Drive Snap: Drive Snapshot Frontend

If you want to experiment, try creating a .bat files, so you will keep the right command line when it's OK. Like :

start "" "c:\program files\snapshot\snapshot.exe" C: X:$computername-$disk-$date-$type --exclude:*.mp3 -G0 -W

 

Would it be possible for someone to repost the program since the links are all dead??

 

Hello folks,
i just need to Backup from Drives snapshot.I want to exclude $folder cause i m using FD-ISR. I can Restore from Hiren BootCD and also from Bootable Floopy.
From Hiren Boot CD the cmd prompt looks like R:\>
And from Floopy Disc the cmd looks like a:\>

Suppose i want to backup C: being D: the location, under the folder D:\>Backup\ and i want to exclude $ISR folder altogether.

WHAT WOULD BE THE CMD LINE :I M REALLY CONFUSED AS I CANT FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS ON THE OFFICIAL SITE.​

 

That Boot CD is illegal, as it uses the full version of some applications. This has been discussed here many time before. I suggest you use something like Ultimate Boot Disc for Windows.

File for Windows:

(1) Is the location of the DS.exe
(2) Is the location where you want your images stored
(3) Is your password
(4) Will make it so there is no limit to the created sna file size, do not this switch on FAT32

This bat will verify the images after creation, and empty the drives recycle bin before imaging. This will also allow you to add import registry entry (pointing to this .bat) that will add the option to image any partition from the context, in two clicks, using the .reg below.

The .reg file above will rename the "open" options used with DS to "Open Virtual Drive" and, provided it points to your .bat, allow you to do what I described above.

Commands for DOS:

C:\> SNAPSHOT C: z:\C-Drive.sna --exclude:"$\Folder"

Individual files can be excluded by --exclude:diskopt.sys (for instance). This causes DS to first search for the file to be excluded then exclude it, so no specific location is required.

 

I do not know if its illegal but their website is giving it for free.
Hiren Boot CD 10.4 is free for download:

Download Hiren Boot CD 10.4 ~ Link to Warez Software Removed as per TOS ~

I tried ur bat line didn't work and the cmd line didn't too ( Does the cmd line h' to be entered when i boot from the floopy.

 

All three of the files I listed work fine, so something else must be going on here. I have never used a DOS boot disk in conjunction with DriveSnapshot, but the commands there are the same as the ones used with a elevated command prompt, so I'll use that.

I just tested the command line I gave you in an elevated command prompt and it worked perfectly. I am not sure what you know about DOS, so I'll try to be as thorough as possible:

• At the command prompt type "dir" to see what files/folders are located there. You're looking for your system (root) drive where Drive Snapshot is located. If that is not the initial drive then you'll need to try others by typing "c:", "d:", "e:", etc. and repeating the command.
  
• Once you have found your system drive you need to be sure that you're in the root of that drive. Do this by typing "cd.." until you get to the root, $drive$:\.
  
• Then, your need to navigate to the directory where the Drive Snapshot ./exe is located. In my case is located here: C:\Program Files\Drive Snapshot\Drive Snapshot.exe. You'll have to navigate your dricve until you find it by using the command "cd" and then the folder name.
  
• After you get to the Drive Snapshot directory everything should work. Try the below, making sure to change the location of the created .sna file and you excluded data using my above instructions:

If the Drive Snapshot .exe is placed on another bootable floppy then the commands are a little different.

In this case W:\c.drive.sna is the location of your image file.

The command line structure for restoring partitions is as follows, with is the documentation of the Drive Snapshot website:

The complexity here is why I recommend UBCD for Windows, or any PE disc with a gui.

 

The cmd worked from crogram files\snapshot.exe
But i dont think it was able to exclude the $ISR folder. Please cheack the snapshot,

it started with the target 7450MB saving in D:\Drive\
The active snapshot i m is around 1.5GB i just restored by Drive Snapshot 5 hrs ago( i h' also installed few softwares, n i m guessing it would come around 1.7 GB): and h' started using FD and h' already made Secondary snapshot.
I tried changing the

to

Since Folder is just a name of any folder starting with $, like for Z:\ it has to be D:\

Am i doing something wrong, 7450MB would be around 7 GB and by DS it would bring it down to 4 GB. Finally i ran out of Disk space , since i h' only 3.13GB left on my D:
I think i m wrong somewhere may be the cmd for excluding is not correct...

 

That may be the case, because I do not believe folders are permitted to have special characters in their names. The dollar sign is a special character. I just used that as an example because that's what was in your original post. Why are you using that? My guess is there's no reason to.

For example, the bat file I use is below, with the password changed. Note the --exclude section. There are two entries there; diskopt.sys, and a directory called "temp". Entries are added to the exclusion list by a comma and tells Drive Snapshot that the exclusion is a directory by a backslash.

Drive Snapshot will search for the information you've added to the exclusion list for you. If you use the above .reg and .bat files I've provided for you then right-clicking on drive C:\ and selecting "Image Drive" will search for and exclude the data you've added to your list in c:\ only. The same can be said for any other drive you chose to image.

Double check name of the folder you want to exclude again. There might not be a need for the dollar sign. If the directory name truly is "$ISR" then you would use this command line to exclude it: --exclude:\$ISR. The backslash needs to be on the outside of the folder name because that is what signals Drive Snapshot that you are intending to exclude a directory and not a file.

Hope that help.

Nate

 

Thank you Nate for ur cmd lines, this time i got it.
This was the working lines:

Simply gave the entire name i.e, "$ISR" and it worked. No need for the backlash.

Instead of 7450MB it started backing 4408MB, which i think it worked. I'll try the backlash as well may be it will remove the $ISR Folder.

Although the $ISR Folder still was present, but the Secondary Snapshot was not, when i mounted on Virtual


Although i dont like making backups from cmd line, its only when i want to exclude certain directory like $ISR, it saves a looooot of time for me.
Excluding cmd lines were not their on the official website, how did u know about it. (Just curious)

Here do i h' to use the [--exclude:"\$ISR " ].

Thank you for ur help.

 

Guess i was happy too quickly. I had another problem i.e., although the cmd worked and excluded the secondary snapshot from $ISR Folder (although the $ISR Folder was not excluded completely: FD-ISR was running on the Notification Bar, and ISR Service.exe and ISR Monitor.exe was running too on the Process Explorer.
MAY BE THAT WAS THE REASON)
Later on after Installing FD-ISR i was not able to boot to another snapshot, let alone choose any snapshot before when the PC booted.

 

I suspect that the problem is that both products are trying to make use of VSS at the same time, but I can't be sure. I do know that both products are designed to take "images" or "snapshots of your drive(s). So, running them both at the same time seems very counter-productive. I even have to exit shadow mode when I create images.

In short, exit FD-ISR first. That just seems like common sense.

 

Hello,

I urgently need your help.

I am in search of the program *Drive Snapshot Frontend* from markymoo.

Unfortunately, the download link is dead.

Can somebody help me, please?

Many thanks beforehand.

Yours sincerely
bill

Excuse for my bad one in English.

 

Hmm, you are out of luck : the free version is almost useless, and the paid version is well protected and can only work on hardware where a key has been generated. The command line is not that hard and you surely can manage what you want without.

 

Hello MerleOne,

many thanks for your quick answer .

I did not know that there is a paid version. Why is the free version useless? Does this run only with a certain version?

The work with command line is not my thing .
And the screenshot from the Frontend looks very good. So I would have tested with pleasure once the free version.

Nice Sunday
bill

 

I can honestly say that Drive Snapshot is one of the best programs I have ever used. It is truly fantastic. It's small, portable, and extremely powerful. To get the most out of Drive Snapshot you need to know how use its command lines. You can read all about them here. There are also numerous threads about them; see here and here for a couple sample threads. As always, don't be afraid to search around here for help or as questions when you have them. There are plenty of people that are here to help.

I can give you an example of the command line structure used in Drive Snapshot, using the configuration I use as an example. It is a .bat file, which simply mean that is issue a sequence of commands (in sequential order) to Drive Snapshot using the command line built into Windows, typically DOS (or in Vista or Seven a DOS-based "emulation").

(1) - This portion of the bat file is not needed for basic Drive Snapshot operation. It does, however, come in very handy. It enables me, along with a custom .reg entry to add imaging abilities to my drive's context menu and lets Drive Snapshot differentiate between the drive I want to image and the other partitions I have. This is a precursor to any Drive Snapshot commands. I can go more in to detail on this later, if you're interested.

(2) - This is the path to my Drive Snapshot executable file. This needs to be in quotes.

(3) - This is a part of #1. It takes the results from that command and feeds them to Drive Snapshot in a way that it understands.

(4) - This is the location of where you want to store you created image (*.sna) file.

(5) - These commands tell Drive Snapshot how to name the created image. In this instance it is names in a way that is easy for me to differentiate between other files. The result would be something like this: C-07-14-2010-1702.

(6) - These command line switches tell Drive Snapshot how to act and how to treat the file. In the above example, -R tells it to empty the recycle bin first, -T tells in to test, or verify, the image after creation, -PW= allows you to specify a password for mounting or restoring the image, -L0 specifies the maximum size of the image (-L0 means no limit), -o tells Drive Snapshot not to generate a hash file, and -W disables the requirement to press any key while starting Drive Snapshot jobs from a .bat file.

It is a lot to take in all at once. Just take in pieces at a time, have fun, and don't forget to ask questions.


Feel free to PM me if you want to for any help you need.

Nate

 

Hello Nate,

many thanks for your help.

Of course I found the homepage 'http://www.drivesnapshot.de/de/commandline.htm'.

The features and experiences of the users well read. As a spoilt Windows user I could fancy that even more people the programme would use, if it would have this Frontend from markymoo.

I had already made a backup, restore not yet.

The programme should work either automatically or by hand by click on a Desktop-Icon. And afterwards the programme should send an email and the PC automatically goes down.

This is my dream...

Yours sincerely
bill

 

As one spoiled Windows user to another, I highly recommend using DS from within Windows ...and for the times when you need a removabe boot disk use a WinPE boot disk (such as the free UBCD4Win), then navigate to snapshot.exe and run it.
Very easy and very reliable!

 

Aaron Here is correct; a bootable disc (or usb) drive is a very important part of my toolkit. Please consider this, especially if you are going to use Drive Snapshot. You are able to use it with any custom windows based bootable media because it is entirely portable. Here are some directions of exactly how to create a UBCD4Win (Ultimate Boot CD for Windows).

 

Hello experts,

thank you for your quick answer .

Some questions after a hard day. In my company there is a server, a clone-server and 5 workstations. The server has 2 hdd. One hdd is called C:\ and the other T:\ (with an icon like a pipeline). I think, T:\ is the network? However, Snapshot under Windows shows me c: and d:\. How becomes from d:\ afterwards t:\? Must I rename the network or release?


Beforehand many thanks and good night
irritating bill

 

I do not believe Drive Snapshot supports imaging of network drives. The below section is from the site:

I do not know why there would be emphasis placed on local if it supported networked drives.

 

I think snapshot supports network drives using sysinternals psexec command line. Can't find the link right now but I am almost sure it is so.

 

I believe you are thinking of this.