ShadowProtect 3.1

Same here. Have enough already. And since IT version has much more features and flexibility, that about does it for my interest in it at all.

Maybe someday they'll share the joy, but for now, home/Users are confined to lower end and features of SP.

No Thanks, especially at the price of IT.

 

EASTER,
You can do backups/restores with the recovery CD of the Desktop version. The IT version has no additional features (except backing up a live system from the CD and unlimited use on any machine you own/attend)

 

I use SPD manually from the CD also, since incrementals and scheduling are not important to me. I only use imaging software for backing up my OS(s) and applications and not for my continuously changing data files. However, I keep SPD installed on my XP partition because in order to use the HIR feature during a restore, the image must be of a partition that has SPD installed on it. If I did not keep SPD installed, my images would be worthless if I had to move to new hardware caused by an unexpected mother board failure.

 

Quite so-whats all the fuss about installing it-not an important deal one way or the other.

Any one who has any knowledge at all about SP would know that using the IT version would just be plain ridiculous for Home users,a silly thought to even mention it!

 

Hairy, even if they give arguments to decide not to install,its ALL IMPORTANT for them anyway,so a some respect please.

 

At Storagecraft you can read all the differences between the several packages,the IT-Edition is priced at normal level,corporate users are not interested in prices only in reliability---they buy a product and not a price--

For home users the desktop edition is more then enough i guess.

 

Peanuts for these guys as they spend millions on IT related stuff[hardware,software,staff,etc.]

 

when restoring C: the "Specifythe restoration screen" gives various options.
For a normal restore is there any reason to check "Restore MBR ? and what about "Restore Disk Hidden Track" ?

Also is it normal that making an image using the CD ( vista option) is a bit slower than the installed version ? The Stagecraft version is even slower

 

Hi Peter

could you clarify ? disk signature, track 0 ? is this the same as restore disk hidden track ?

So far seems very stable and well built. Compression ( unless I'm doing something wrong) -is much poorer than I am
used to but these days drives are big enough for it not to matter. The Storagcraft recovery option is much slower than the Vista recovery - which surprised me.

 

Further to Pete's info--yes the two options should be always checked on restore,as they were originally backed up.

The restoration CD using the Vista option should be faster by a factor of about 12% or more according to my experiences.

Depending of course on your computer power, I am achieving around 76mbps with the disk.

Cant really think why the CD is slower in your case,most unusual.

The standard default compression should be used,but should have thought its about the same as TI.

You should try the incremental backups-lightning fast within seconds, as only the sector differences are backed up

Good that you are trying it out!

 

Yes you are correct - I have double chceked image sizes and the normal Acronis is the same as the normal SP

So Far I have only played with the ISO disk and the vista CD option is what I am finding is much faster than the Storagecraft option. Both CD methods are slower than when I last installed the demo and ran from within windows. Perhaps something else has changed. Everything is so system dependent. On one old machine all I get is 15mbps, others 30 and others 50. I have a new machine still under wraps which will hopefully get up to the 70's.

As to incremental backups - no thanks. I only bought SP for a bit of fun. Acronis
9, 9.1 and 10 will still be used to make full images and when I decide which machine to activate with SP I will probably do just the same.


Just to show how hardware dependent all this can be. Lap top with 19 gig of data - SP 3.1 disk took about 15 minutes to image to an external drive.
Acronis 10 took just over 13 minutes to do the same. Something is not right. when mounted the Acronis image could be read no problem. The SP mount froze 3 levels down. I suspect the external USB case is the problem but who knows ?

 

Well dont forget at the least the HIR feature which may help you in transferring to a new computer!

 

That is probably the last thing I would ever use. my machine count is currently 8
(in service) with at least that number given away or dumped - and I have never transfered a system to a new machine from an old. I like to start out clean with each new project. As I install I take images to allow me to go back and correct and when the base installation is complete a final image is made. I know that transferring is popular but it just doesn't make sense to me. It would be like buying a new car and not getting that new car smell.

 

If you have both Acronis and SP installed at the same time on one computer,theres your problem immediately!

SP normally wont run at all with ATI installed

Generally BSODs occur,but if you are able to get SP to function,its obviously been degraded in every way including performance.

edit;the other problem is using USB for transfer,definitely going to slow things down-well documented.

 

Not at Same time - Using CD only. Any way the real problem is with the mounting of the SP image - can not read below the first few file levels. Will try another external later - which is almost certainly the culprit.

By the way perhaps the Acronis SP problem only applies when both are "installed" because I have tried another machine with Acronis 10 installed and using the SP CD had no problems with either program.

There is nothing fundamentally wrong with SP 3.1 or Acronis 10 per se both are great programs but the program hasn't been written yet that will not fail or have problems with some combinations of hardware. Even FD-ISR when active had its problems on occasion - although I do believe those found fault disappeared in the middle of the night and returned several days later as conversos.

USB - yes slower but on this machine on this occasion with 19 gig of data Acronis as actually faster and more importantly the data could be read without issue from the mounted image. using another drive, another cable, e-sata rather than USB etc I would not be surprised at different results.

Checked today with another external USB and the image took 3 minutes less than previously and the image mounted with no problem.

 

I have finally installed SP3.1 on one machine and made a couple of full image back ups. For some reason the speed when installed is slower than when using the emergency disk - does this sound reasonable ? I have no need for all the fancy stuff and am quite happy to just use the CD But I did think that the installed version would be faster and not slower

 

You never need to format the target prior to restore. That would be an absolute waste of time as the contents of the target (including its file system) are overwritten by the contents of the image during the restore operation.

Yes, you should use HIR if you are restoring an image of an OS volume to a different machine.

 

The installed version is performing I/O using the storage stack of your installed operating system. The storage stack implementation in Vista is noticeably faster than the storage stack in Windows 2000, XP and Server 2003, which accounts for some of the improved I/O performance (if you're doing backups in the Recommended Vista-based WinPE environment). Also, your installed storage stack contains additional layers which are not needed within the recovery environment (such as our snapshot drivers, antivirus drivers, etc).

 

In your case, where you install ShadowProtect but never actually use the installed ShadowProtect (you do all your backup from the Recovery Environment) there are only three binaries that the installed ShadowProtect always runs and you can easily disable all three of these. Just remember that if you do this you must not use the installed ShadowProtect.

1) You can change the ShadowProtect's service start value to "Disabled" so that it's not running. Your images of that OS (with the ShadowProtect service disabled) will still be migrateable with HIR.

2) You can switch off the ShadowProtect snapshot driver (so that it doesn't load/run) by changing the following Start REG_DWORD value from 0 to 4:

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\stcvsm\Start

3) You can switch off the ShadowProtect mount driver (so that it doesn't load/run) by changing the following Start REG_DWORD value from 1 to 4:

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\sbmount\Start

After you make these 3 changes and reboot, there will be absolutely no portion of ShadowProtect running on your system, but images of your system will still be migratable using HIR.

 

Thanks - I think I have pretty much got it figured out now. I will not be using SP
installed. Using the acronis 10 CD I imaged 88 gig in just under 50 min. Using the SP CD ( vista based) the same data took 33 minutes.

 

Good speed

 

Regarding the conflict when using SP and ATI products utilizing Snapman-True Image and Disk Director.

StorageCraft have confirmed that "when you boot the recovery environment CD, ONLY the executable binaries on the CD itself are loaded and run. None of the binaries on the hard disk are run. Therefore there's no potential interop issue if you do your backups from within ShadowProtect's booted CD Recovery Environment"

Therefore if you wont to run both or trial SP whilst ATI is present,this is possible,as long as SP isnt installed,but only run from the CD.

Thanks to Longview for originally suggesting this.