Help Needed using Drive Snapshot

nexstar,

That's nice information. I just tested and they both work.

 

Just re-read your post, osip, and I should point out that if you are going to restore all Rollback snapshots then the image has to be done outside of windows (ie either in DOS or BartPE/UBCD). You then need to select maintenance mode in the advanced options to save all unused sectors. If you are doing it in DOS then -A on the command line does the same thing.

You may have already known this but I didn't want you to go and restore the image taken within windows thinking it would have all the snapshots avaialable . From within Windows (using maintenance mode) you can only image the current state of the drive, but it will retain your RB installation so you don't need to re-install or re-activate.

Graham

 

Tnx for that underlining,Graham...Actually I did the image in win with the maintenance mode and 2040 MB split but hav´nt dared to try a restore yet...In DOS it seems to be impossible to have access to my external FAT USB drive (G: ),neither in default (0) nor "search for usb/cd drives" (1)...Tried every letter but don´t get it...Nothing! Maybe it will differ if I place the image on D: data drive (NTFS)...
Would make a Bart PE but then I have to use the Win CD which I don´t have available...Any alternatives to that, the same with UBCDWIN?

 

I've got a large external hard drive that doesn't get detected with the DOS usb driver. There may be a better driver available from somewhere that you could include on the disk to try.

Yes, both BartE and UBCD need the install CD although the files can be just copied off the CD to a directory on your hard drive. Your drive should be detected ok in the BartPE/UBCD environment although I found that my external, when connected to my ancient Dell Inspiron 8200 laptop via a PCMCIA usb 2.0 adapter, would detect the drive but wouldn't assign it a drive letter. It was easy enough to manually assign a letter though and all worked fine after that.

Is your D: drive a second partition on the main drive? Then it would be fine to put the image there and when you boot back into Windows, you can just copy/move it to the external drive.

Graham

 

'tis true . The command line options, although initially a bit scary, also allow you to set up DS to be semi or even fully automated. If you try differentials then you might like to try setting up a very simple batch file to do it for you.

Suppose you have a DSbackups directory on your D: drive where you want to save your images. First do a full image. You can do this in the GUI but if you put this one line:

snapshot c: d:\dsbackups\$computername-$DISK-Full.sna -L0

into a text file and save it into the backup directory as 'full.bat' and also put a copy of snapshot.exe in there as well, then you can click on the full.bat file and DS will make a full backup in a single file (-L0) and call it 'yourpc-C-Full.sna'. It will also, by default, generate a much smaller 'hash' file with the same name but with the suffix '.hsh'.

If you want to save space, then the full image can be moved to an external drive as only the hash file is needed for the differential (the full image would be needed for the restore though ).

OK, so supposing you wanted to make a daily differential and keep the last seven days worth. Make a fresh batch file called daily-diff.bat and have it contain just the following line:

snapshot c: d:\dsbackups\$computername-$disk-$weekday-$type.sna -hd:\dsbackups\$computername-C-Full.hsh -L0

You can click on the file to run it or set up Windows scheduler to run it automatically. This will generate a differential using the first two letters of the weekday as part of the filename. If the filename exists (ie the one from last week) it will be overwritten. After seven days you should have a rolling set of seven differentials .

If the dos window popping up is annoying when you run the batch file then you can simply make a shortcut to it from the desktop, say, and alter the properties of the shortcut so that it runs minimised. When it runs it will be on the task bar and will show the percentage progress.

You could also have a shortcut on the desktop to the full image batch so that you just need to click the button to create a new image.

Sorry, I'm rambling now.... but the possibilities are endless once you delve just a little deeper .

Graham

 

Thats very useful info Graham thankyou.

My next step is to also try differentials. Need to study up a bit on the principals of this hash thingy and the whole idea of differentials and incrementals. Best way really is just to DO IT. Quickest way to learn I have found.

 

My thoughts exactly!! Thank You.

Copy/Paste

Anymore good tips?

 

If you want to image your child's C: drive from your computer over the network it is easy with DS.

In your computer you have already put psexec.exe and snapshot.exe in the root of the D: drive.

"Child" is the computer name of remote computer

"Dad" is the computer name of your computer

"Kid" is the logon username in the remote computer

"passwd" is the logon password in the remote computer

"son" is a shared folder in your computer

Make a batch file like this.

It will create split files that fit on DVDs. Burn with UDF mode.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/utilities/psexec.mspx

http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/remback.htm

 

Everyone contributing to this Topic is been very helpful. Since DriveSnapshot is radically different then my long-time trusted Paragon, in it's simplicity, i have a few questions now.

With DS, it's OK to IMAGE your working partition on the same drive BUT store it to the other non-active but bootable partition. (Single Drive) YES or NO.
Because i already done that.

Restoring THAT SAME WORK PARTITION is easily accomplished by simply booting to the other Partition and letting it roll. YES OR NO

Now when it comes to IMAGING the Whole Drive, "that" is easily done while working in that same system. YES OR NO

"BUT", restoring a WHOLE (entire) DRIVE will require the DOS diskette or CD. YES or NO

I'm doing a differential right now as we speak (type).

Defrags will in no way affect any of the integrity of either the HSH or SNA since these are IMAGE files, right?

Thanks a ton for all the very useful info.

 

@EASTER.

OK, While I see what you are trying to do, and I can see it would be useful, I think you are talking about Dual Booting from the same disk but different partitions. THAT I dont know how to do, as I use FDISR for booting to different OS's.
Question to you. - Is it possible to set up this sort of Dual Boot while still retaining FDISR?
If it can, then depending on what the D.S. Gurus here say about your questions, I can see great possibilities to learn some more.

Do also let us know how the differentials go please.
Thanks to all again.

Ken

 

I've done that too. Problem is though you can only boot to a single snapshot if i remember the drill correctly. Don't quote me on that, i was throwing around some ideas with different setups one day recently and wondered the same thing myself.

Seems the XP Bootloader kept putting the system in the same snapshot. I'll reinstall that drive again and retest that, but by the time i do someone who already knows that answer for sure will likely confirm or deny it.

QUESTION:

On the differentials, theres no way to meld the two into a single or as Peter2150 says for SP, collasped them, I know. No problem though, but was curious as to what DriveSnapshot does with the other original IMAGE. Mine is ZERO.sna then differential ZEROE1.sna + .HSH of course.
Cool proggy no doubt.

Regards EASTER

 

It is possible, but FD-ISR will protect only the OSes on the first partition.

 

ok. As I understand that, FDISR would only need to protect the first partition if the second partition is maintained as an IMAGE of the first, (or have I got that wrong)
I am interested in a second bootable partition for emergencies which could be imaged from the first partition by scheduling or something similar.

Maybe I need to start a new thread to ask you how to create the dual boot?

 

Interesting but effective.

The dual-boot scenario is not so difficult to set up, myself i'll have to try to make that setup myself when time permits again.

 

Yes, better create a new thread at the FD-ISR forum.
And explain how you want/imagine to have your configuration.

 

@pandlouk.

Need to give a lot more thought to exactly what I would like to do so will post on FDISR when I have done that.

To all :- Back on track now, I have just done my first differential backup, and placed it in the same folder as
a) The original FULL backup, and b) the Hash file.
My UBCD4Win cd sees these files ok. So does the restore process now involve 2 separate operations as EASTER found with using Dos, or am I able to just select the differential only, and it will find the Full backup file?

Ken

 

Yes, D: is a second partition on the main drive...Excuse me for my stupidity,but, what do you mean: ´copy/move it to the external drive´when rebooting...
Allright,I understand that I can have the image storaged or copy/moved to FAT Usb drive,but if that drive is´nt reckognized in DOS I have to place it where it´s reckognized, i.e on D: (data)...So, my question is this:
1. Can I,in case of emergency, move some way the whole image dir from G: to D: in a preboot evironment and then restore from D: in DOS ?
2.Or is the only option when restoring sys partition to have the image dir on D: NTFS where it´s reckognized...And after that move it to G: only for storaging...

Thanks for your attention...

 

Quite a self-help group really .....

Thanks for this info, Brian. I had never tried using DS over the network but I'll certainly give it a go now.

That would be a 'Yes' then .

That would be a 'No'. The image you have created with DS is file, or series of files. These cannot be booted from directly (I'm sure you know this...I'm just stating the obvious really ) and so have to be restored to a partition first. I think you are probably looking at cloning the working partition so that you've got a 'standby' partition ready to boot to if needed(?).

That's a 'Yes' . In fact, I don't know how you find it, but I find that DS works very well in the background while I carry on with other things.

You could, technically, restore to a non-active partition, make that active and then restore the rest but, in reality, I would say that was a 'Yes' as there wouldn't be much point.

There's no problem defragging the images because, as you say, these are simply files. There is a potential consideration to take into account when defragging and doing differentials, in that the resulting differentials could be larger than they would otherwise have been. It is explained on the DS site here.

Graham

 

What SP does, as Pete has it set up, is to take regular incremental snapshots. These then get consolidated into a differential snapshot at some point. With differentials, to do a restore you need just two files, the original full image and the differential snapshot. Retoring with incrementals requires the full image, the current incremental you want to restore to plus each incremental preceding that back to the full image.

Graham

 

If you are running DS in the GUI, either from UBCD or Windows, then you can just select the differential to restore and it will automatically restore both. In DOS you restore the full image and then the differential.

Graham

 

My poor explanation, more like . Yes, you're right. Ultimately the image has to be on a device where it can be read from. My method was just a quick fix to get you an image stored externally.

1) Yes, but that G: drive still has to be readable from the preboot environment.
2) Don't overlook DVD's. If the image files are split, as recommended for DVD, into 1.5GB files, then you can create a bootable DVD with a copy of DS on it and the first three image files. This makes things pretty simple. In fact, if you save your first full backup in this way then you can just have a seperate CD or DVD for each differential if you want to.

It is obviously, quicker to have the image file on D: but that is not secure in the event of drive failure or partition madness, so doing all three is probably the best option (ie D: NTFS, G: External, and DVD).

BUT, I would strongly urge you to find some way to create yourself a BartPE/UBCD disc and then you won't be restricted at all.

Graham

 

I will consider the bootable DVD as well creation of the BartPE/UBCD disc ...Allright, my other restore/image solutions are good and reliable but the "addiction" for these kind of apps got me into this...Thx again...
Also,@appster succeeded obviously with RB snapshots intact, I assume the DS imaging was made in Win...Just luck?

 

I think i understand it now. With DriveSnapshot you CAN create "multiple" differentials but they will indeed add up over time. Like to someday see DS fashion combining the latest differential into the MAIN image.

This is assuming of course that Differentials only reflect saved data which has changed from the last image, thus they are ALL combined at restore but separately as the process moves along during restore.

 

It would take more space for the DS program than the present version sports, that is a given, but still is incredibly light and so simple plus reasonably fast, but most of all efficient!

Again, i assume the differentials only entail the most recent changes from the base image at the time it's created, if i read it right. Still, since no mechanism is in place like a SP, with DS, the differentials will accummalate. Reason for my asking is that is if thats the case, one would be better off simply deleting ALL images at some future point in time, then repeat the process. Therein lies stark differences between SP & DS. With SP, incremental images, irregardless of quantity of them are simply melded together into a single form image, thus making preservation of concurring changes plus the first original backup a total combination of them all.

Interesting feature.