COMODO Time Machine BETA Released!

Tried this out in a VM Worked fine for a few days. Then yesterday I got a system configuration error VM is finished. Glad I still use imaging for the real system that always works.

 

@Pete

I have not delved deeply in this stuff much, and frankly don't really see the great need, other than I would love to be able to test applications such as firewalls that do require a reboot on my real machine to see how they perform. Right now I can restore an image in around 5 minutes, so it is not really inconvenient. But the whole idea of snapshots like vm has is so very appealing and could be used in so many situations I have only scratched the surface of.

I am too busy working on different things right now to give it a shot on my raid array, but perhaps when my current projects are finished I will have the time to break things a bit and see what happens.

Thanks for the respones.

Sul.

 

Yea, nothing like vm snapshot, but actually pretty good for a real system.

Does not matter I guess as the beta would not install onto my array.

Sul.

 

I'm having a few issues in CTM

Check disk(chkdsk) firing off during reboots repeatedly,
after the last chkdsk I wasn't sure if the snapshots were still in tact.
This happens now if I create a snapshot or jump into my baseline OS
snapshot.

 

Do you get an "Improper shutdown, ckeck disk" message? I had this with EAZ Fix too, but not with Rollback... From the research i 've done, this was a very often issue with older versions of the EAZ fix/Rollback family, to the point that devs had given a 1000$ award for whoever managed to track the problem. Apparently one reason that causes it, is unexpected shutdown, causing some corruption to the program's sector mapping, specially while you do snapshot defrag. But i am sure it's not the only one, because it happened to me too without doing anything "abnormal".


After having used EAZ Fix/Rollback for some days now, i think i will go without. I also noticed a bit of system slowdown. Very little, but it was there. I also migrated to Win 7 x64 RTM since yesterday and i like the automatic defrag (which is prohibited if you have such programs installed). I think i will stay with images from now on (Win 7 can do entire system image in some versions too).

As an idea it's good, but, i don't like the restrictions and the fact that as they say, it's like running Windows on another OS , the program itself.

 

I've just completed testing of Auslogics, O&O and Windows defraggers on a Comodo Time Machine installation without issue. Rebooted in between each defrag successfully and loaded pre-defrag and post-defrag snapshots at the end of the test without issue.

Cheers
P.S. Had to physically disconnect a Brother USB printer (which has a built in card reader) prior to installation.

 

The defragmentation with 3rd party tools, isn't absolutely forbidden. BUT, it can cause issues with Rollback derived programs, that's why it is not RECOMMENDED, which means, you can defrag, but, if at some point, you run out of luck and neither your Windows nor your Rollback derived program boots, don't blame the devs, you were warned.


See here what the Rollback dev says:

Also:

 

A new beta is there.

 

well once this is released, i can finally move onto a free version of rollback rx basically

 

Very cool.. I hope they fixed that nasty chkdsk on reboot issue.

 

I hope they will implement the exclude disks/folders option soon. It is just so impracticable to exclude all your data drives.

I would not use this technology for data backup (just plain old fashioned syncback on an external harddisk), it is great as a replacement for system restore of Windows. Thing is they have to provide the exclude disks/folders option for this to work well.

@SSJ 64 bits (when? )

 

Am I right in thinking that this:

"* CTM is NOT compatible with any disk utilities including disk encryption utilities such as COMODO Disk Encryption"

...means that if you're running Truecrypt on your system CTM will not work at all?

 

It,s alreday there.

 

What the exclude option of Time Machine or SSJ using an 64 bits OS? (sorry for the unclearity, reading back it looked like when Time MAchine would be available on 64 bit, but that was not my question)


Thanks

 

@Aigle/others

Does Comodo Time Machine allready provides the exclude directories and folders option (not the synchronise option).



@SSJ

I know, just trying to clearify something, By the way 3 - 5 years will require a lot of creativity from your side in posting LUA + SRP + Sandboxie + etc.

 

I mean now you can now exclude partitions/ drives.

 

Thx they listened.

 

is ther any timeline of approximately when this will be released out of beta?

 

Working ok on my play pc, Aigle thx fo rthe info (excliuded two drives and one partition of C drive, right from install)

 

Good to know!

 

Some more questions then..

So I broke my raid 0 array apart. I have been creating lots of image files lately and eating gb up pretty fast, so my 2 x 750 drives are now individual. This of course gives me the option to use CTM. I have tried it out, but found it somewhat slow.

For example, creating the first snapshot (a copy of the baseline), then installing a firewall, rebooting and making the second snapshot was fast. Then, choosing to go 'back in time' to the first snapshot (on reboot) took perhaps 10 minutes to load the snapshot.

Is this normal? My system is approx 7gb large, with macrium images being approx 3.1gb. I understand that the CTM is making sector maps, and the OS is on top of the CTM so it does not 'see' the data from other snapshots although it technically exists.

If I have 100gb on my primary partition (and no other partion of the 750gb), and I make a snapshot, is it possible that data written by snapshot A is capable of writing data to a sector that houses snapshot data? Or is the CTM driver/etc responsible for monitoring what sectors are already 'used'. This is why the technology seems to be called 'slow' for hdd performance?

What should one see, lets say with a 10gb OS disk, when restoring snapshots for load times?

How much hdd performance degredation is there exactly?

Finally a little story. I went to a LAN party last weekend. Played some CoD etc. Anywhoo, I had just put my macrium image on my primary drive, and have SD installed. Throughout the day, the file grew in size to something like 79 gb (the SD file). I am not reclaiming much, and there was not data written to reclaim, as the games are on another drive that is not shadowed.

Now, SD was posing some issues, I presume due to the very large amount of data it was monitoring. I was thinking here, perhaps it would be better to just install CTM at a time like this. Then I thought, since I use bartPE in ramdisk to restore my images anyway, why bother with either? I can restore an image in about 5 minutes.

What would the benefit be really in this instance? Speed wise, I can copy from drive B to drive A (both 750gb drives, matched) a 6.5gb file in 1min 22secs, so these drives are not really 'slow', yet CTM seems so slow. Am I just having an anomoly?

@Pete, you state that for absolute backup imaging is the way to go (I agree), but you also state that this 'techonology' would be faster when restoring snapshots. Am I just having an issue with snapshot restore speed, in that I should see things faster with CTM?

Questions, always questions.

Sul.

 

Sul,

I had experienced something simular, because in the first beta it was impossible to exclude data drives. When I tested it it took me also more then 10 minutes to fall back. Then I tried the synchronise and it took 20 minutes (because it first restores to the previous snapshot, then updates all the data partitions to the latest state).

Reason for me to ask whether they could provide an exclude option, which Aigle told me they had granted.

Plus side of CTM
I am now running it with the data drives excluded and it is fast see post https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=1564175&postcount=5900 both in operation and fallback (I even cut out all the temp files and desktop /data references to a "temp" partition). It is an excellent freeware alternative to Windows10 system restore functionality (yes no typo, it is way advanced than Windows system restore at the moment). Comodo

Down side
I have taken notice of Pete's reservation "when you stay within the bounderies of this technology prerequisites, it provides fast and easy system restore functionality".

I did some testing: some defrag programs, replace all data on the disk, which triggers CTM to warn you on low free disk space (those configurable defraggers touch at least 125% of the disk space used), also some partition managers trigger a MBR recreate, because they notice the MBR is 'changed' (the bootable code of CTM is stored in the MBR).

My conclusion
For last frontier OS+Programs fallback/recovery I still use traditional image/backup software with rescue disk. I asked Comodo to make the place where the snapshots are stored transparent (so the two technologies can be used together easily). I also think this technology is no replacement for raid 5 to protect data or an external backup data drive with for instance syncback.

When comodo would provide some partition manager software and defrager software with it (so non-techies are able to use it also), it could easily be the software of choice which brings fallback/recovery/disk management to the masses.

But when it comes out of beta, I will problably put it on the two XP machines, since it is far superior to windows own.

Regards Kees

regards Kees

 

is this beta stable? wuld it be reliable enuff on a real machine? any system failures or crashes for any of you?