Image for Dos/Windows 2.00 Final Release

Discussion in 'backup, imaging & disk mgmt' started by markymoo, Dec 21, 2007.

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  1. markymoo

    markymoo Registered Member

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    Today, Terabyte Software release Image for Windows 2.00 there image backup software. Theres is alot more benefits and numerous options than 1.xx versions. Previous versions have been very reliable for backup. I haven't tested it yet but going on testing there beta and previous versions if you want a very good value and reliable backup then this is it. My tests with IFW 1.70 concluded it was fast as Drive Snapshot.

    http://www.terabyteunlimited.com

     
    Last edited: Dec 22, 2007
  2. HAN

    HAN Registered Member

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    Is there a changelog for Image for DOS? Not really interested in IFW...
     
  3. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    I'm really impressed with ver 2 IFW and IFD. I've made an IFD custom restore CD. To restore to a particular image on your HD you just rename that image (in Windows) so the name matches the custom CD name. Then load your CD, click Restart, go and have a beer and when you return the image has been restored. It's that easy. And fast. It's the first imaging software I've used where both image creation and the restore process can be automated.

    If desired you can use BartPE or VistaPE for IFW restores.
     
  4. markymoo

    markymoo Registered Member

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    @HAN's

    no but its a major upgrade, now version 2.00a and it will work with Vista. There is a help file in the trial version which covers the options. notable options for me is restoring the MBR (or however many sectors you wish to put back), a stronger verify byte for byte ensuring 100% backup accuracy, no backup of the page file and AES encryption backup. I really like that IFD detects all your new hardware in dos from the off. Being able to see your NTFS partitions without needing to load a NTSF4DOS utilty is a plus and like Brian says everything can be automated due to it's power options.

    If you want sexy gui go with Acronis where as if you want reliable backups go with IFW/IFD ;)
     
    Last edited: Dec 22, 2007
  5. markymoo

    markymoo Registered Member

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    That's great. You really got your imaging perfected now. The software is rock solid, small and self contained taking up few resources and never had a problem with using it regularly and testing it for 2 months. It gets higher rating than Drive Snapshot because restoring in Dos with DS i had issues with (though DS was fine with a recovery environment BartPE/LiveXP cd). Having said that i hardly do any backup/restore in dos now so thats hardly an issue. IFW/IFD gives me no issues even when i was testing the 2.00 Pre-Release Candidates so this final 2.00 should be a belter. It has plenty of good options now from its graphical user interface(gui) or for real power the command line like you Brian use it. All these options give you plenty of freedom on how you want to backup. My opinion is the PHYLOCK technology(which in this enhanced version 2.00 has more options) is better at backing up windows while in use than the Microsoft VSS technology by other image software as it backed up all Eaz-Fix/Rollback snapshots. Paragon has it's own technology or VSS so does Drive Snapshot.

    Have you discovered anymore new options than from the previous Beta/Release Candidate? I find the multi-pass option interesting.

    That's straightforward.
     
    Last edited: Dec 22, 2007
  6. EASTER

    EASTER Registered Member

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    Very good news. As a DS supporter i've also seen a lot of positive results spoken of by IFD/IFW.

    Now i'm curious. LoL
     
  7. Bob D

    Bob D Registered Member

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    Unfortunately, the old 'TBIView' which allows you to open and view image (.IMG) files giving the ability to view and extract individual files or folders, doesn't work with the new .TBI file format (yet).
    Per Terabyte: TBIView will be upgraded to support the .TBI files soon.
     
  8. Cloudcroft

    Cloudcroft Registered Member

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    Thanks for news, markymoo....I've got my free upgrade installed, and it looks great!
     
  9. HAN

    HAN Registered Member

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    I've downloaded IFD 2.0 and will begin looking at it. When I ran it as version 1.x, it was always rock solid.

    FWIW, IFD was the only imaging app I ran until I learned about ShadowProtect Desktop. And I still used IFD for a while until SP supported DVD burning from the recovery CD. (I use both external HDs and DVDs for diversity.)

    This all said, it's nice to have one's eggs in more than one basket. IFD 2 will likely be my other egg... :D
     
  10. huntnyc

    huntnyc Registered Member

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    @Markymoo,

    Appreciate the good info. Have used Image for Windows in the past but dropped it when Image for DOS would not support my USB external enclosure for my laptop disk. But, may try this again now because I enjoyed so much the small footprint and low resources of this product. But first a couple of questions to you.

    1. Are you saying you can back up all Rollback snapshots with Image for Windows while doing that within Windows?

    2. If yes, what options do you have set to accomplish this fantastic task?

    3. In restoring the system drive from DOS, what options to you ned to set to get the MBR and Track 0 restored?

    Thanks and I really appreciate your help. If the answers come back positively and this software is compatable with my USB drives, then i may just go back to these lightweight powerful products.

    Gary
     
  11. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    Gary, regarding question 3, this is from the IFD userguide.

     
  12. huntnyc

    huntnyc Registered Member

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    Brian,

    Thanks and I saw that going through the manual. However, I did some testing in Image for DOS and Linux and I find that the same terrible USB 2.0 drivers are still so slow with my USB 2.0 exernal drive. I don't have a problem with ShadowProtect Recovery. It is blazing in comparison. Just wish Terabyte could offer wider compatability out of the box.

    Gary
     
  13. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    Gary,

    Thanks for that observation. I image to a second HD but I'll have to test the speed to an external HD. I know IFD can see my external HD but I haven't yet created an image direct to the external HD.

    In reality I will not be creating any images with IFD. All images will be created with IFW. All restores will be from IFD. I'll create and restore an image using an external HD as a test because I'm interested too.
     
  14. huntnyc

    huntnyc Registered Member

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    Brian,

    Glad to hear your results when done. As to restore time though, that will be slow too, fast bootup but very slow restore compared to a VistaPE or WinPE environment.

    Gary
     
  15. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    Gary, you are correct. I imaged my second WinXP partition, that's why I was able to restore from Windows with IFW. The image size was 778 MB. I think the table is self explanatory. Let me know if it's not.

    PS All times include Validation.
     

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  16. markymoo

    markymoo Registered Member

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    Hi huntnyc

    I know about USB in dos and getting the drivers for them to work. There's nothing to stop you adding an extra USB driver to the IFD boot disk but i suspect your USB external is not being mounted properly because it hasnt been properly formatted or theres some corruption in the extended MBR. I had similar situation i tried to access my external USB drive and IFD came up failed to mount filesystem so i did full formats and still no good. I was starting to think IFD is detecting it wrong or i need it own driver so i was off trying every USB driver under the sun but nooo. There had been a old boot manager from over a year ago left in the extended MBR which meant it gave wrong partition info. I had been using the drive in windows for so long without no problems. It was only until i cleared that out with MBRWizard did it all come good. Backing upto USB is alot slower so for external i suggest firewire if you can as IFD detects this.

    1 & 3

    Yes i discovered during aload of intense testing. The result was more impressive because i did all this while using Raid 0 & 1 on 3 WD Raptors. IFD even sees my Raid. This helped give me great backup and restore speed for testing. I like to backup in windows as i know it reliable doing the verify and means i can use my pc while it backs up especially if its a big partition. IFW was the only image software that succeded even though other image software can backup/restore the MBR. I was also examining how DS can backup so fast over other s/w then found out it wasn't backing up the pagefile. IFW 2.00 now has that option which resulted in them backing up in the same amount of speed, seconds between them. I used the console version of IFW 2.00 not the GUI which can still be used in this final as alternative.

    IFW 1.70 doesnt backup/restore the MBR but no worrries because no image software can backup the real MBR while in windows with Eaz-Fix/Rollback installed. :p Get any sector editor and you see a standard NT MBR which is what declared to image software. sooo it didn't matter...The real importance is the PHYLOCK part of IFW and backing up all sectors.

    So when thats done you left needing to backup the real MBR which you see either in dos or a recovery cd like BartPE/LiveXP using the best MBR util for the job mbrwizard v.2 which is for xp or dos. When you need to restore you just restore the image and auto install the MBR right after. I tried all this with 4 top image softwares and only IFW succeeded. The others booted halted or ran chkdsk and tried to repair the disk but made it worse, so it down to how low level it backs up in windows.

    2

    The options are simple. PHYLOCK shouldnt be tampered with unless you have problems with general backup. I never had to touch them they all left on default. Sometimes the cache size needs to be increased with low memory or space or failed validate but thats rare. I always use validate as i not hanging on the backup to finish as i getting on with other stuff and check back if the validate is good. Don't be surprised if it fails validation odd time the verify test is intense. It can even verify before you image and after. Turn on backup all sectors. I could understand if you sat there in dos you not keen to see it verify at a crawl thats why no loss while using it in windows. All other options are personal to you.

    Now IFW 2.00 can backup and restore the entire MBR but in the case backing up of windows with Eaz-fix this becomes redundant for reasons i described above. This feature would come into it's own when you backing up in windows without Eaz-Fix/Rollback or outside of windows.

    @Cloudcroft

    Yes :thumb: Enjoy playing with all the options. When i was using the pre-release there was no help and no gui built so it was fun for Brian and i with trial and error what all the new options did. I never had much complaint with the older IFW/IFD only it didnt restore the MBR but that didn't matter later on.

    @Han
    I want this v.2 to hopefully be my no.1 choice.
     
    Last edited: Dec 23, 2007
  17. HAN

    HAN Registered Member

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    markymoo: Thanks for the info so far. I'm still a bit thick about some of the new aspects of IFD though... :blink:

    As far as MBR restoration, the user manual leads me to believe that IFD can only restore a standard MBR. If there are any other variables in the PC's MBR, I assume IFD cannot restore those items? (You probably already answered this but as I said, I'm still confused by this.)

    The manual seems to say that the 1st track must be restored in order to restore the MBR. Is this correct? If so, why have them as separate options?

    Finally, I don't use Vista but I assume no issues with restoring Vista's BCD?
     
  18. huntnyc

    huntnyc Registered Member

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    @Markymoo,

    Looked at my external drive and I soo no corruption in EMBR (has none) or any other place that I know. Did not reformat beacuase I don't see anything that would make me want to do that. Will be getting new external drive after the first of the year and will try to test it again but right now, I will leave that alone. Thanks for your insight in all of this and I will reread it and see if I am missing something.

    @Brian,

    Thanks for the tests and yes they do confirm what I am seeing here I Believe.

    Gary
     
  19. markymoo

    markymoo Registered Member

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    @HAN

    IFW 1.70 wasn't able to backup/restore MBR but this new IFW/IFD 2.00 can both back up the entire track 0 which is all sectors and cylinders 0 as default. A track has 63 sectors with the MBR being the first sector 0 and each sector containing 512 bytes. IFD/IFW has an extra option to decide how many of the 63 sectors of track 0 you want to put back which is for special cases such as custom o/s boot managers or EF/RB. All operating systems use just sector 0.

    I don't know what you imaging but let's say you have a succesful image made of xp and your C drive goes corrupt so the only option left is to restore the image. A quick format would sort it out but theres no need as the image will do that. The MBR is still intact there's no need to restore the MBR. The MBR survives 99.9% of the time. You would need to restore the MBR....

    1. if the drive is new or another drive which would be missing a xp MBR.
    2. if the drive or partitions are not showing there correct size after format.
    3. if you had a different operating system to xp installed before.
    4. if you wanted to restore all EF/RB snapshots.
    5. if you used a custom boot manager like BootIt.
    6. if the drive shows up as bad or invalid.
    7. if you change your partition size to a different size to the partition image size and dont specify.
    8. if you wanted to wipe out any newly created extended partitions after c

    So if you restoring to the same partition each time then you do nothing :) except 'select active' and optional validate unless you get situation 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8. It will specify EMBR or AUTO in the first track sectors. Just leave this alone and dont bother ticking Restore First Track. You soon know when track 0 is missing when your newly restored o/s hangs at the start, the screen goes blank and a flashing cursor appears top left. You just restore again and select 'restore first track'. It does no harm to select 'restore first track' as it won't make no difference as its there already most times.
     
    Last edited: Dec 23, 2007
  20. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    I forgot to test Image for Linux. When you buy IFW you get IFW, IFD and IFL. I haven't use IFL seriously and I was pleased with today's results as it must have better USB drivers than IFD.

    Here is an updated table. A few IFW input errors have been corrected. Note that we have three ways to restore an image on an external HD.

    Gary, IFL should be of use for your restores from an external HD. It's 5 times quicker than IFD.


    .
     

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  21. huntnyc

    huntnyc Registered Member

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    @Brain,

    I tried IFL also but same as IFD, very slow on both imaging and restoring. Must be just a quirky drive enclosure - MAPower is the name for a laptop 2.5 HDD which is a Fujitsu brand I believe. I do I could get this product to work in its native form instead of having to do a Windows type of CD but for now, no go.

    Brian, didn't I read a post in another forum where you mentioned that you could create a VistaPE CD for IFW. If so, could you refresh us on that with some steps to doing it. Thanks.

    By the way, my laptop is HP DV8000t if that makes a difference - Running XP Pro.

    Gary
     
  22. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    Gary,

    Mustang has instructions.

    http://www.mechrest.com/plugins/BartPEGuide/VistaPEGuide.htm

    I don't know how to create an IFW plugin but you don't really need one. From VistaPE just navigate to imagew.exe on your HD, a USB stick or the CD if you have added it via UltraISO. Double click imagew.exe and the program starts. If you have imagew.ini in the same folder as imagew.exe then the program will run as registered.

    You can use imagewc.exe in the same way.
     
  23. huntnyc

    huntnyc Registered Member

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    Thanks Brian. That sounds good. What is th edifference between imagew.exe and imagewc.exe and thanks.

    Gary
     
  24. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    imagew.exe is the standard IFW GUI app.

    imagewc.exe runs IFW in a Command Console. It's more suited to batch file work but you can use either. Your choice. It's a separate download from TeraByte.
     
  25. huntnyc

    huntnyc Registered Member

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    Thanks Brian. I just might try to put Image for Windows standard with Mustang's Disk Director script for VistaPE. Is there a free alternative to UltaISO to get that IFW folder into the ISO and thanks again.

    Gary
     
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