Anyone heard from HDS - re Rollback?

ErikAlbert keeps the scores up-to-date :

FirstDefense-ISR + Acronis True Image Home = excellent
FirstDefense-ISR + IFW/IFD = good, but MBR-issue

RollbackRx + Drive Snapshot = excellent

EazFix + Acronis True Image Home = excellent

 

Good man!! I'm glad someone is keeping score

 

It baffles me that we have these competitions in this forum, like Acronis vs. Terabyte, eazSolution vs. LeapfrogSoftware.
Sometimes I get the feeling that people express themselves kind of harsh because they regret their (expensive) choice. Who knows.

I have made my choice and accept the disadvantages of my choice. I know for sure that if I made a different choice I would have to accept different disadvantages. It's that simple. It would be boring if everything was perfect.

I'm happy with what I have and I don't chose to be unhappy with what I don't have.

Let us respect other's choices.

 

The "raw" option in Terabyte images with RB has been discussed & afaicr it has worked.

Drive snapshot is a great tool, just a slightly tricky interface for me and no partiton management options cf BING.

 

Please allow me to ask some questions, because I think that Drivesnapshot has lots of potential.

Have you created disk images from outside Windows, for example after booting bartPE?
Did you create the first image when EF/RB was installed with the baseline and did you make differential images after creating some snapshots?
Did you create the first image before installing EF/RB and then a differential image after installation of EF/RB?
Did you verify that all snapshots restore error free?

So, just to be sure, you didn't use the sector-by-sector option, right?
If you didn't do all of these actions, do they sound reasonable to you?

 

Thanks nexstar for the info. You've made an old man very happy!!
Lee

 

I don't think I have, to be honest. I've always imaged from within Windows but I have certainly restored using bartPE and UBCD.

Depending on the system, I've normally had differentials pre-dating the Rollback installation. On my laptop I did do a full image prior to the RollBack installation (just in case!) and then differentials subsequently.

See above

I take a lot of snapshots and, no, I haven't restored and verified them all. However, I did do a specific test which I reported in another thread where I restored an image containing three known-to-be-different snapshots and I verified that they were all ok and different.

No, all of the above was done without selecting that option. I did create an image using that option as well but I didn't get around to restoring the image as the non sector-by-sector option had worked ok.

I have done most of them but, yes, they sound perfectly reasonable

I've just brought back from the dead an old laptop of mine which I may set up to do some destruction testing and also look into the speed impact of Rollback. I've never really noticed any slow down myself but that's probably because my PC spends more time waiting for me than vice versa!

 

My laptop just got a similar notice, it's installing XP now...
Thank you for your answers and the time to take the tests.

 

nexstar~ Would you please describe the DS Restore method used for the above test? In other words, was the restore initiated using DS within Windows or from a bootable CD/Floppy. If the latter, would you please provide the details? Also, which version of DS did you use? ~pv

 

sorry OT but:

Agree
I dont consider reenbling the preboot an issue ( if that is what you refer to)rather, an idiot proof serendipitous failsafe.

 

Not in my world guys.
Users need to be warned, when they use IFW/IFD, that the MBR needs to be fixed by enabling the Pre-boot in FDISR, because the restoration wasn't complete.
This isn't mentioned in the FDISR Manual either.

 

Indeed you have to enable the Pre-boot in FDISR, which is a software that has nothing to do with IFW/IFD.
So the restoration happens in TWO places : IFW/IFD and FirstDefense-ISR.

With Acronis all required actions happen inside True Image Home : restoring the partition and the MBR and there is no need to change FDISR afterwards. That is the difference.
So the restoration happens in ONE place : True Image Home

 

I'd always been under the impression that DS could not restore the system drive from within XP but, having had a look on the DS site, I see that it can do this by unmounting the drive. I've never tried this and so would have used the recovery cd from DOS or my UBCD, probably the former. The DS site explains how to create the various recovery media. I just created a floppy version and then used Nero to create a bootable cd from that. UBCD is probably the way to go if you don't want to mess with any command line switches.

I used version 1.37 dated 'Sep 5 2006' which I think is still the latest download version. Interestingly, although the DS web site looks like it doesn't get tended very often, I contacted the DS support back in September as I was trying out ShadowUser and I got a DS error when I tried to image the drive with SU installed. They responded within 2 hours asking for a log output and within another 12 hours I was sent a new version which fixed the problem. So, from my experience, they do seem to be at home and listening

I'm hoping to do some more tests with my sacrificial laptop this weekend (work keeps getting in the way this week) and so will repeat what I've already done and try out some of the more radical possibilities.

 

Thanks for getting back to me re your success with DS. Of course, I will be very interested in your further testing of DS insofar as it's abilty to capture and restore all of Rollback's snapshots (intact).

 

When the Raw option is used, all sectors are backed and not just the used sectors. How does this affect the size of the final image (is it a lot bigger) ?

Does DS suffer from the pre-boot problem ?

The main web page for DS says the system partition CANNOT be restored from within Windows, which makes sense to me as I don't understand how it can unmount the partition and replace files if it's in use by Windows.

Ref: http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/

 

That's obviously why I was under that impression then. I'm sure you must be right. I was reading this page the other night and as it didn't specifically exclude the system partition then I thought I might have missed this feature. In the cold light of day, I can't see this working either....but I'll try it anyway just to make sure!

 

MBRtool might be helpful in that area, when you test. I noticed that DS doesn't get the right sectors when it retrieves the MBR from inside Windows. Probably a eazFix/Rollback RX trick...

 

I see no reason why DS coudn't initiate a restore from Windows whereby DS would reboot the system into DOS to continue the restore process. I say this because ATI can initiate a restore from Windows whereby it reboots the system into Linux to continue the restore process.

In any case, using DS' Raw mode has to result in a much larger image and take a much longer time because it copies every sector of the disk. ATI can do this as well, but I have found that the process takes too long and consumes too much storage to be used on a regular basis for backup!