Backup with ShadowProtect Recovery CD

I have been using Sp IT for several months now, and have had my first problem. During a restore, either the software (ShadowProtect) crashed, and destroyed the partition, or the partition self-destructed, and crashed the program. anyway long story short, I have recovered the data, but when I try to mount the volume, I get the error that the next volume is not available. All of the volumes are there and intact, at least I hope they are in tact, but I am unable to mount the volume. has anyone encountered this before, or know of a utility to reindex the volumes?

 

I totally agree with appster's answer. After you have restored the image, it's too late to be concerned about verification. If you are going to verify the image I believe it should be done immediatly after creating it.

JA

 

Did you try to restore your SP image a second time? Are you able to restore the MBR and Hidden Track? - that would restore your partition table.

 

I am unable to get that far, when I try to load the image file, it errors with the next file in the volume is unavailable. I am looking for a utility that will allow me to repair the image files, or some hidden function inside of ShadowProtect that will allow me to do so.

 

Peter,

So what you are implying is that it does make sense to verify the restore either by the crc method or a read byte-by-byte pass. I agree.

thanks,
Ron

 

Hmm...I may be wrong, but I thought I'd read somewhere (here probably!) that SP carried out the crc check on the image prior to restoring it. I'm still not sure how you would carry out a crc check on the restored partition, bearing in mind that most imaging software excludes pagefile.sys etc and just use placeholders in the image itself.

I could see how you could do a file comparison by mounting the image as a virtual drive and using a file comparison utility but all verification processes I've come across in imaging software ('til now ) have only operated on the image file itself.

I'm always happy to be educated though .

Graham

 

Thanks Jo Ann for rerunning the tests.

My humble comments:

- Based on your particular hardware setup with the particular VistaPeE setup of SP, SP was slightly faster than DS. Given that the backup speed difference is rather marginal and that the test setting is very limited (one hardware configuration/environment), I'd hesitate to find the results statistically relevant. In particular the drastically different comparison results shown by another user who used a standard Windows PE installation indicates that a lot more testing on different hardware in different testing environments would be needed to make a conclusive statement.

- When recommending one imaging tool over the other, it is important to point out all pros and cons that are important to us. It's true that in your testing environment SP slightly outperformed DS; it's also true that the recovery procedure worked equally reliable for you (nothing worse than a non-working restore, right?); and obviously, for you and many other people a pretty GUI is an added bonus. And yes, creating your own PE installation CD can be a PITA (though I've also heard about people who love the manual tweaking ).

Now, if someone asked me for my personal preferences, I'd point out that one of the striking features of DS is it's ability to run on any live Windows machine without installation. SP can do that, too, but it will cost you (IT Edition). Another benefit, and this is obviously also my personal opinion, is the better reachability of DS developers. In the past, I've made several comments/suggestions via the contact e-mail available on the DS homepage; not only did DS immediately respond to my mails, but they also implemented the suggestions I made and (within a few days) corrected the errors I reported (they were related to shadow copies made by Vista). With the e-mail of the main developer in my bookmarks, I can always immediately get in touch with the right guys if needed. In comparison, I waited a long time to get my hands on SP, and all their support could tell me was that Vista support would be available when it's available (obviously that was before 3.0 came out). This lack of individual user care was what made me look for an alternative to begin with -- and that's when I found DS. I admit, I love tinkering with command line tools, and here again DS shines in comparison to other similar tools. There are so many parameters I can adjust and tweak that I hardly ever use the DS GUI. Have I mentioned that I am a laptop user? I love the ability to use a hash file of my full image backup to create subsequent differential backups. It means I can keep the full image somewhere stored on my server at home, while still creating differential backups when on the go. To my specific needs, this is a must-have feature. Finally, I am allergic to any kind of copy-protection that tinkers with my system. DS only requires a serial number that is branded inside its executable. SP uses a third-party protection (Silicon Realms Armadillo) which is something I don't like to have on my computer.

So, to come to a point, I think both SP and DS are very capable tools. We can continue comparing them and I am sure we'll all have a lot to say depending on our personal preferences and experiences. But for a general, conclusive statement, we'd need a lot more data.

 

doctorow

The best way to get SP support is via the StorageCraft Support Forum here.
It is very fast and helpful.
As you say,it really depends on personal preferences.
I certainly know the one I prefer between SP and DS.

 

Hairy Coo, regarding the support I was trying to get back then, it was through their forums; I'd point you to their response had they not removed the old forums and with it all older forum entries.

 

But you have to understand they are not being deliberately vague or unhelpful-at that stage for whatever reason they probably just weren't sure enough for operational reasons to make a definite pronouncement.
I have been very impressed with their support,they try their best,but dont always have all the answers.

 

Yes, I found this reference to it from grnxnm from which I would guess that the crc check is carried out on the stream of data being restored which is why it is reported at the end. It is a double-check that the file being restored is sound but is obviously not a check on what has actually been written to the disk.

It's certainly handy to know before you start using a restored image that there may be a problem .

Graham

 

That's not good (this is the first and only report I've read of an 'SP failure'). I hope you can find a utility to help you recover... Just curious, did you verify the image after creating it?

 

Regardless of the particular image-backup program, imho the only verification of value is the one performed immediately following image creation. It's at that time that something (constructive) can be done about a failed verify process (ie.,create another image that does verify). What's the point in verifying when restoring, when the backup image is desperately needed for recovery?

 

Those are some very interesting test results. One thing I would respectfully request is that users do not alter the StorageCraft ShadowProtect .ISO file. Aside from the legalities, this will cause a nightmare when it comes to supporting our product. You can easily accomplish a similar objective by placing the binaries you wish to execute upon a USB drive (thumb drive, etc) and running them from there, within the booted recovery environment. No need to change the ISO itself.

For DS users who wish to improve their bootable CD environment, I suggest that they obtain the WinPE Vista OPK directly from Microsoft and use it to build their own CD. Needless to say, they may not distribute the ISO which they create - this would require a license agreement with Microsoft.

 

In fact, ShadowProtect always, automatically, verifies the content of an image file during a restore operation.

 

I also have a question :
When can I remove the SP Recovery CD ?
When the main menu of SP appears on the screen ?
Or do I have to wait until I boot back in Windows ?

 

Yup, users really need to try out all of the relevant options on their own equipment before making a purchase decision. All of these products have free trials so the expense is testing time. If your backup needs are simple then you can often find a decent free solution.

From a technical standpoint I find DS's ability to dynamically inject its filter driver, without reboot, to be an interesting thing, however the technique that this requires (hooking the IRP dispatch table of the driver below it) can be quite risky and is explicitly recommended against (and not supported) by Microsoft. For the desktop/home user crowd, the occasional deadlock/BSOD/corruption/etc which could occur due to such an injection technique may not be a big deal, but to the enterprise crowd (our primary audience) this would be unacceptable, and therefore we implemented our filter driver using supported techniques. This doesn't mean that DS has issues - Tom claims that he's been able to implement his hook without problems and perhaps this is the case (hopefully so).

As far as command-line tools go, you may find it interesting that all of ShadowProtect can be controlled via the command line. The mounter, the imagine engine, and even the installed NT service (ShadowProtectSvc.exe - via its Automation-compliant COM interface), etc, all can be controlled via the command line. In fact we provide additional tools which are not actually necessary parts of the product, explicitly for the benefit of command-line tinkerers (such as our image.exe command-line tool which allows you to easily enumerate and manipulate dependent image file chains).

That being said, if DS works for you, stick with it.

 

This depends on which environment you choose to boot (as the ShadowProtect CD includes two environments, the "Legacy" environment which is a Server 2003-based WinPE distro, and the "Recommended" environment which is a Vista-based WinPE distro). If you boot the Recommended environment, then you can remove the CD as soon as ShadowProtect comes up. If you use the Legacy environment then you must always leave the CD in the drive. The Legacy environment is designed to work on machines with minimal RAM and hence it minimizes the amount of binaries which are loaded into RAM, and therefore the CD must remain in the drive for the environment to function properly.

 

Well said, grnxnm!

 

Then how do you explain the incident reported in posts #51 and #55?

 

Unfortunately there's not enough information for me to say, immediately, what went wrong. Some of the information in those posts is ambiguous too (at least to me), which doesn't help.

I suggest that the user contact StorageCraft support to diagnose their issue.

Off the cuff I'd say that it sounds like they're missing an image file that's part of the chain of image files that they're trying to restore, but without more information it's hard to say. Another possibility is that they selected an image file to restore and then specified the target of the restore to be the volume which contained that image file. In this case, the volume would be nuked and the restore would fail and subsequently they wouldn't be able to find their image file. This has happend, to my knowledge, at least once, and we have added safeguards to 3.2 to prevent users from accidentally restoring over the volume which contains the image that is being restored.

 

grnxnm: You mentioned 3.2. Is 3.2 out? If so, will it show up as an available download (providing we have paid for the annual support) under our account at StorageCraft?