EAZ-FIX free today

In order to capture ALL RB/EF snapshots, imaging must be done by booting up into another OS environment (which can be WinPE or the like). If you create the image from within your normal Windows environment, you will only capture your current snapshot (if that's ok with you, that seems to work).

Edit: My comments (above) are based on my experiences with ATI, DS and Paragon, but I should mention that I recall markymoo once stating that he somehow used IFW with Phylock to successfully image RB/EF (presumably with all snapshots) from within Windows!!!

 

I dont know if it is very risky, maybe it is. I´ve done it once or twice and nothing happened (good or bad). But it is pointless to use a defragger other than the one provided by EAZ-FIX (unless you uninstall EF first). They have explained very clearly and pedagogically why, and once you read the FAQ it is not hard to understand the concept of the software and why a defragger is useless, why they are a waste of time. External defraggers does not do anything, they can not do anything to the file system while EF or its clones are installed. Simple as that. So forget all about defraggers other than the built into EF.
If anyone think that a external defragger does anything benefical while EF is installed, they have just not understood what EAZ-FIX is all about. If a external defragger is so important to someone, they should not get involved in the concept of EAZ-FIX or its clones.

 

Pete, I'm missing the point of your analogy. Unless you change your OS, it seems to me that Graham's method works fine for any other system changes, and without any more hassle than just performing a restore.

 

you removed my question where did it go lol.

 

Hi all,

I think the right problem is not GAOTD one day limitation but will EAZ servers validate this license during activation process next days?

Regards,

MaB

 

I just downloaded EF thanks to Meriadoc. If appster is correct about Markymoo being able to fully image an EF-managed Windows partition from within Windows, I would sure like to explore doing that with Drive Snapshot (which I happen to use).

Markymoo, if you happen to read this, would you elaborate as to whether or not this is doable?

 

Have to agree Franklin.

My setup of Sandboxie, SD, FDISR, and Drive Snapshot/Paragon seem to be sufficient for my system. Can't think under what circumstances I would need any more at the moment. Sometimes it's too much..
Will leave EF to the more adventurous, but appreciate the link.

 

As appster rightly says, it does work. I do it regularly and I don't know what you are doing with shovels on your PC, Pete, but I never let bulldozers near mine .

For those of us that don't have terabyte system partitions ( )it can work very well. I used it earlier on a 60GB laptop drive which has a 15GB C partition and on which I have the pagefile moved to the D drive. The resulting image of the C drive is 1.5GB which takes less than 10 minutes to restore from a DVD boot disk (including the booting). That then restores an Eaz-Fix protected and activated system. Even if I hadn't cleaned up the disk previously, the largest that the image can be is 15GB.

If I remember correctly, you just wanted to know if Eaz-Fix would sort out a problem Vista installation (?). The short answer is, no. Not unless it was already installed when/if Vista was working ok (I could be unkind here ).

I think this is right. The GAOTD file was just a wrapper around the Eaz-Fix installation files. Once extracted to the C:\Eaz-Fix folder you can install EF without a problem. However, I'd be very surprised if the license provided would be allowed to work on the online activation after the 24 hours is up which is why a RAW image is one way to have something to use at a later date without re-activating. I tend to do this anyway, even with my paid-for licences, as it means you don't have to bother with the activation.

I'm sure Mark will be along but, no, you can't do this with DS from within Windows and retain all snapshots. Mark's testing discovered that you could only do this within Windows using IFW as long as the Phylock add-on was installed. I've tried this myself and it does work.

Thanks to Meriadoc for the info on this. An extra license, even just for testing, is always welcome .

Graham

 

You bet your buttons i am, and loving it!

It doesn't bother me at all right after i invested with some real revenue in it they pass a version over to Give-Away.

EAZ-FIX is working PERFECTLY for me!

Just need to keep the defraggers away and let it do it itself. Also don't run a extra space wiper on it like RESTORATION or you might get an overloaded disk like i tried once.

Since learning what NOT to run with it installed, it's a Charm.

I am curious on the imaging part though so i need to make a Sector by Sector or DS Maintenance image and restore to see if it indeed holds up.

Regards EASTER

 

I am glad that I could point this out. As a RollBack rx user I know how good this software can be.

 

Hi all,

I wanted to share my experience on Eaz-fix "the-free-one-for-one-day".
This is what I did:
1. made a snapshot with drivesnapshot.exe (never failed me) from c: to d:
2. Put back a virgin xp image, made with drivesnapshot to c:
3. installed easy-fix, went through the activation etc, all went well.
4. made a image with drivesnapshot from c: to d:
5. put back my original image to c:
6. didn't work. I saw eaz-fix trying to do something from within mbr i guess.
7. Booted with my pe restore cd and replaced the mbr from the drivesnapshot image back to c:
7. My old pc worked again like a charm.
Note. I always thought that drivesnapshot automatically restored the MBR from the image taken. Anyway. Restoring the mbr did the job.

8. Booted again with my pe restore cd, and restored the eaz-fix image taken a little while before.
Also restored the mbr with the command snapshot.exe --restorembr hd1 c-ful.sna.
9. Booted and voilà clean xp with eaz-fix working.

Long time ago I used rollback. Got it replaced with First-Defense.
Now came a nice opportunity to try rollbacks' clone or visa versa, again.
Regards.
Nick Franken

 

yeah, well that's not surprising, i can't ask a question about vista without people being unkind. it's too late now, the program isn't free anymore.

this is how my computer looked when i first booted it, HP's own software they preinstall makes the whole computer unstable too and has lots of security holes. i don't see how that's my fault when there's no windows cd to reinstall with!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ern/1991958171/

 

So as a new EF user (and an old DS user) as far as preserving my EF installation, I must run DS by booting up into DOS/WinPE and create a maintenance mode image of EF-managed C-partition - is that correct?

That begs the question what results would I achieve if I were to image my EF-managed C-partition using DS from within WinXP...

a) ...using maintenance mode?
as compared to:
b) ...using normal mode?

 

Yes, that is correct insofar as my experience with DS & RB goes (but then again, markymoo may disagree?).

Addressing option (b) first, doing that will definitely result in capturing only your current snapshot (been there, done that). Although I don't recall ever trying option (a), I don't think the results would be any different than option (b), except for the larger size of the resulting image!

Perhaps Graham can chime-in and educate both of us - re option (a).

 

I've not successfully restored a DS maintenance mode image taken within Windows. I had a sneaky feeling that Mark had done this by restoring the mbr with secinspect after having saved it outside of Windows but I've just tried this and I couldn't get the sub-console back this way. Outside of Windows it works fine.

Graham

 

Suggest that you do NOT try to update in the future,as this will rate as a new shareware download and unless you have imaged,theres no way to go back to the freebie and activation will be lost.

There may in fact be a minor EF update on the way,as the current RBx version is 8.1-9437,whilst EF is 8.1-7387.

They appear identical,the only difference I could guess at ,was better uninstalling with RBx.

edit; Both great-pity the imaging is so slow and apparently unreliable.

 

easter how are you, do you know how create a image raw or sector by sector with paragon?

if you do can you please explain me me how

thanks in advanced

 

@ appster & nexstar, thanks for your feedback. Based on your experiences, I will image my EF-managed partition by using DS outside of WinXP so that I have a full and reliable backup.

However, it's a heck of a lot more convenient to run backups from within WinXP (as I'm sure you guys would agree). So I'm still curious as to the different results I would get using DS' maintenance mode vs. its normal mode when imaging my EF-managed partition from within WinXP.

 

No question that it's less hassle to backup from within WinXP, but you have to accept the method that works!

If you want to backup ALL of your EF snapshots and preserve the EF-modified MBR so that EF will be totally operational when you restore your system partition, then you must backup by booting into DOS/WinPE/BartPE/VistaPE and then run DS in maintenance mode. End of story!

Personally, I hate backing up or restoring in DOS, so I strongly recommend booting into one of the 'PE' environments. Then you can run snapshot.exe from wherever it resides!

 

CD/DVD Environments are a dream come true. You can accomplish plenty, especially useful for DS as well.

Hi mata7 Fine thanks.

This week i'll be switching drives again so i'll have to get my hands wet again since been quite awhile since i took any action with Paragon aside from a normal backup image. Next week i'm due to pick up some additional HD's and those i am going to test every single option with both PARAGON + Drive Snapshot and some others. There are some pretty smart Paragon users here so hopefully they can weight on your question for you before i can. If you're like me, waiting is pure torture. LoL

Regards EASTER

 

Hi Aaron, Its possible using IFW v1.xx or 2.xx in windows with PHYLOCK (i used to call it PSYLOCK) installed on default and raw(all sectors) settings. The MBR has then have to be saved in Dos or Bartpe with a MBR util(my preferred choice is MBRWiz). If the partition is big then it is an extra plus doing it in windows along with the convenience. It beneficial to boot into dos off a usb stick or cd and save the MBR ran from a batch file then launch a BartPe or other recovery cd just to do this. I used secinspect initially before MBRWiz outside of windows to back up the MBR but now prefer MBRWiz as it has alot more options and for dos too. When you come to restore the image back you can restore the image and MBR one after the other as thats always done outside of windows and make this automatic.

Alternatively you could do it with IFW outside of windows or any image software that does RAW backup and then you wouldn't have to bother backing up the MBR. Try both ways and weigh up which is best for you. If you try to backup windows in windows with another software like DS in maintenance mode when you come to reboot - the Eaz-Fix startup console will be missing and the Eaz-Fix will not be installed or greyed out as the MBR needed info is missing. Once that happens the windows is corrupt and all the snapsots are corrupt as the xp has written over sectors that were protected so you would have to restore the image again from a successful all snaphots Eaz-Fix backup.

If the partition is 10-20 gig say then i use dos or BartPe to backup and restore as the time factor is small even with verify. DS and IFD/IFW will backup all Eaz-Fix snapshots outside of xp fine with no need to restore the MBR too. ShadowProtect is my third choice but i prefer the other 2 as they so reliable,compact, can be run from dos or xp...from any drive or folder...have lots of options to run from batch files for optimum use and have the auto verify option.

An older thread from November you can glean useful info from on trying to backup all snapshots is here https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=189409&page=4&highlight=eaz-fix snapshots more interesting reading here...https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=187031 Theres quite a few more threads going back from start of mid 2007 that are good reading too.

Using this restriced free Eaz-Fix for the long term is a bad idea. As you start to use Eaz-fix more and more, you start to take this way of backup and restore for granted and the one day you need to rely on it and reinstall it could be bad day. You can jump through loops to make it work indefinitely but is it worth it for something this important. Even if you do what nexstar suggested the Eaz-Fix that runs again in the new image might do a date check with the current date anyways. I can't comment much as i not tried it.

 

markymoo, thanks for explaining how you imaged an EF-managed partition from within Windows. While I appreciate learning of the method, as a very satisfied DS user I'm not about to start up with any other disk imaging product (ie., IFW).

After reading a few older threads (in this forum) last night I downloaded the free UBCD4Windows iso and used the boot CD it creates to startup my system. Once I got to the desktop (takes quite a while!) I went to my DS program folder, ran snapshot.exe and as suggested, made a maintenance mode image of my C-partition which ran without incident and verified ok. Tonight I'm planning to restore that image.

As far as using the free version of EF being a bad idea, it beats the usual 15 day trial and if (after a few months) EF does become a 'way of life', I will not hesitate to buy the then current build.

Thanks again,
Aaron

 

thanks easter cant wait, please just let me know

again thanks

 

Hmm.. Really? Where did you get that info from?

As you can see from my earlier post I never managed to register with GAOTD so I just used the serial provided in the downloaded zip I got from GAOTD on the trial I had installed (so I never installed the EF you get from GAOTD)

Yesterday I decided I needed to get rid of the FDISR snapshots I saved after uninstalling FDISR and do a "real" defrag with a third party defragger..
So I uninstalled EF and deleted the FDISR snapshots. Did a defrag with auslogic and then I installed EAZ-FIX again and activated it online. No problems.

Unless the fact that I did use the provided serial on my existing EAZ-FIX has something to do with it, I would say that you can uninstall and install again without fear. Of course they have some counter (atleast Rollback did) so you can not uninstall and install it too many times, but that has nothing to do with the GAOTD key.If my memory serves me right I believe I could reinstall Rollback Rx three times before I had to contact HDS to open up the key.