Drive Snapshot vs Image for Dos question?

Can Drive Snapshot be used to make backups from a bootable floppy disk or bootable floppy image the way IFD can? (as far as I can tell the Drive Snapshot's Disaster Recovery Diskette is for recoveries only. I can boot to BartPE, but that's not instantaneous).

Further details for the curious only: The feature I love most about IFD is that it loads instantaneously from a virtual floppy image (img-file), and you can put it on a MS-DOS boot disk with IFD.INI and AUTOEXEC.BAT configured to automatically backup your system partition without needing to go through any options. Can that be done with Drive Snapshot too?

My IFD.INI (example from my Dell desktop):

and AUTOEXEC.BAT:

 

I don't think so. You need the Windows environment to create a partition image or to mount an image. From dos, only the restore features are available.

 

Yes, Drive Snapshot can be used to create and restore disk imaging using the bootable disk. That's the beauty of having an imaging program that is a single exe, and is portable. You will need to remember to copy the exe on to whatever boot media you're using. Once you have a DOS prompt all the command line options should work just the same as in Windows. Try something like this:

A:\Snapshot.exe SNAPSHOT C: X:\$disk-$month-$day-$year-$hour$minute.sna -R -T -PW=password -o -L0 -W

Update: Apparently I was wrong here. It seems that with 1.39 it is not possible. I remember doing it though. (Perhaps it was with a beta.) I'll have to research this more.

 

I think only a set of line commands is available under DOS environment. Only for restoration.

 

I've tried to make a backup from DOS using the latest version of Drive Snapshot. Attached is a pic of the error messages I get, plus the commands it shows me to be available. The image is from a virtual machine so that I could use capture it using PrintScreen, but I've tried this on a real computer too with a real floppy diskette, and experienced the same thing.

 

Just as I said, only restore is working. You have to use a BartCD (WinPE) if you want to backup something offline.

 

@pajenn~ snapshot.exe is a Windows program so it will not execute in DOS. While I realize that DOS boots much faster than Windows, when you think about the time it takes for a backup/verify (not to mention the nicety of working in a Windows' GUI), I really don't think waiting one minute for WinPE to bootup should be considered a deterrent!

I hope you don't take offense, as this is just one old guy's opinion...

 

@Aaron Here ~ Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of Drive Snapshot and don't mean to dis it, although IFD, ShadowProtect and Macrium Reflect are also excellent - they each have their own strengths and weaknesses, and sometimes one of them just works better or faster on a particular machine than the others. I usually run Drive Snapshot from Windows XP directly, but if it could be used from DOS for backups and if those backups were as fast as from Windows XP or PE, then I'd probably do that instead.

At the moment I use IFD on my desktop for fast backups at boot up because the load time is virtually zero and the backup speed on that computer is about the same as with the other programs from Windows or BartPE.

If I want to make a backup from Windows I use Drive Snapshot on both my desktop and laptop because it's small, fast (fastest on my laptop in VSS mode), and doesn't interfere with anything or add any always-on services or other bloat. And because of its extensive command line support I often automate backups with it as part of general maintenance (e.g. monthly ScanDefrag = chkdsk, trash clean, pagedefrag, mydefrag monthly and drive snapshot backup. i leave them to run overnight, at the end of which ScanDefrag shuts down the computer automatically).

If I boot to BartPE/XPE, then I use either ShadowProtect or Macrium Reflect. I like the latter because of its fast incrementals, but I trust ShadowProtect the most, especially when I'm upgrading hard drives or otherwise suspect I might need a hardware independent restore. Acronis Backup and Recovery 10 Workstation (corporate product), might be the most powerful tool of them all, but I had trouble setting it up for BartPE.

Naturally I'd prefer to use only one imaging program that did it all, if it existed. For example, if Snapshot for DOS could do backups I'd drop IFD. If it could do inrementals based on file size and time stamp comparison (the faster, sloppier method), then I'd drop Macrium Reflect. My understanding is that the author of Drive Snapshot could implement fast incrementals easily, but chose not to because it's less reliable than file content comparison based differentials. Still, I wish he'd offered it as a non-default option.

Anyway, I started the thread to double check whether or not Drive Snapshot could be used for DOS-based backups not just for my own knowledge, but also so that I would not mischaracterize it if asked or during discussions of backup software.

 

Too bad even the new Drive Snapshot cant make backup in DOS. Pajenn i think the cmd line is for the cmd interpreter.
I really hope the author would integrate the backup function to work in real DOS mode too.
I use image for DOS on my other desktop n DRIVE SNAPSHOT on my other Desktop. But the Bootable Floopy for IFD is terribly slow compared to Drive Snapshot.
But boot the same thing from a CD they are quickest to boot to recovery environment.
The beauty of these two program is unlike ATI ,SHADOW, PARAGON etc etc they do not require dot net framework and non of its processes runs in the background. They truely justify the word " EFFICIENT " ......