firstdefense-isr-ifw/ifd

i know this is the firstdefense forum.but i cant find enough info on eighther.of the two apps ifw-ifd.iam currently using paragon drive image but i have been having problems with mounting and viewing images.not all the time.i have seen that a couple of people here use one or the other thats why iam posting here.what i would like to know is with eighther or can i backup to my second internal harddrive.if so could you let me know how....it looks like it only backsup to external drives

 

This is the website of BootItNG, IFW (Image for Windows) and IFD (Image for DOS)
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/
I used IFW and IFD very shortly and ditched them, because they aren't userfriendly and certainly not for beginners, newbies, ...

That's why I use Acronis True Image Home, which has userfriendly wizards for backup and restore.
Backup/Restore are possible on an internal and external harddisk, I tried both and ATI never failed until now.
My suggestion is : trial ATI and you will see the difference concerning userfriendliness.

I guess you have to wait for people who use IFW and/or IFD for backup/restore.

 

hi.ErikAlbert.thanks for the reply.there are a lot of problems with ati home.and its just not worth it for me to download the workstation at 156mb.so ill wait to see if enyone that uses ifw/ifd comes along....

 

Hi theshadow247

I have to disagree with ErikAlbert.

My experience concerning imaging software began with Ghost, went through Acronis True Image and ended with Image for Windows/Image for DOS.

I ditched ATI because it didn't go along well with my system. I have been using IFW/IFD since almost two yers now and with no problems at all. Works flawlessly for me.

I certainly do not consider IFW/IFD to be a non-userfriendly software. Maybe ATI is more userfriendly and has more eye candy. But IFW/IFD is certainly more stable and - by far - considerably less buggy.

Give it a try and you won't regret it!

You certainly can backup to to a second HD or to an external drive. I have tried both methods with no problems at all.

Regards

Rui

 

hi.Rui.i tryed to backup to my second harddrive witch is my e/drive but couln't figure it out can you please tell me how to do it.and what free software will i need from terabyte web site.

 

Rui, you already had experience with other image backup softwares before using IFW/IFD. That's not the same.

I never used image backup and I could do a backup right after installing ATI, but not with IFW/IFD.

theshadow seems also to have problems with IFW/IFD to do a backup on his internal harddisk and it is possible to do such a backup. Of course when a software isn't userfriendly enough, you don't know how to do it.

 

Rui, your experiences and the order of them, along with your sentiments regarding these softwares, are uncannily similar to mine. Are you sure you're not me ? Well, thank goodness, I am. (although perhaps you are aware that folks with the same name as mine -- no relation that I know of -- have run a rather lucrative business out of Portugal for centuries now. http://www.croftport.com/pt/history.htm)

 

LOL
Here I come.
The terabyte apps are IMHO the best bar none for what they do.
WRT E-A, I am simple home user and after a short learning curve have come to completely trust these apps.

Lots of experienced users here use them.
Look carefully about on the websites.
No flashy GUI, just rock solid apps.
Dont br put off by what sounds like tricky installs. (I did it and I ain't no techy)

Get BING and for the price get IFW/IFD.
Watch the vids. You will be amazed.
Support for multibooting with Linux and IFL also available.
You can back up to any available storage Primary HD, External HD with whatever connection, Support for RAID, USB HD or flash, Bootable CD or DVD.

I have xternal enclosure with removeable HD with USB>EIDE connection works flawlessly.

Don't have to install BING unless you want >4 primary partitions and are happy manipulating MBR, can just access from boot floppy or even USB if your bios supports USB booting.

For some POV:
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=133283
and here:
https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=131281

some other sites FYI:
http://fileforum.betanews.com/review/973841366/1/view
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/image.htm
http://www.abxzone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=102874
http://members.shaw.ca/bootitng/
http://aumha.org/win5/a/ntfscvt.php
http://www.simtel.net/spotlights/bootit.php
http://www.heffy.com/image.htm
http://www.langa.com/newsletters/2003/2003-07-03.htm
http://www.pcclub.org.uk/bootitng.htm
http://www.pcclub.org.uk/recoverycd.htm
http://discussioni.yserv.com/it.comp.hardware.archive/2465.html
http://www.jasons-toolbox.com/Articles/BootItNG/printable.asp

LOL, that should do it.
You would not regret getting these apps.
Longboard

LOOK ABOVE

 

Hi the shadow247

This time, I am posting only instructions for working with Image for DOS (IFD), and assuming you want to backup your system partition to your second HD. Please understand that it is considerably late here, and that tomorrow (or better, today) is a working day.

So, here it goes:

(1) Download IFD trial version and unzip it to a folder of your choice;
(2) Read the Quickstrt.pdf and run Makedisk.exe in order to to create a bootable media with IFD (it can be a floppy or a CD-R);
(3) Providing your floppy drive or CD/DVD drive is your first boot device, insert the bootable media previously created in step 2 in the appropriate drive and restart your computer;
(4) When IFD loads follow these steps:
(a) Create Image
(b) Save from BIOS HD
(c) Save from Hard Drive 0 (your system disk)
(d) Save to partition
(e) Save to BIOS HD
(f) Save to Hard Drive 1 (your second HD)
(g) Save as - enter a self-explanatory filename at the prompt and leave the files at the root directory - eg: enter filename DDMMYY.IMG
(h) Select maximum file size as 2 GB
(i) When seeing the image validation questions, select "y" for both
AND THERE YOU GO.

Please do post your feedback.
Hope this helps
Regards
Rui

 

ErikAlbert

You are probably right. In my own case, it was important to have a previous experience with imaging software. On the other hand, I agree ATI is more user friendly than IFW/IFD. But, IMHO that userfriendliness concerns particularly the GUI and starts ending when reliable performance is concerned.
Is that userfriendliness?
Anyway, of course I respect your opinion.
By the way, what about seeing the instructions I posted to theshadow247 and give IFD a try again?
Regards
Rui

 

Hi crofttk

Of course I am quite aware of the association of the Croft family with Portugal and that "rather lucrative business".
Unfortunately, you have no relation to them, If you had it, of course you would be exiled not in Texas but in Portugal!!

 

You, sir, are oh so correct !

 

Longboard,
Since, I've read a post, where a total newbie was adviced to use ProcessGuard, I'm very carefull what members at Wilders consider as "userfriendly".
I've seen users at work, who called a software "not userfriendly" and after a short or long learning curve, they called it suddenly "userfriendly", because they finally understood the software.
I've another definition of "userfriendliness".

I'm telling you that Terabyte softwares are NOT userfriendly and only for experienced and knowledgeable users.
Terabyte softwares are very reliable, but that's not the same as userfriendly.
Terabyte doesn't even know what userfriendliness is and each screen of their software proves it.

Acronis True Image and FirstDefense-ISR are userfriendly and the last one even more.
Reliability and userfriendliness have nothing to do with eachother, because any combination of reliable, userfriendly, not reliable and not userfriendly is possible in softwares.

 

You can, it's NOT limited to backing up to external drives. Let us know how it goes with the procedure Rui posted if you try it. If you want to do this from Image for Windows, shout out and one of us can go through that for you. You'll only need the free utility "Phylock" in order to include your system (boot) partition in the image -- it has a pretty straightforward install procedure listed in the readme.txt file that accompanies it and it's a "set it and forget it" component.

 

hi.Rui.thanks for the instructions for ifd.iam realy looking for the info on image for windows so i can stay in windows wile imaging.iam realy not a newbie with imaging software.but there shure is a learning curve with ifw/ifd.from what i have read and seen myself..

 

Hi, theshadow247.
I imagine rui has "hit the hay" by now, so I can scratch up a step-by-step for IFW for you here if you can wait a little bit.

Meantime, you should download Phylock from Terabyte if you haven't already done so.

You ultimately will want to get familiar with IFD, at least for restores, because a restore of your system partition should be done from IFD.

 

hi.crofttk.ill wait no problem.i already have Phylock and makedisk.so your saying that i can't restor with ifw.but i can with ifd.i can live with that.thanks

 

You can restore "secondary drives", i.e., those other than your system partition from IFW but it's either highly recommended or required that you restore the system partition from outside of Windows with IFD -- sorry I can't remember for certain if it's a requirement but I just wouldn't even attempt it from IFW myself, just caution on my part.

Have you viewed the video for imaging from IFW at http://www.heffy.com/image.htm ? That may be more efficient than me writing a step by step, although I still don't mind doing it.

P.S. Darn it ! I was going to look at the video again myself to see how complete it is and just realized that my Windows Media Player is about 2/3 of the way through synchronizing about 780 songs to my MP3 player, it may need another 1/2 hour. LOL! I didn't realize how late it is and I have work in the morning and should hit the hay myself, so I will have to wait 'til I get a break in the morning or at lunch time (Central US time) to pick this back up.

 

Oh ! Hey, BTW, theshadow, I just recalled something: You hinted at where you had difficulty with IFW backing up to your second hard drive. I just remembered that I had a little difficulty my first time also and it came after I selected the drive(s) for backup and was trying to select the other hard drive in the "Select destination:" step.

I kept trying to select my "HD 1" directly and, when I hit "Next>>" it would respond by saying: "Please enter a file name or select a specific CD/DVD drive."

I found that the solution for me was to, instead, select the folder at the top that says "File" and then to click "Browse". THEN you can browse to the specific drive and folder and enter a file name for the image.

Rui's suggestion of using 6 digits to represent the date of the backup for a file name is a good one, because only 8 characters of the image name will show in IFD if you have to restore from there and the 7th and 8th digits will be used by IFW/IFD to indicate which drive is in the image.

Once you have entered your target drive/name in that manner then "Next>>" will get you to the screen where you select whether to compress, whether to validate the image, whether to do it "byte by byte" and the file "split" size to use. Once you make those selections and click "Finish" then the backup will begin.

I just threw this out on the off chance that this is where you had difficulty. Please advise. OK, now I really am hanging it up for the night.

 

thats exactly the problem i was having.i think it will all workout now thanks for the help.

 

You cannot restore an image of your active partition with IFW to itself in Windows.
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=055&pt_sid=322e21c7dc11c3d65b295e43603c95c1
and
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=061

With IFW you should image to and restore from another partition re-order the partitions for correct booting and delete the unwanted partition. You must use phylock to prevent corruption when imaging in windows with IFW.

Check this thread from the usergroups for a quick overview:
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/cg...e&group=public.apps.bootitng&item=15826&utag=
...just click on [next] to move through...

Of coursre you can restore an image of your active partition to overwrite the current active partition With IFD from floppy, ie outside windows, but the image itself should be from another partition.
Tha same applies to BING from floppy. This is really the primary function of these apps in event of unbootable situation on corrupted boot partition.

I did it as experiment and it worked, but not something I would want to do regularly I think.

The other option is to do "copy" function in BING to keep same on external HD or hidden partition on primary HD, then in event of catastrophic software foul-up, unhide, slide to correspond to boot number in boot.ini and reboot! (analagous to FDISR secondary or archive)
Almost too many options

HD are so large and so cheap now it is probably best to have space kept on your primary in case of need to restore image to "reserved space". This is slight limitation of these apps but very minimal downside IMO.

If you are willing to have OS and appfiles only on "C" partition, then imaging and restores can be very quick indeed to very small partitions.

I use FDISR as day to day option, keep archive on external HD, use BING to push my partitions around as needed and do regular full image to external HD with IFW or Bing. I occasionally lose track of where the HD partitions are in IFD and am not super familiar with DOS naming conventions (project for next month) and so keep that as reserve option. Have never lost data or had corrupt files. HAve restored individual files with "TBI View" with no problem.

My solution can be a bit (!!) time consuming and takes a lot of space, but does have "built in" redundancies and multiple restore options.

The only other drawback for me with Terabyte is no "incremental/differential" update of images and so I have to delete the older image files to tidyup. I suspect smarter users have theirs HDs better organised (me jealous) to maintain smaller images. There has been mention of an update coming soon which may include this function or similar.

HTH.
Crofftk has helped me in the past I think he knows what he is on about
Lbd.

 

iam just finishing reading the links you posted and with the links and video's iam realy understanding both ifw/ifd.i want to really thank everyone that posted links and helped me to understand terabyte software.thanks.the people on this forum go out of there way to help out.keep up the good work....

 

Hi the shadow247

I am posting this basic tutorial about making system backups using IFW.
Probably you do not need it at this time anymore, but this will also benefit other prospective IFW/IFD users and forum members.
My USD external drive was used as the target drive.
So here it goes:

[img=http://img522.imageshack.us/img522/6435/ifw19dj.th.jpg]

[img=http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/5197/ifw23ht.th.jpg]

[img=http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/4223/ifw34lu.th.jpg]

[img=http://img512.imageshack.us/img512/8981/ifw45en.jpg]

[img=http://img296.imageshack.us/img296/5228/ifw58uc.th.jpg]

[img=http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/3651/ifw68gp.th.jpg]

[img=http://img508.imageshack.us/img508/8544/ifw76wt.jpg]

[img=http://img508.imageshack.us/img508/1746/ifw89na.th.jpg]

[img=http://img508.imageshack.us/img508/5131/ifw95af.th.jpg]

[img=http://img49.imageshack.us/img49/9673/ifw106xc.th.jpg]

And THAT's IT!

Regards

Rui

 

Excellent ! Then we got lucky. Glad I could help.