New Drive Snapshot build released.

i installed under windows , but it does not use any drivers or services
it's safe backup online , under windows ,and work with windows during the backup?

to restore it's a pain , it's very slow , and the only way is from floppy ?

 

it should work safely.
i usually leave the computer alone for the 3-4 minutes it takes to image the system.

you can restore from the desktop and it will reboot and do its thing.
for the restore speed, i find it is fast, maybe a tad faster than Windows 7 own imaging utility.

apparently, you can build a CD if you want to load from a CD.
or you can use any Win PE cd to give you a GUI, find the DS app and run it.

 

thanks
in the homepage there is

but does it work really ? no issue?
i know paragon and acronis and they are fast

 

works fine for me.
just launch DS from Windows and set it up for next reboot.

make sure you select autostart for both Success or Failure.
if you select No Auto-Start and your keyboard is not recognized you're gonna have
to do a hard restart after DS finishes the process at boot time.

 

thanks but during the boot xp ,or w7 load files i guess they are locked , really i found it risky

but drive snapshop work like paragon ?
i mean it doesn't make a raw image ?
and when it restores a partition the files location are in the same place ?
for example i moved all my mp3 in the more slow part of the partition

in a old signature i can see your Drive Snapshot (w/HIR) , what's the meaning , drive snapshot has a hir

 

it can take RAW images per the image below.

as for my signature you are mistaken, i just started using DS 2 days ago.

as for your other questions i am not an expert.
maybe someone else will more knowledge will stop by later on.

http://img806.imageshack.us/i/image1na.jpg

 

thanks
i'm just a bit scarry , i will make a backup with paragon and test drive snapshot
really can't understand how could restore a partition like w7 or xp on boot

 

works!!!
but in boot time restore is slow , i guess because work in dos

 

For those of you who use Drive Snapshot, a new build (dated Mar 2, 2011) is now available for download.

Aaron

 

thanks
sadly there is not history about the new build

 

True; that's been an issue for a long time. I've asked them to provide release notes (see below), but unless they get more requests I'm afraid it's not going to happen.

I believe this particular build fixes a bug reported by Panagiotis (pandlouk) who found that DS was not saving all 32 sectors of track 0 (there may have been other changes as well).

Aaron

 

thanks Aaron
there is not forum for snapshot

how can i receive info about new builds?

i sent an email too

 

mantra,

While there is no official DS forum, a number of Wilders members are DS users and we try to post relevant DS information as it becomes known. All in all I believe we do a pretty decent job of DS coverage (and Tom Ehlert should recognize that)!

As I suggested (in my email) to Tom, a simple text file accompanying each new build which lists the build-changes (bug-fixes, enhancements, etc.) would be a welcomed approach.

Aaron

 

Yes, this version includes the patch for sector0.

Panagiotis

 

What's stored in sector 0?

 

thanks

yes what are there in 32 sectors of track 0 ?
mbr ? part of them ? disk signature ?

 

not sure about drive snapshot, but a lot of programs boot into memory. I boot virtual floppy, cd, and other images (img, ima, iso, vhd, ...) with grub boot loader all the time. I run DS from various mini-windows or winpe environments (that's faster), but I could boot it from the included bootdisk.img in which case I would end up running DOS from ram with Drive Snapshot for DOS available for restores. I think the only Windows files (or files on the C: partition) to have been accessed at that point would be the boot files (e.g. boot.ini and ntldr for xp or grldr & menu.lst for grub), and they aren't locked even during normal Windows use.

When I used Acronis, I think it gave the option to create a pre-boot menu and environment directly on the system partition. This environment would consist of a bunch of files on C:\ that you could boot from instead of loading Windows (and a change to the MBR or boot.ini too). I suppose those files may remain locked (but if they needed restoring, then you were screwed anyway because the boot Acronis environment wouldn't work), or maybe Acronis created a pre-boot ram disk on the fly, copied the boot files to the ram disk and then booted from it (so it would run in memory leaving the system partition fully accessibly). Either way, Windows wasn't loaded so Windows files didn't get locked and restores could be made without issues.

 

thanks a lot!
is more fast to load bartPe or mini-windows boot cd ?
where can i find how make a mini-windows or find a mini-windows boot cd?

and how can i add drive snapshot to Win7PE_SE Release ?
i would like to add total commander too

 

I use Make_PE3 and it's great

I also added DS and TC to it!

 

mantra,

Once you have your WinPE iso, you can use any iso maker (I use UltraISO but there are also free ones out there) to simply copy snapshot.exe 'into the iso' and then burn your PE disk.

Actually, since snapshot.exe is a truly portable app, you can place it just about anywhere you wish, navigate to it and run it (but I can't help you with TC as I don't use it).

Aaron

 

thanks
thee are some iso to download
are they enogh ?
i add with ultraiso drive snap and totalcommander with ultraiso, can i do in the iso files?

but these iso to burn are slow to boot up

i bought Active@ Boot Disk http://www.ntfs.com/boot-disk.htm could i add drive snapshot and total commander

 

thanks Aaron
do you know which kind of data are stored in the 32 sectors of track 0 ?

 

Wikipedia is usually a fairly reliable information source...

 

First, building a mini-Windows or BartPE can take a lot of work, at least if you want to do it right. You could try using a free tool called IMG_XP to do it, but there are no guarantees it'll work out of the box. I've probably spent weeks struggling with various WinPEs, mini-windows, and plugins for them. The easiest way would be just to download a Windows 7 Recovery Disc, use it to launch command prompt (or explorer if included), browse to your Snapshot.exe (or just copy snapshot.exe to your backup drive for portable use), and launch it from there.

You can probably find a tutorial or tool to install the WinRE disk to a USB flash drive (e.g. unetbootin, U_XP_SET, WinToFlash, MultiBootISO, PeToUSB, FlashBoot, ... depending on the OS).

If you are still interested in using BartPE or mini-Windows, then below are my 2 cents:

In my experience a small windows XP loads faster than BartPE with XPE plugin* because it doesn't need to install all the drivers on the fly as with WinPE systems. Also, they are easier to configure once running because you don't need to bother with plugins; just install the drivers and software you want (e.g. drive snapshot) after your boot to this windows - it will maintain registry changes across reboots whereas WinPEs reset the registry each boot.

In either case, it's usually faster to add a small, separate partition to your hard drive, "install" your mini-XP or BartPE to it (or copy your iso or vhd to it) and boot from that partition rather than from a USB drive (although some modern USB drives have very fast read/write speeds). I wouldn't run your recovery disk from a CD because you cannot write to a CD which makes things less convenient. You also need a copy of Windows XP to build your BartPE disk.

*About the XPE plugin for BartPE: It makes BartPE more like XP and should enable you to use Windows VSS service with Drive Snapshot (VSS backups are faster in my experience than non-VSS backups), although it may take some configuring to get VSS working even with the XPE plugin. However, XPE also adds size to BartPE = longer boot time. YMMV.

About mini-Windows:

--First you need an extra copy of Windows XP installation CD. You may want to look for the types of "performance" editions that some people put out (they are around 300 MB in iso size). You can also use nLite to (further) strip down your XP image (remove windows tour, extra languages and keyboards, games, etc.)

--Second, you can either add a small partition to your hard drive and install the a mini XP to that or you can install it on a virtual disk:

Mini-win on a real partition: Just pop in the installation CD or USB, when prompted choose the new small partition as the target for your new windows, and let it install. The installer should automatically update your boot loader and boot.ini file (in case of XP, not sure about Win7) so that the next time you boot your computer it will ask you which OS to boot (you can open boot.ini with notepad to edit the boot menu). This is how I added a small (2.5 GB) 64-bit Windows XP to my laptop. I think there are also ways use grub to install Windows on a USB drive.

Mini-win on virtual disk: I have several of these too (still testing), but they can be complicated to build although IMG_XP tries to automate the whole process for you. If you want to try, then take a look at this thread (warning: it's convoluted). Don't bother importing your IMG or VHD to a USB drive, just boot it from your system partition, or use another partition on your local hard disk (safer). I used the instructions in that thread to build several small 32-bit Windows XP systems; one is 1.5 GB VHD (xp.vhd) with SP3 and .NET framework included. The other one is 600 MB IMG (xp.img) with SP2 only that I built using IMG_XP. I couldn't get the internet or VSS working on that one, but it's about as small as you can make a useful XP.

About grub boot loader: Grub is ridiculously easy to add to your system on XP. All you need is to download grub4dos and copy grldr from it to you system drive's root (e.g. to C:\ ), create a text file called menu.lst to C:\ as well, and last add the following entry to your boot.ini menu:

add it on a new line after the main (default) boot option, for xp the default entry is usually something like:

Also, change the timeout in boot.ini to something like 5 or 10 (seconds) - it's 30 by default.

Now you can choose to load the grub boot menu at boot time. To add entries to this menu (menu.lst) you can edit it with notepad. Here's an example of menu.lst (all referenced img or iso files need to be contiguous (defragged) and located at C:\ or the root of another local partition, may also work for iso/img located on USB flash drives if you computer detects them at boot):

 

thank you so much

WOW man

i 'm printing your reply and i will take your advise!!

thank you so much pajenn !!!!