feature list comparison with RollBack Rx

Discussion in 'FirstDefense-ISR Forum' started by besonen, Jun 19, 2007.

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  1. besonen

    besonen Registered Member

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    hi all,

    can anyone point me to a feature list comparison of FirstDefense-ISR and RollBack Rx?

    if not, please mention some of the differences of each solution.

    i'd like to come up to speed on these two solutions asap so i can choose which one will best meet my needs. knowing the differences may help me to eliminate one right away.


    thanks,
    david
     
  2. ErikAlbert

    ErikAlbert Registered Member

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    It's hard to find an image backup software that restores ALL snapshots of RollbackRx. Usually they restore only the baseline snapshot or the current snapshot. FDISR doesn't have that problem.
    If you don't care about losing snapshots during restoration, RollbackRx is good for you.
     
  3. besonen

    besonen Registered Member

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    hmmm . . ., i don't quite understand what you wrote.

    are you saying that RollbackRx sometimes loses it's own snapshots?

    please rephrase.
     
  4. ErikAlbert

    ErikAlbert Registered Member

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    For instance : RollbackRx is on your computer with 5 snapshots and you do a backup at the end of the day, using Acronis True Image.
    Next day you have a disaster in the morning and you restore that image of yesterday.
    After restoration you have only 1 snapshot instead of 5.
     
  5. besonen

    besonen Registered Member

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    is this a "feature" or a bug? i'm being serious btw. for all i know Rollback RX's design necessitates this behavior.
     
  6. besonen

    besonen Registered Member

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    and couldn't lost snapshots can be prevented by occasionally imaging critial partitions with something like ghost?
     
  7. ErikAlbert

    ErikAlbert Registered Member

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    I consider this as bad, but members, like JoAnn and pvsurfer, don't consider this as a problem, so you better contact them and which software to blame : RollbackRx or Image Backup Software ?
    Personally I blame the Image Backup Softwares, because they are supposed to restore your harddisk, no matter what is on your harddisk.
    If I take a picture (image) of 5 people, I wouldn't like it if only one person was on the picture instead of 5. Pure logical reasoning.

    I don't know about Ghost, but many image backup softwares have a problem with backup/restoring RollbackRx COMPLETELY.
    ATI and ShadowProtect don't restore RollbackRx completely, that's all I know.
     
    Last edited: Jun 19, 2007
  8. Acadia

    Acadia Registered Member

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    Gotta agree with Erik here, if they don't simply (no matter how hard it is to do) restore a mirror image of your system, they should not be calling themselves imaging program. :mad:

    Acadia
     
  9. besonen

    besonen Registered Member

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    supports FAT32/FAT16:

    FDISR: NO
    Rollback RX: YES

    [is this true? a bummer for me if it is because i like FAT32.]
     
  10. Acadia

    Acadia Registered Member

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    Don't know about Rollback, but FDISR is ONLY for NTFS systems. FD uses some of the characteristics of the NTFS file system to perform its magic.

    Acadia
     
  11. ErikAlbert

    ErikAlbert Registered Member

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    Each snapshot in FDISR is independent.
    Each snapshot in RBRx is dependent of the baseline snapshot.
    So you can't delete the baseline (=first) snapshot in RBRx, but you can delete the first snapshot in FDISR.

    Each snapshot in FDISR can have a different Operating System, but only these are allowed : win2000pro, winXPhome, winXPpro and winVISTA. So FDISR can be used as a multiple boot system.
    This is impossible with RBRx.

    RBRx creates new snapshots very fast in seconds, FDISR is slow 5-8 minuts or more. FDISR is pretty fast with EXISTING snapshots.
    RBRx requires less space, FDISR requires much space, because each snapshot contains a complete Operating System.
     
    Last edited: Jun 19, 2007
  12. ErikAlbert

    ErikAlbert Registered Member

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    Frankly, I don't even understand why it should be that hard. They only have to copy the image byte per byte from the beginning of the harddisk until the last byte is written and the rest is free space.

    It's obvious to me that it doesn't work that way and that's why RBRx isn't restored completely.
    Also the Recovery CD of ATI and SP failed after a killdisk attack, which is also unlogical. The only thing a Recovery CD has to do is to replace the corrupted harddisk with an image, byte per byte.
    The only reason why a restoration shouldn't work is a physical damaged harddisk.
     
  13. Peter2150

    Peter2150 Global Moderator

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    The problem with the first statement is how do you know when the rest is free space. So the only thing you can do is copy all the sectors of the drive. Most imaging problems record sectors but also keep track of the files, within the image. They get that from the windows file system. Rollback uses a separate system to keep track of whats where with the sectors, so the only thing the windows file system knows about is the current snapshot.

    As to the recovery CD issue, Erik you aren't paying attention. I'll re post this once more. The imaging programs, as a first step examine the disk structure, particularly the partitions. They all use the same Microsoft routines do do this. Those routines have no problem if there is no partition table(blank disk) or a valid table present. But the routines fail when the partition table is invalid, and thus they can't pass any information back to the imaging programs, so these programs can't function past that point.


    To anyone wondering about the difference between Rollback and FDISR, I would suggest doing a lot of reading of posts and the program websites. They work very differently and as such are probably going to be used differently. It is important to understand the differences, and honestly that is more than anyone person is going to feel like typing.

    Pete
     
  14. EASTER.2010

    EASTER.2010 Guest

    Frankly i'm one of those who find infinite benefits with COMPLETE snapshots (FD-ISR) and not working off of a single baseline snapshot like Rollback Rx only does. To me that's crucial and can spell disaster and myriads of lost effort & time.

    FD-ISR doesn't put the users data at risk but on the extreme contrary and to Leapfrog's credit :thumb: , institutes SEVERAL reliable scenarios from which to return-to-working-base completely intact for ALL of your compliment of snapshots .

    Snapshots 10, plus unlimited archives of those 10 or more :D if you delete any after archiving ;) and create different ones (oh Joy!) make for a formidable fail-safe method to preserve your system (S) 100%.

    Now in retrospect, Rollback Rx currently drastically IMO, limits a way out as useful as what FD-ISR provides irregardless if it does allows for referencing 1,000,000 + snapshots, but this is not to detriment of Rollback Rx, it's just that some people prefer it to do just what it offers and expect nothing more or less.

    For me, i need to have my cake and eat it too. :D
     
  15. kennyboy

    kennyboy Registered Member

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    Totally agree.

    Having learnt from this forum, I now rely on FDR completely by using a 2 snapshot setup, one primary and 2nd Basic snapshot is for emergency booting only, to enable an image restore if necessary. Then have 2 archives on 2nd disk and alternate the copy update between them. This setup was prompted by the way Peter uses his system, and I feel much safer this way than relying on 1 baseline snapshot as I understand Rollback does.
    Yes, FDR takes up more space, and is probably slower, but the amount of times this setup has saved me outweighs this.
     
  16. EASTER.2010

    EASTER.2010 Guest

    And i totally agree with you too kennyboy.

    Theres always some trade-off between programs similar in nature but operate distinctively different in their respective methods to accomplish their means.

    In FD-ISR the creating of snapshots AND archives (complete ones i might add) DOES require some time from start to finish but is not unreasonable by any stretch. Thereafter the updating is literally Seconds! on my machine, and boy some of my snapshots fly. That may have to do in part with defragging with UD but FD-ISR definitely contributes in some way to this also although i'm at a loss to explain how, but just tickled pink that it does help make my system run better.

    Indeed that benefit far outweighs any speed factor because if Rollback happens to choke for one reason or another like happened to me, the only alternative is to either switch or uninstall back to only 1 lowly snapshot and the rest after that point are history, and down the drain goes all that work & effort in one full swoop.

    The feature in FD-ISR that stands out most for me is where you can SAVE actually BOTH snapshots AND archives, but i save only archives and update them regularly then transfer them to safe storage on alternative media be that hard drives or even DVD's if theres enough room.

    I'm looking forward though to Rollback Rx to finally impliment a similar feature now that they've teamed up with Leapfrog Technologies. This can't spell anything but SUCCESS & SATISFACTION all the way around for the both of them and all of us too IMO. :thumb:
     
  17. ErikAlbert

    ErikAlbert Registered Member

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    I do pay attention, I just don't understand why it can't be fixed by StorageCraft.
    The Microsoft routines examine the disk structure, which results in 3 possibilities :
    1. Valid partitions, which isn't a problem
    2. No partitions, which isn't a problem either
    3. Invalid partitions, which is a problem, because the Microsoft routines fail.

    If the Microsoft routines indicate invalid partitions, the Recovery CD has to act differently and inform/ask the user what to do. Two possibilities :
    1. Cancel the operation.
    2. Erase the harddisk first, which creates a situation, that Microsoft routines do understand and then restore the image.
     
  18. ErikAlbert

    ErikAlbert Registered Member

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    You don't have to explain it to me. I use FDISR since March 2006 and I'm fully aware of the possibilities of FDISR and I know how to use it.
    In case you didn't notice, I was never interested in RBRx.
    RBRx is a child, that needs to grow up and you can do only one thing with a child : PLAY.
    How can I entrust my two permanent snapshots to a software like RBRx ? I would be worried constantly of losing them.
    I never considered speed and less space as an advantage, other users do that, not me. :)
     
  19. kennyboy

    kennyboy Registered Member

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    It is just that.............the "POSSIBILITIES of FDISR" that make the software so invaluable. It can be tailored to suit ANYBODIES way of working, and no one way is the "correct" way. This is what makes it such an amazing piece of software, and Rollback would need to emulate this interoperability as well as the astonishing reliablilty of FDR to make me look at it further. FDR isn't bullet-proof, but it is the closest thing I have ever found, and personally, I am very grateful to Leapfrog Software for doing what Microsoft should have achieved long ago.

    Speed and disk space are irrelevant. Consider the time you would spend trying to get out of a crisis WITHOUT FDR!! ....Disk space??....... Get another drive!

    How much more adventurous have you become since having the re-assurance of FDR? Personally, I have learnt so much from being able to be a little more brave testing software/system configuration since having FDR to save me from my own, or others folly.
     
  20. Peter2150

    Peter2150 Global Moderator

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    Hi Kennyboy

    Actually I am using Rollback with in the structure you also are using. Instrumental in my usage though is I don't desire to keep previous Rollback snapshot on a permenent basis. So day to day I use Rollback, but I also keep my FDISR archive up to date. There is no problem updating the FDISR archive from the current system within Rollback. Should there be a problem, I just restore my most recent Shadowprotect snapshot. Now all trace of Rollback is gone, but my system is out of date. I update with the FDISR archive, which puts Rollback back on the system in a sort of uninstalled state, as it's not in the MBR. I then uninstall Rollback and reinstall it, and life goes on. Note between the uninstall and reinstall of Rollback I'll defrag and do a new image. Works like a champ, and gives me the best of both worlds.

    Pete
     
  21. Peter2150

    Peter2150 Global Moderator

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    Okay. In essence what happens is sort of the first one. Just the program see's the messed up partition. If I remember right SP showed the partition, but couldn't work with it, and ATI, just never showed the disk at all.

    So could they say, okay, Microsoft is showing a bad partition table, erase the disk and go on. Probably so. But then one other nasty issue comes into play. Economics. They had never even seen this issue until silly me starts playing with Killdisk trojan, and discovers this problem. Given their client base, the odds are it may never be seen again. So how much priority, time, and money do they spend to solve the problem.

    Same thing when I really got into trouble and none of the recovery stuff would even boot. That clearly showed them it was a bug in the microsoft routine. They could as a developer go to Microsoft with a bug report, and try and get microsoft to fix it. But they would have to develop a test case, build the supporting data, to do so. Yes they are interested, but again, its a resource issue. How much time can they afford to spend.

    Erik, let me bring the above home to you. Sandboxie. You tried it, and it didn't work on your machine. You could have worked with the developer, to try and resolve the conflict and get it working. You made a choice, that it wasn't worth it to you, and ditched the program. That may well have been a very wise choice for you. Both storagecraft, and acronois, if they were aware of the problem, have to make the same choices.

    Pete
     
  22. grnxnm

    grnxnm Registered Member

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    I'd like to throw in my opinion on this one too. From observation (and a fairly detailed understanding of the windows kernel storage stack) my guess is that this BSOD is being caused by ftdisk.sys (or perhaps disk.sys) - I'd have to hook up the kernel debugger to know for sure, but it's definitely being caused by a Microsoft driver. However, I can also tell you that if/when we open an incident with Microsoft to address this issue, it may very well take them at least a year to actually *decide* if they are going to fix it (and longer to actually implement the fix, and longer before you see the fix in a service pack, if ever (it may only end up in a private hotfix which you would have to personally request)). I've tackled other issues like this before and from first-hand experience I can tell you that it can be excruciatingly difficult to get MS to fix issues with some of its kernel components. If we decide to tackle it, I'm going to do everything I can to make sure that some other engineer has to tackle it, because I don't want to be the sucker that has to wade through 8 levels of support in four countries via hundreds of emails over many months just to get them to fix a Windows bug that in reality will affect few (more likely zero) customers. Oh, and by the way, I should also point out that Microsoft will also perform an assessment of the damage being caused by their bug and if only a handful of people are affected they won't bother to fix it. Worse yet, this assessment will only take place after I've negotiated with them for 6 months to try to get them to fix it. Okay, I'm venting now, please forgive me. I'm just reliving the nightmare that occurred the last time I reported an issue in a kernel component. <shudder>
     
  23. Chris12923

    Chris12923 Registered Member

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    Most of the people that have posted are purely basing their opinions on version 7 of Rollback (not version :cool: and are not really helping you. I'll try to be clear as I can and please if anyone notices anything wrong in my post please let me know.

    1. Rollback can take scheduled snapshots at the time you specify. Including per reboot or a certain time you wish: hourly,daily, weekly, monthly.

    2. Rollback can save up to 60,000 snapshot.

    3. Rollback is not affected by things that destroy your data like the killdisk virus.

    4. Rollback does rely on files from other snapshots...but just like FDISR it can save a full image to a backup disk not just relying on other snapshots.

    5. Rollback takes images quicker.

    6. Rollback restores images quicker

    7. Rollback takes less space.

    8. Rollback can recover individual files from previous snapshots.

    9. Rollback does support multi boot systems unlike someone said earlier. unless I read their post wrong.

    10. Rollback works with 9x, Me, NT, 2000, XP & VISTA.

    11. Rollback has admin account and access control if you wish to use them.

    So there are some other features that Rollback has that FDISR does not but this list covers most of the main features. FDISR is a good program but you are asking for comparisons. i hope this helps make your decision easier and if you have any questions please ask. peter2150 is also very knowledgeable of the products as well.

    Thanks,

    Chris
     
  24. Peter2150

    Peter2150 Global Moderator

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    Excellent post Chris.

    I think it is important to understand the two programs work radically differently. FDISR keeps full independent snapshots using the standard windows file system. Rollback uses it's own file system with a database of clusters in use, and passes the file information thru a kernel driver to it's database.

    Since I've put version 8 on my system Rollback has worked flawlessly, but knowing it's design and past problems, I am still cautious. FDISR makes an outstanding back up. Combining them with Shadow protect, I have the best of all the worlds.

    One needs to understand how these programs work, what they each do, and decide how you are going to use them. That will go a long way to determining what is best.

    Pete
     
  25. EASTER.2010

    EASTER.2010 Guest

    Excellent post! Many like yourself already have experienced first-hand how very far advanced FD-ISR is compared to the mediocre routine of Rollback Rx as well as dependable in a real crisis.

    Yeah, but Pete, really. That's NOT a very acceptable scenario for most. There should be no problems with Rollback Rx that would force a user to have to turn to your imaging program + image to recover from it's mistakes. It's unacceptable to many including myself to release a program that you can't really rely on it's features to return (ALL OF THEM=snapshots) system/data to their previous good/safe state but only 1. Everything after a Rollback Rx change of snaps is subsequently discarded forever, so why bother wasting time creating even 6 or 10 snapshots when if you need to revert back in time, EVERYTHING afterwards is toast. That concept like ErikAlbert alludes to is nothing more than PLAY, and serious users don't play with protecting their data but rather PRESERVE those long hours & efforts. This is where FD-ISR is INFINITELY MORE RELIABLE!!!

    So what else is new?
    ..... besides of course ShadowProtect Version 3 which we are all awaiting with great anticipation btw.

    Chris. So what if you can manufacture 100 million snapshots? When something goes awry either with buggy Rollback Rx or another issue jams you & prevents your booting up at all, all snapshots AFTER your selection to boot to are HISTORY. Correct me plz if i'm wrong about that, so that puffed up idealology with Rollback Rx you can make snapshots till the cows come home doesn't hold much water for more knowledgable and experienced users.

    FD-ISR is NOT a good program, it is however a MAGNIFICIENT and extremely beneficial, innovative technology that can 100% guarantee to PRESERVE & ROLLBACK any system to a previous good state WITH ALL DATA INTACT!

    Let's say FD-ISR somehow gets corrupted and HAS to be uninstalled to make way for a reinstall. AND, let's say all it's snapshots plus archives in the $ISR room are trashed beyond recovery. If you were a wise and prudent FD-ISR user/customer like many here are, you have storaged at least that same compliment of archives as snapshots over to some alternative external media and they are at the ready to be transformed once again into EXACTLY what you had previously in those corrupted ones that met some fate, and so your FULL Data Recovery is 100% assured by reinstalling FD-ISR and converting the archives back into snapshots again.

    Is the current version of Rollback capable to recall ALL your snapshots/archives in the same manner? I think not.

    I challenge any other rollback program short of an imaging app to offer such of this same reliability.
     
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