Backup with ShadowProtect Recovery CD

Hi there,

Creating a backup with ShadowProtect recovery CD, there is a choice between "Start networking" or "cancel".

Can anybody explain the difference between the two possibilities and which is the most commonly used?

Thanks in advance

 

If you want to backup to a NAS or network drive, then youll need to click "Start networking" and configure the necessary settings.

If youre just using an external/internal drive or DVD/CD drive, click "Cancel".

 

I have a single home computer and I always click "cancel", but it doesn't make any difference for me, which button I click.
"Start Networking" usually fails on my computer and lasts longer, but backup or restore are not affected by this.
ShadowProtect is my only software, that didn't fail yet.

 

On the subject of backing up with SP's Boot CD, how does one use it to create a sector-by-sector backup? ....after designating the partition to backup, I only see a choice to make a full or differential backup, not a sector-by-sector backup.

 

Jo Ann,

SP is already doing a sector-by-sector backup. From page 21 in the user guide...

Are you referring to creating an image where you backup the sectors not in use as well as the sectors in use? That can take time.

 

Pete/Brian~ As a Rollback Rx user I need to be able to backup everything (including RB snapshots) on my C-partition. I now do that using Drive Snapshot in Maintenance Mode (after first booting up with UBCD4Win). Since SP includes a complete boot CD, I just wanted to see how it compares to DS for my backup needs.

Taking your suggestion Pete, I did find that by going into "Advanced", I was able to check "Include Free Space". So this evening I will see how SP compares to DS re the resulting image-size and time-to-completion.

JA

 

Jo Ann,
Previously had success imaging Rollback with SP,but you have to collapse the Rx snapshots into the baseline to ensure your Rx image will be up to date,as SP will only image the baseline,not individual snaps.

You will find however that Rollback probably will need reinstallation after a restoration of the SP image containing the baseline,as the Rx mbr code would need replacing.
Everything else should be fine.
edit; I enabled the MBR and Hidden Tracks restore option in SP

 

That sounds to me as if you performed the SP backup from within Windows, not from its boot CD. If you are telling me those are the results when using SP's boot CD and selecting "include free space" that wouldn't say much for SP, because DS recovers my C-partition in its entirety (with all RB snapshots intact) when used as I described!

 

SP CD vs. DS w/UBCD4Win

As mentioned above, I decided to compare ShadowProtect and DriveSnapshot each backing up my entire C-partition, including 5 Rollback Rx snapshots. I have done this numerous times with DS using its "Maintenance Mode" (after booting up with UBCD4Win) and have successfully restored those DS images on several occaisions. However, with all of the 'fanfare' SP has been getting on this forum, I wanted to see how it measured up to DS.

My C-partition is 15GB of which Windows XP reports about 10GB free. However, Windows doesn't 'see' the 5 RB snapshots, which according to RB's Snapshot Management screen consume (in total) about 800MB.

I first booted up UBCD4Win and backed up my C-partition using DS in Maintenance Mode. I used DS' standard compression-level (no others are offered).

Time To Completion (DS): 20min 52sec
Resulting DS Image Size: 10.51GB

I then booted up the SP CD, selected it's "Include Free Space" option and its recommended (default) compression-level to again backup my C-partition. The results amazed me!

Time To Completion (SP): 10min 20sec
Resulting SP Image Size: 10.98GB

SP accompished the same backup in half the time that DS took (and the image-size wasn't all that different)!!!

Thinking that I may not have selected SP's "Include Free Space" option, I repeated the backup making sure that the option was indeed selected:

Time To Completion (SP): 10min 16sec
Resulting SP Image Size: 10.99GB

Now the big question is, will the SP image restore my C-partition perfectly (with all 5 RB snapshots)? Before attempting a recovery, I need the following info from Peter or any other SP guru... when restoring the image (using the CD), what do I do 'to tell SP' to also restore the MBR & Track 0?

 

"Holy moly Batman" (er, Batgirl), as a staunch DS user (along with RB), after seeing your incredible SP - DS results I have got to give SP a go!

I'm quite anxious to hear if you had success in achieving a full recovery of your Rollback (C) partition using your SP image.

 

I assure you that you are no more anxious than me to find that out. However, my family 'dragged me away' from my PC for an outing on what was a beautiful Sunday. As a working wife and mom tomorrow starts another hectic work-week, so the restore attempt will have to wait until Sat.

Batgirl

 

you should'nt surprised cause some guys make lovesongs on it for years on end,and voice their praises on any opportunity they get.

must admit that there is some truth in it !

 

Here is a question for you: Have you checked if you get optimal harddisk performance with your copy of UBCD4Win? When I use DS, I always found the speed of my harddisks to be the limiting factor (with a thoughput of around 55-60MB/s). There is simply no way that any other application, including SP, could do the job twice as fast, because my harddisks wouldn't allow that.

PS: Looking at your numbers, it's obviously not the case (or you have a very old computer). If you need 21mins to backup 15GB of data (the entire disk sector-by-sector), that would mean you have a throughput of around 12MB/s. This is *really* slow. Either your hardware (CPU, disk) cannot give more, or your copy of WinPE doesn't support it properly (check drivers).

 

Hi doc,

The PC in question is a Dell Inspiron laptop with a 2GHz PentM, 1GB RAM, a 5400RPM 60GB HDD and the size of my C-partition is slighly over 15GB. I've been using DS to backup my system partition by first booting up the PC into a WinPE/VistaPE environment (for reasons discussed in a prior post).

I have found that DS typically takes 18 - 22 min (depending on the size of my RB snapshots and perhaps the degree of disk-fragmentation) to create a full backup of my system partition (using Maintenance Mode). Obviously, differentials are much quicker.

Since SP boots up into Vista PE and created a full backup of the very same C-partition in half the time as DS, I fail to see why my PC components/drivers would be affecting DS and not SP!

JA

 

Jo Ann,

Have you tried backing up your C: drive in Maintenance mode with DS while still in Windows? It would be interesting to check the speed and also to see if the restore was successful. You may like using boot CDs. I don't know if that is your preference.

As an aside, imaging and restoring with DS in DOS is twice as fast in one of my old computers if you load UDMA drivers. This obviously doesn't apply to you.

 

First, SP uses Vista PE while UBCD4Win uses Win PE. But even if SP still used Win PE (like older versions did; actually, SP's recovery environment used and still uses an officially licensed version from Microsoft, which is not the same as your self-made Win PE/BartPE/UBCD4Win), it would still be like comparing apples and oranges, unless you made sure that both come installed with the same driver set and configuration. There are folks out there who spend a lot of time optimizing their Win PE configuration.

Like I said, on a moderately modern computer (I have a T7500 @ 2.2GHz, 2GB Ram, 7200rpm hdd), DS can easily max out at the speed that your harddisk gives you. And that is all you can hope for.

 

Brian, as a matter of fact I did a Maint Mode backup of my system partition from within Windows XP when I first tried DS. Unfortunately that resulted in only backing up my current Rollback snapshot. I subsequently read posts by appster and markymoo to the effect that in order to backup all EZ/RB snapshots (with DS) it was necessary to first bootup into DOS or a flavor of WinPE (so for me it's not a preference but a necessity)!

 

Doc, your point is well taken. I can easily add snapshot.exe to SP's boot-disk iso (using UltraISO) and then re-burn the CD. Then I can run DS from within SP's VistaPE environment to see if that materially changes my SP vs DS results (above). I will do that this coming weekend and report my findings.

 

Excellent. I am looking forward to hearing of your findings!

 

SP vs. DS (Revisited)

Because of doctorow's (rightfully) questioning the results of my first SP vs DS comparison in this thread, I have re-run the comparison. However, this time I compared ShadowProtect and DriveSnapshot by running them from the same boot CD. Of coarse I backed up the same C-partition to same external USB2 drive.

The size of my C-partition and its free-space is approximately the same as when I last ran these tests. I ran SP using its "Include Free Space" option and DS using its "Maintenance Mode" option (in order to capture all of my Rollback Rx snapshots).

With both SP and DS now on the SP Boot CD, I booted up into the VistaPE environment and backed up my C-partition using DS in "Maintenance Mode", and DS' standard compression-level.

Time To Completion (DS): 11min 39sec
Resulting DS File Size: 11.01GB (.sna = 10.34GB, .hsh = 0.67GB)
Time To Verify Image: 9min 29sec

I then ran SP, selecting it's "Include Free Space" option and the standard compression-level to again backup my C-partition.

Time To Completion (SP): 9min 53sec
Resulting SP File Size: 10.79GB (SP doesn't create a separate hash file)
Time To Verify Image: 5min 53sec

Well the results are a lot closer than before, so it's now obvious to me that DS runs much faster with the VistaPE Boot CD than with UBCD4Win!
Still, SP was somewhat faster than DS in creating the image and considerably faster in verifying it. Good going SP!

However, the jury is still out on a restore comparison. If I get the chance later today I will restore both images and report back with the results.
------
PS. As I have 2 partitions on this drive, but only restoring the C-partition, I would like to have Pete (or another SP guru) verify Pete's 'recipe' for restoring the MBR and Track 0 (with SP).

 

Jo Ann,

Wonderful work because I had been debating about getting DS but I have been using SP for quite a while now. Here are my restore steps that work for me and if I remeber correctly Pete has mentioned that he had followed these I think, stand to be corrected.

Boot from SP CD and go to restore wizard and then choose the image to restore and then right-click on drive C and teel SP to Delete Volume. Right-click again on what will be shown as Unallocated and click Create exact primary. In next step i think MBR and Track 0 should be auto selected for you. And then tell it to go ahead with restore. i do this a lot and it never has failed me so far. Hope it works well for you and please keep informing us with your cpmarison. Wonderful job.

Gary