First Defense by Raxco

Discussion in 'FirstDefense-ISR Forum' started by hollywoodpc, Mar 18, 2005.

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  1. hollywoodpc

    hollywoodpc Registered Member

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    First Defense ISR

    I am looking for info on this program . I am trialing it . Just want some thoughts from those that have used it or still use it . Many thanks in advance . And Peter . I started this thread cause I got tired of waiting for you to . lol . Thanks
     
    hollywoodpc, Mar 18, 2005
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  2. Peter2150

    Peter2150 Global Moderator

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    At HollywoodPc's request my impressions.

    First I think First Defense is fantastic, and also Raxco is fantastic.

    First Defense basically gives you the option of keeping up to 10 different snapshots of your system. They all must reside on your main drive. Also they do consume space. I keep one snapshot and it is the same size as the contents of my hard disk. You could easily reduce the size of one you wanted to keep by uninstalling stuff from the snapshot.

    I use it for 2 reasons. First for some testing like when I trialed KAV, I boot to the secondary snapshot, work there, and then when I am done go back to the primary and recopy. The other reason for my love affair. This morning I was playing around with some stuff in a new program, and discovered I had hung my computer. Power button rebooted, and got the the log in window, but system would hang on log in. When into Safe mode to see if I could clear the problem.(I couldn't). No Sweat, I just rebooted into my seconday snapshot which was fine, and did a copy (3 minutes), and booted back into my primary snapshot and went about my business. FDISR has save my bacon this way on several occasions. Makes me very willing to experiment, I just make sure my secondary snapshot is up to date first.

    Now let me tell you what Raxco is like. I ran into a problem with Perfect Disk 7.0 recently. Wouldn't do the offline defrag. I called and got hold of the tech support tech I've talked to before. He asked a few questions, then asked me to try something. I called back with the results, and he then said he would send a program with instructions to run and then send back the log. He did, and I did. While we were waiting for the developers to look at what I sent we got to talking about did the same thing happen under version 6.0. I no longer had version 6 which is no longer available. He sent me a copy so I could test. He then had me run another log to give to the development team. While waiting I accidently stumbled on the solution, but in the process screwed up First Defense. He then helped me fix that. THis was only over a 3 day period.

    More on Raxco. I am buying a notebook, and wanted Raid 0, but wasn't sure it would work with First Defense. Called my tech support guy and he said absolutely yes. I then asked him sort of jokingly if Raxco would make any kind of deal on a 2nd purchase. (They do have a PD and FDISR powerpack at 20% off). He said he bet marketing would do something for a returning customer. A while back I had responding to a VP who wrote a purchase followup Email. They must have like my comments, as I heard from a lady in Marketing who asked me if they could use what I'd written as a testimonial. I said yes, and got a lovely shirt out of it. Anyway I emailed this lady, and asked her what if anything they could do for me purchasing a 2nd set of these programs. She responded with a 25% of coupon which I used on the 20% off package.

    Service like this on great software.

    HollywoodPC, this may have been far more than you wanted, but it is why I am enthusiastic about these products.

    Pete
     
    Peter2150, Mar 18, 2005
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  3. Peter2150

    Peter2150 Global Moderator

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    Re: First Defense ISR

    You were waiting and I was writing. :D
     
    Peter2150, Mar 18, 2005
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  4. hollywoodpc

    hollywoodpc Registered Member

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    Thanks Pete .
    I have PD 7 and have dealt with Raxco . Unlike you , I do not like their tech support . For me , it stinks . When they do reply , it has been generic and unhelpful . Also . I found it interesting that I inquired today , about a discount on FD as I am a returning customer . They sent me to a link where EVERYBODY gets 20 % off . I wrote back and said I thought they might give me something better as I am being loyal . Nope ! That was it . This too , irritated me . But , I was interested in FD . Thank you Pete for this analysis . Very nice of you . I will not forget it .
     
    hollywoodpc, Mar 18, 2005
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  5. Peter2150

    Peter2150 Global Moderator

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    Hollywoodpc

    You are most welcome. I've found for me it easiest to pick up the phone and call. Being in their backyard doesn't hurt. On the discount thing, also having both products, and a person I'd dealt with before probably made a big difference. I suspect the person I contact was a much bigger factor then the 2 products.

    All that aside First Defense is a wonderful product.

    All the best

    Pete
     
    Peter2150, Mar 18, 2005
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  6. hollywoodpc

    hollywoodpc Registered Member

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    Thank you again . Tough decision but , I like the product . Could be a life saver . I wonder what else out there is like this . hmmmmm
     
    hollywoodpc, Mar 18, 2005
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  7. Acadia

    Acadia Registered Member

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    Ok, first, I would recommend that anyone wanting to trial FirstDefense, go to the Raxco website and study all the pdf files, faq and knowledgebase on FD, there are several, before even downloading it. FD is not a set-and-forget program like GoBack is, another excellent program by the way in my opinion. FD is much more flexible than GoBack, you can do much more with it, but, it is not as easy to use and you've got to know what you are doing.

    Here are several threads from the pas about FD with much information, good luck:

    https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=54766&highlight=firstdefense acadia

    https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=66418&highlight=firstdefense acadia

    https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=67398&highlight=firstdefense

    https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=44413&highlight=raxco acadia

    Acadia

    EDIT: Two other programs that will take your hard drive "back in time" are, of course, GoBack, and ReStoreIt from Farstone, which is similar to GoBack in that you only have one history bin and can only go in one direction: back. With FD, you can return to the present, or should I say, goback to the future. ;)
     
    Acadia, Mar 18, 2005
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  8. Peter2150

    Peter2150 Global Moderator

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    There are some others. One is Symantec's Goback. I used this when it was owned by Roxio. They have fixed the time limitation to some extent in that they doubled the storage area from 4g to 8g. It worked well, but the problem was it was a sliding time window, and a few very large files, and you shrank that window. Had it on a friends machine and the time window got shut down due to some very large files. Thats when I moved on. of course there is also Symantec's legendary support.

    Another product is RestoreIt 6.0 by Farstone. Don't know much about, but I did use one of their disk imaging programs. It was primitive compared to others, and I gave it up. I am not to awfully inclined to go looking as First Defense has worked for me time and again.

    Hey I see you are in VA. If you ever need techsupport again, PM me and I'll give you my contact.

    Pete
     
    Peter2150, Mar 18, 2005
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  9. Acadia

    Acadia Registered Member

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    Good grief, I believe the three of us are in the same neighborhood, and my wife and I are going to be vacationing once again in Shenandoah National Park in two months.

    Acadia
     
    Acadia, Mar 18, 2005
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  10. hollywoodpc

    hollywoodpc Registered Member

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    Thanks Pete . On the way . And thanks Acadia . Your links were good reading . I learned a little bit . Seems FD is pretty easy though . I reformatted and found this gem . So I have a snapshot of everything in perfect order .
     
    hollywoodpc, Mar 18, 2005
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  11. Acadia

    Acadia Registered Member

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    EXCELLENT! And you can keep that pristine Snapshot forever! Unlike GoBack or MS System Restore, it will never go away, even if you disable FD. In fact, you can even uninstall FirstDefense and you will be given an option to keep the snapshots, so if any time in the future you reinstall FD, you can just pick up where you left off and use those old snapshots.

    Acadia
     
    Acadia, Mar 18, 2005
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  12. hollywoodpc

    hollywoodpc Registered Member

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    And Acadia .
    Come in the fall if you can . Everyone else will too but , it is absolutely beautiful
     
    hollywoodpc, Mar 18, 2005
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  13. hollywoodpc

    hollywoodpc Registered Member

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    Thank you . That is super !
     
    hollywoodpc, Mar 18, 2005
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  14. Acadia

    Acadia Registered Member

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    Ahhhh, in the fall we go to, can you guess, Acadia!

    Acadia
     
    Acadia, Mar 18, 2005
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  15. hollywoodpc

    hollywoodpc Registered Member

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    Got it !
     
    hollywoodpc, Mar 18, 2005
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  16. Peter2150

    Peter2150 Global Moderator

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    To use a bad pun, what a "trip" this is.
     
    Peter2150, Mar 18, 2005
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  17. hollywoodpc

    hollywoodpc Registered Member

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    :eek: :eek: :eek: :D Yep
     
    hollywoodpc, Mar 18, 2005
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  18. Acadia

    Acadia Registered Member

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    Must be careful or else this thread will be moved again, this time to Ten-Forward!! :D

    Acadia
     
    Acadia, Mar 19, 2005
    #18
  19. Don Pelotas

    Don Pelotas Registered Member

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    Hollywood. I share Peter & Acadia's sentiments about FD, assuming your trial goes well, i don't think that you would regret buying it, especially if you trial lots of different programs & beta's. Money well spent. :)
     
    Don Pelotas, Mar 19, 2005
    #19
  20. Don Pelotas

    Don Pelotas Registered Member

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    Does anyone know how the new version of FD is progressing, and is it true that it will include writing to disk as an option?
     
    Don Pelotas, Mar 19, 2005
    #20
  21. bluekey23

    bluekey23 Registered Member

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    Hello All,
    My experience has been the same as Peter's and I also heartily recommend FD. It does everything Peter says it does. For backups to hdd, I don't think you will find a better program.
    One caveat, however: If you want to delete a snapshot where Process Guard is installed, be sure to uninstall PG first. Otherwise, you will create "structure error' in FD and will only be able to boot into your most recent snapshot. I ran into this problem last year and the support I got from Leapfrog was great. The developer in a series of emails was able to troubleshoot the problem and sent me a small file to run that helped me get out of the problem. Nevertheless, better not go there in the first place.
    Goodluck.
     
    bluekey23, Mar 19, 2005
    #21
  22. Chris12923

    Chris12923 Registered Member

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    Something similar is ShadowUser and ShadowSurfer from http://www.shadowstor.com They don't allow snapshot but with a reboot your back to the way you were prior to enabling. Very nice.

    Hope this helps,

    Chris
     
    Chris12923, Mar 19, 2005
    #22
  23. Acadia

    Acadia Registered Member

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    To prevent any confusion for anyone studying this thread, Leapfrog and Raxco are affiliated with each other; I believe Leapfrog helped Raxco to develop FirstDefense.

    No, I have not heard any more rumors about the next new version of FD; that would indeed be fantastic if the Snapshots could be kept on another hard drive.

    Acadia
     
    Acadia, Mar 19, 2005
    #23
  24. Mephisto

    Mephisto Guest

    I use and recommend R-Drive Image 2.0 ...

    * A simple wizard interface - no in-depth computer management skills are required.
    * Image files are created on-the-fly, no need to stop and restart Windows. All other disk writes are stored in a cache until the image is created.
    * Drive Image data can be compressed to save free space.
    * Image files can be stored on removable media. Support for USB 2.0 devices in the pseudo-graphic mode.
    * Drive Images can be split into several files to fit the type of the storage medium.
    * Disk Image can be created incrementally.
    * Disk Image files can be password-protected and contain comments.
    * Data from an image are restored on-the-fly, except on a system partition. Data to the system partition can be restored either by restarting R-Drive Image in its pseudo-graphic mode directly from Windows, or by using specially created startup disks.
    * Special startup disks (either 2 floppy disks or a bootable CD) can be created to restore data to a system partition.
    * The file system of the restored disk can be converted to another one (FAT16 to FAT32 and vise versa.).
    * Data from a disk image can be restored on a free (unpartitioned) space on any place on a hard drive. The size of the restored partition can be changed
    * Data from a disk image can be restored on other existing partitions. R-Drive Image deletes such partitions and restores data on that free space.
    * An entire disk can be directly copied on another one.
    * A disk image can be connected as a read-only virtual drive and its content can be viewed and copied.
    * A disk image can be checked for its integrity.
    * Scripts can be created for frequent or unattended actions. Scripts are executed from a command line and can be included to any command file
     
    Mephisto, Mar 19, 2005
    #24
  25. Mephisto

    Mephisto Guest

    Mephisto, Mar 19, 2005
    #25
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