Some questions about Rollback RX

I am talking about windows 2K/XP recovery console. As far as I understand any change to the hard drive that is not done in windows with the RB driver running would mess up the drive since RB uses what looks like empty sectors (when its driver is not running) for storing snapshots.

Just to clarify, is it possible that hawki's HD was 99% full since he had too many snapshots (that are too different)?
I always felt that RB's claim that it uses just 0.07% of the HD is misleading. It refers only to its internal sector maps tables, etc. In reality, there are no miracles -- every file that is part of some snapshot takes the usual space. Thus, the HD used space is the sum total space required by all files in all snapshots + 0.07%; whereas looking at the space occupied by the files in "My Computer" would only take into account the current snapshot.

So guys, what is the conclusion? Is version 8.1 reliable, or does it trash drives?

Also, any suggestions about alternatives that satisfy the requirements in my previous post?

Thanks,

Ben

 

I don't think that was the case. With file viewing utilities other than Windows Explorer such as Power Desk I could clearly see the "true picture" of my drive showing tons of free space and only the programs I had installed and files I had created. If Rollback had filled all the free space with snapshots its files were invisible to all external utilities and the amount of space it would have occupied was reported as being free. You couldn't pay me enough to risk using Rollback again.

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Ben, I believe as long as you don't change the RB-modified MBR (e.g., by running FIXMBR), there shouldn't be any problems.

Ben, you will never get concensus on that. For sure there are those who have had major issues with RB and those of us who haven't had any problems. There apparently are certain conflicts that can come about that can, as you say, 'trash drives'. I continue to believe those problems are related to defragging the drive (or meta-files) and/or anything else that attempts to modify the MBR.

 

nice post nostradamus

anyways, been using rollback rx ver8.1 for more than 2years and its been very very helpful to me since i download lots of crappy software from the dark side.

 

the way you post i guess you don't like rollback rx.....don't waste time if you don't like it. get another ISR software.

 

Ambient, fully agree with what you say. That has been my experience too.

PS, Silver, I participate on the Horizon DataSys forum, I do not work for the company and do not appreciate the suggestion that I might be a fanboy because I do (not at my age, anyway )

 

Ben, I think that you are spot on with your analysis here.

My experience says that v8.1 is reliable...but that is just on my rig and i would strongly recommend anyone contemplating using the software to take a full image first (as one should when using any software that gets stuck into the OS at such a low level) and then run it for a couple of days with snapshots set at Hourly (so as to be able to really see the effect of these in terms of disk space usage & using the snapshot defragmenter).

BTW, I also agree with Aaron when he says that you will never get consensus on the issue & that the majority of the issues are due to defraggers being used when they should not.

Cheers



Baldrick

 

Yup, but I'm sure there are also some other situations (such as a near-full system volume or other programs attempting to modify the MBR) which will bring about EF/RB related problems.

Afaic, the bottom-line to this (and all such discussions) is that any ISR program (including the highly-regarded FD-ISR) is vulnerable to conflicts/problems and therefore none of them should be considered a last-line of recovery (imho, only a disk-imaging product should be relied upon for that)!

 

Once again I fully agree with you on your final point...about disk-imaging (which interestingly enough is included in Rollbackk Rx v8.1).

 

I don't think that's fair to tell people to stay away from it when there are others who haven't experienced problems with this software. You can, of course, talk of your experience, but in no way does that mean others will be affected the same way. This is true for any software; there are users who suffer with poor installs or whatever, and yet, there are others who don't.

 

Apparently Silver has had some very bad experiences with RB, so his warning is understandable, even though I (and others in this forum) hold RB in high regard.

I completely agree with this and furthermore I'm aware that indiscriminate use of some registry cleaners can be another source of RB-problems. A co-worker and RB user recently experienced serious system issues immediately after running his registry cleaner and deleting all of the found entries without examining them! So while I use and value RB, I endorse and practice Aaron's "last line of recovery" advice.

 

New AyRecovery user here! Well that is rather disconcerting, considering the fact that indiscriminate reg deletion is the type of issue one expects to recover from with this multi-badged application.

 

Exactly. That is the same experience that I had. It would go as long as one to six months, then it would completely trash my partitions. I have 3 licenses of RollbackRx and it happened on 3 different machines over a course of a year. I have dumped it and am now happily using FD-ISR Pro and have been for over 2 years with no problems at all.

By the way, I did not try to defrag my drive or do anything unusual that would cause this. My drives are always less than half full.

Those of you who have not had problems, I wish you the best. My advice is to have a good and current backup image at all times.

Silver

 

Silver,

I'm a satisfied EF (RB) user, but if I experienced the RB problems that you have I'm sure I too would be posting negative feedback. However, as Jo Ann indicated, even the highly touted FD-ISR is not without its problems (as reported in the FD-ISR forum). So while I do make regular backup images of my system partition, I think that's an equally good suggestion for the users of any ISR program, if not for all Windows users!

Aaron

 

Hear, hear...the best advice to date IMHO.

 

Hi,

Thanks guys for all the replies. As you said a consensus regarding the reliability of RBx will probably never be reached. Anyway, I decided not to go with it for the mean time.

I appreciate all your efforts in helping me,

Ben

 

I have dumped the use MBR-changing ISR softwares, given the speed of the current imaging softwares.

 

This has been a very interesting thread especially since I just discovered this forum because of a related search for solutions regarding roll-backs and drive images.

A major concern of mine raised above in this thread is the issue about defrag causing problems. I use Diskeeper and have it set to defrag every time the screen saver comes on. I have been using GoBack since Roxio days and have stuck with Nortons last independent version of the program but thats getting a bit old and I figured a more current program would be preferable so here I am. As noted above in this thread if you run a defrag on a fairly fragmented drive you will lose all of GoBacks revert history. It has been my experience that using Diskeeper as I have described has avoided this problem in GoBack so it may well be a solution with the programs under discussion (First Defence and RollBack Rx etc) as well. One can only hope so.

Here is what my current regime looks like.

I use Acronis True Image to image my drive daily. I save these images on an external Terabyte drive which will allow me to keep apx 1 months worth of daily backups. Each week I image the entire drive and then have Acronis do incremental backups for the balance of the week (Sunday to Sunday). This regime is fine for most purposes but I am also looking to protect my data during the day but I do not want to have to do incremental backups to the eternal drive during the day. My solution so far has been GoBack.

What I am looking for:

A GoBack replacement that will enable me to get versions of saved files if possible (preferably multiple versions of the file as it has evolved) that were created during the day. GoBack does this each time I save a file but it does not appear that the other programs under discussion will. Is this correct?

I am also looking at individual file specific version creators/savers. I have downloaded but not yet tried 2 programs for this. They are FileHampster (a free version is available) and 12 Ghosts Backup.

I am also considering adding into the mix an on-line backup service, the 2 leading contenders at this point are Mozy and Carbonite. This will provide for a full off site drive image as well as on the fly incremental updates as files are created or modified. I would consider this as my last line of full defence since I am less confident with the on-line idea than I am with a hard drive backup that is in my physical possession.

Finally I use Acronis to image the drive to a portable external drive monthly and store this drive in a safe deposit box at the bank.

The above may seem like a bit of over kill but I am in the business of doing 3D graphics modeling and losing even a few hours of work is something I am anxious to avoid.

I look forward to hearing what you folks have to say on these matters.

PS: this is my first post to this forum and I am very glad I have found it.

 

HI Peter and thanks for your reply.

As noted elsewhere I do run defrags continuously besides I am not looking to replace True Image but rather am looking for a rollback program thats easy to use in the event of a recent (since my most recent daily TI backup) problem. Also I would prefer to clear the increments myself or at least after a few days rather than having it happen automatically at the end of the day.

I have looked at programs such as Outback Plus and an auto save program is not a viable solution to this particular need. The CAD program I use does not save seamlessly in the background. There is a definite and noticeable halt to all activity in the program each time a save is done. This interruption to the work flow is not something that I can live with.

Your last suggestion of Active Backup looks like it may well be just the ticket for my needs regarding access to versions of a file, I will download it today and give it a test run. Many thanks for this one.

 

Hello bgoodman4,

I (and my family) have been using Rollback Rx for more than a year without any issues whatsoever. While I use Drive Snapshot for disk-imaging with my personal laptop, my family prefers Acronis True Image because of its user-friendly GUI. Both DS and ATI work well in concert with RB.

I used Roxio GoBack for a few years and based on that experience I would say that RB is a far better IR solution for the following reasons:

- RB doesn't require a pre-allocated amount of disk space as does GB.

- RB snapshots consume much less disk space than those of GB.

- While both GB and RB increase bootup time, GB impacts system performance afterwards, whereas RB doesn't.

Fwiw, the 'real-time' backup programs that I've tried, including the original, Second Copy, did a good job of backing-up user files, but they were not capable of backing-up user preferences and settings because they can not backup registry items!

JA

 

Thank you JoAnn, my main concern at this point is the oft repeated issue with defrags. I guess you have not had issues with this as you indicate no problems. I have Diskeeper running constantly in the background and am concerned that the backup program will see defrags as new files and repeatedly want to back these up leading to a rapid loss of free disk space. If it were not for this issue I would begin using RollBack immediately instead of GoBack.

 

First let me voice my opinion that disk defrags are overrated and I question the 'benefit' of running DK (or any other defragger) continuously. Doing that has to certainly impact system performance and I have yet to see any real benefit. After upgrading from Windows 98 (using FAT) to Windows 2000 (using NTFS) I could no longer observe any meaningful benefit to defragging. So I question the published hype from the defrag software developers and have yet to see any independent tests which conclusively reveal true benefits of defragging (in an NTFS environment).

Secondly, you should be aware that Rollback Rx (and its clones) provides its own snapshot defragger/optimizer and since you are always working inside a snapshot a disk defrag is a complete waste of time (disk defraggers do not see the snapshots as they are not even seen by Windows). Therefore, the only time I perform (or suggest doing) a disk defrag is before installing or reinstalling RB.

 

Very good points, especially considering that the main reason I went to a continuous defrag regime was so as to not cause GoBack to lose its history. Since I will be replacing GoBack I no longer need to do this.

As usual the obvious is only obvious in hindsight.

Thank you both for your illumination.