. Getting ready to eat breakfast.

Thanks,

Chris

 

Interesting report, spm, thanks again.

Acadia

 

On the 50% coupon issue, you might give Horizon Datasys a call and see what they can do for you on this. Remind them you heard about the program at Wilders forum. I am truly enjoying this program and I am using in combination with Image for Windows at this point. Although I have multiple partitions on my drive, I am just having RBRx monitor my C drive right now. Thanks for all the good point about the program.

Gary

 

It has been hinted by Todd of Leapfrog Software in the FD forum here on Wilders that this issue will be addressed in a future release. He wouldn't give anything away, but told us to look out for the next release in response to a customer query regarding the possibility of compressing the size of snapshots.

 

@Pete & huntnyc

So you're happy with Terabyte?

Looks good to me.

LBD

 

I have talked to my contact at HDS and he has been kind enough to offer one more 50% off coupon code. I'm pretty sure this will be the last one of it's kind so hopefully any users that were on the fence trying to decide will take advantage of this.

Posted with permission from HDS

"Here is a coupon that will be valid until Friday March 31 only:

50% discount coupon: CPN50PRBLX299
Valid for Commercial Licenses only (not educational) Maximum 4 licenses per
customer email. Here is the purchase link:
http://store.esellerate.net/s.asp?s=STR1472547315&Cmd=BUY&SKURefnum=SKU74625863885
Simply cut and past the coupon above into the shopping cart."


Thanks,

Chris

EDIT: I edited the link as it did not copy/paste correctly from my mail.

 

Thanks Chris

Gerard

 

Thanks for the update.

On my system TI 8 cannot image a RBRX partition.

So options appear to be TI 9.1? , Drive snapshot or Ghost.

 

What happened when you tried to use TI8 to create an image (did TI launch; did it go through the motions; did it error-out)? Also, which build of TI8 are you using?

Fwiw, the last time I tried Drive Snapshot (2004), its restore function didn't work for me!

~pv

 

or HDSClone (free iso download)

 

Unless I'm missing something, the problem with using HDSClone is that you need to have a replacement drive to clone to. Whereas with an imaging product you can store the image on a USB drive or DVDs until the day that your drive fails - at which time you buy a replacement drive and then restore your image to it.

 

With HDSClone you can backup and restore drives (partitions) with image files.