Recently I had a conversation with @DavidXanatos encouraging him to develop a program similar to Shadow Defender. He said he knows how to implement a Disk write interception on Sector Level behavior, though it seems a lot of work for him and time. What do you SD users think?
Many here would like that however I don't think it would be worth his time and money as the market would be quite small.
I agree with @digmor crusher. There's a very small "nerd" market, that would not make it profitable. I think it would be better to use an imaging app you know and trust and just reimage when needed. It['s not quite the same, but if you make daily images on a schedule you should be pretty well covered.
I gave up SD years ago because with Sandboxie and a good imaging program, it just isn't needed. Acadia
Deep Freeze is a good alternative to SD. Imaging programs will get very fast in the near future, restoring a system will probably get as fast as a reboot. As a matter of fact I can restore my system in 2 minutes right now, so why bother with a program like SD? Obviously this applies to single users, Deep Freeze is ideal for institutions…
This is why Wilders needs a emoji system. I agree with this 100%. I would go further and say an anti-malware app isn't needed either, for the same reasons.
Nope, I need a SD successor. I think I shouldn't have asked in the open forum, I was looking for backup to persuade and convince David See, my hardware isn't powerful enough to restore images that fast and on every reboot.
I agree with everything said in the thread, especialy that about imaging and near future, but i do not agree to that it is for "a small nerd market". I think it has a larger user base than that. The world is much larger than Wilders. And about near future, that will take a while anyhow and, a program like SD would still be faster besides having the possibility to save data. So i have thought about and hoped for the same as Mr.X. If DX would create something like that, i would by it, especially if it could survive reboots until one decides to end the containment.
For me personally I have always liked the ability to click on the SD icon and run something new in it more or less straight away. So quick and easy. I agree that there are more SD users than people think.
Of course there are more users than "nerds". It is no wonder that 2 such programs, Toolwiz Time Freeze and SD, was developed in the eastern hemisphere, they love and use such programs. When one reads articles on the net many do reviews of programs and they use SD and such for testing of the program before writing. Etc etc. So there definitely is a user base that can economicly motivate a development. Furthermore, AI will be more of a threath in the future so virtulization will be needed. If SB-P would have a feature one could activate within it which turned it into something like SD, besides all what it is now, it would be very attractive for many. That is easy to see. Regarding work for DX, that would only be initially, the rest would be maintenance a couple of times per year. And, some day he will stop developing SB-P as he does now and only do maintenance for it, which leaves him with only maintenance for mentioned programs/features, which gives him less work than he has now with the almost frenzy like development. So Mr.X, keep talking to him, you would do thousands of people a service including DX since he would definitely benefit from it.
SD saves time. No need to reboot / restore, just shut off the computer. I wish there was an alternative that worked easily with win 11. I agree there are more SD users than people think. Maybe not enough to make the project worth David's time. ??
No need to. That's why I created this thread for him to see what others here think about a SD successor. @DavidXanatos read this thread please.
SD is just beautiful simplicity. However for many Sandboxie users it has become like a modern washing machine in that it comes with loads of settings and most people only use 2 at most.
I'd like to see this happen. Would definitely try it out. Be nice to have another option for light virtualization.
Remarkable points about creating a SD successor: 1. Disk write interception on sector level is something David's DiskCryptor already does. This will provide transparent encryption of data. And he knows how to implement such behavior. 2. David needs time to start developing such a tool because there are other priorities.
Interesting. I think we are a bunch of individuals here at Wilders and at MalwareTips that are willing to help out with a launch of such a program by doing YouTube videos about that program. Besides "speading the word" at different forums on the net.
Ultimately its the question of available time and other projects. Currently finishing Major Privacy has main priority.
i wont compare SD and SB like this. SD is on top SB Because of system vs apps. SB might for some users enough, but its not all mighty.
I have tried SD out today in a VM and it seams it does not store all new data in the diskpt0.sys at least copying a 4 gig file to the VM did not make it grow. Probably it uses that file to store meta data and new data are directed to unused sectors on the partition. All in all the driver must be quite complicated and have the ability to understand NTFS directly.
@DavidXanatos Take a look at this article: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/configuration/unified-write-filter/ I really don't know whether SD utilizes UWF or not, it might be helpful for you to understand though. Edit: I believe SD does not utilize it in any way because UWF is only supported on higher Windows SKUs: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/configuration/unified-write-filter/#requirements
As a massive fan of Shadow Defender. I'd personally buy (not rent) a piece of software that truly replaces Shadow Defender. To me, Shadow Defender, Sandboxie (Classic not Plus), virtual machines and Drive Snapshot are as natural to me as breathing air. Sadly though, there isn't much a market for these pieces of software from normal every day home computer users, so developers would solely rely on us for revenue as we are the true "nerdy", "geeky" people that know about and appreciate such software.
I believe that if David makes it open source on GitHub, and I am sure he will, then the successor will get much more visibility.
