Bug in Drive Snapshot's current build?

I use DS' Maintenance Mode to produce a raw-backup of my system partition by first booting into UBCD4Win and then running a copy of snapshot.exe (residing on my external backup drive). In the past, DS always compressed the backup image, even in Maintenance Mode. Well, I recently installed the current build (14405) and was very surprised to find that it did not compress my Maintenance Mode image!

I'd really appreciate it if another DS user would perform a similar backup and confirm this...

 

I've never used this mode before. I'm creating the image now and will report what I find.

 

I am not sure what to think. I have a 50 gb c:\ partition and the sna file created was 44 gb.

 

n8, just to make sure we are on the same page, did you run the backup from outside of Windows?

 

Indeed I did. Although, in maintenance mode, there was no difference for me in size between running it in and out of windows other than about 100 meg.

 

Thanks n8. While your resulting image was only about 12% smaller than the total size of your partition you nevertheless got some compression - I didn't get any (nada)! Out of curiosity, what OS are you running?

 

Windows 7 64-bit. Keep in mind that DS does not currently exclude the swap or hibernation files with Windows 7.

 

Right - but I'm using WinXP 32-bit, so how does all of this compute?

I guess it's time to try and contact Tom E.

 

Good luck with that. He doesn't return communication attempts anymore.

 

Does this build of DS compress a normal backup image?

 

I am not sure to understand : you are referring to Windows Safe mode or a snapshot mode. If it is snapshot, how do you activate this mode ? In UBCD4win environment, you can launch the full snapshot ?!!

 

I believe so Brian - but that really doesn't matter to me as I hardly ever create 'normal' images.

 

Merle, I'm not sure I understand what it is that you don't understand.

Maintenance Mode is found in DS' Advanced Options screen and is selected to perform an all sectors (raw) disk-image. I need to do that from a 'Live OS' so I boot into UBCD4Win. Since DS is a portable app, I keep a copy of snapshot.exe on my backup drive, so after I boot into UBCD4Win I execute the app from my backup drive.

Does that answer your questions?

 

Thanks for the clarification : the trick is that, IMHO, you should never use the "maintenance mode", unless you want to handle the image in a very specific way (looking for deleted files mainly). Because "empty" sectors are not really empty, they are full of data that can take a lot of space in the image. Hope that helps.

 

I'm a Rollback Rx user and RB writes its snapshots to Windows 'unused sectors', so in order to competely image my system partition (including RB snapshots) I have to use DS' maintenance mode.

 

As a sanity-check I just used a somewhat older DS v1.39 build (with a June 2009 date) and it compressed a maintenance mode image of my C-partition to about 70% of its total size!

 

OK, I see.

 

Is there any problem with using June build ? I remember a chat with snapshot developer where he told me never to use a newer build unless I had a specific problem with it.

 

Merle, it's difficult to know what problems (if any) were fixed because the DS website doesn't usually list a change-log from build to build. I downloaded and tried the Oct 2009 build just for the sake of having the 'latest & greatest' version, but in my case that turned out to be an unwise move (as reported here).

 

I also do the same often, I mean installing the latest version, just because it's new....

 

Yeah, it's natural to think that newer is better, but as this example proves, that's not always true....
....I now have a post-it note on my PC: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it".

 

Hi guys,

sorry, I can't reproduce that here. not from BartPE; neither from inside windows

both in Windows, and from BartPE, in maintenance or normal mode, it compresses (as it should).

I don't doubt what you see, but if I want to fix this, I must be able to reproduce that bug.

to make testing faster, please run from the command line,
saving partition C: to X:\test, maintenance mode

c:>snapshot x: X:\test -a
...
- read 325/155057MB, written 239MB 0%

abort with Ctrl-C

you see, that it has read 325 MB so far, and compressed this to 239 MB

c:>snapshot x: X:\test -a -c0 (nul)

will disable compression

c:>snapshot x: X:\test -a -c3 (nul)

will enable compression

could you run this also for large or small partition
from inside windows, or from BartPE

btw: the only way to get no compression that I can think of
would be full drive encryption. is that the case ?

strange ...

please reply also to te@drivesnapshot.de

 

Hi guys,

The current build of DS seems to be working fine for me - re compressing the image in maintenance mode.

Aaron just for kicks why not try downloading another copy of the exe and see if the problem persists?

Tom, is there a page on your website with change-logs for each build? - if not, that would be very informative for DS users! Also, what is the ETA for v1.4?

Jo Ann

 

Well, it seems I can't reproduce this either -- DS' current 1.39 build compressed my last full and differential maintenance mode images!

I'm at a loss to explain why the compression algorithm didn't 'kick-in' the first time I used this build, but it's working properly now.

Please accept my apology for the false alarm.