MrAnyone try Drive Cloner Rx

Just curious if anyone tried it yet. If so whats the conclusion? Sorry heres the link http://www.horizondatasys.com/363895.ihtml.

p.s. Sorry about the mr in the title..

Thanks,

Chris

 

I've used it before as its built into rollback rx. It does the job ok however it was fairly slow on my system and doesn't offer some of the advanced features found in similar products.

 

That was the old version. This version is just out. I did a comparison between the new version of drive cloner and another top tier imaging app (imaging done with windows running). Below are the results.

Drive Cloner 16.5 min to backup an ntfs 149 gig partition with 39.4 gigs used
A top tier Imaging app 22.50 min to backup an ntfs 149 gig partition with 38.7 gigs used both apps were run using default settings. Cloner produced a 6.82 gig backup file and the top tier app produced an 8.48 gig backup file.

I'm impressed. I have not tried the restore times yet.

Thanks,

Chris

 

I don't believe it has the functionality to create and restore a complete disk-image with Rollback Rx installed.

 

True from the looks of it it can not do raw backups.

 

Hummmm. Why would Horizon create an imaging program that does not understand RollBack Rxs snapshots. Does anyone know for sure if this program will or will not image a full drive INCLUDING RollBack Rx snapshots? Or if it in any way makes it easier to image a drive that has RollBack installed on it than would be the case if you were using other imaging programs?

Now that I think of it given all the talk about the issues associated with imaging systems with RollBack Rx installed you would think Horizon would push Drive Clones ability to backup RollBack Rx snaps if it could do so. I would think that would be a central selling point.

EDIT: I just spent a few min on Live Chat with a Horizon employee and he indicated he would have a tech get in touch with me within 24 hours. When I have anything definitive regarding this issue I will post the info.

 

I dont think it backs up Rollback snapshots. I would have thought it would but I really dont think so. Maybe a future version...

Thanks,

Chris

 

Have not heard from a Horizons tech yet, if i ever do I will post our communications here and hopefully get this clear once and for all.

 

Please correct me if I'm wrong but I think a possible way to get into an image program (I realize not actually imaging snapshots) would be using the linked freeware. I haven't installed it but I think if a recovery media were made with it, you could get into the BIOS and disable IRs from booting first and then start a conventional recovery app. I'm using the free one year Ay license and weekly uninstall it to make Ghost images. I'm considering after the next uninstall making a BootManager disk also if I understand the program correctly.

http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager.html#features

 

i try to d/l it and winrar says Drive_Cloner_Rx_20081224.zip is damage.
anyone got same problem ?

 

Yup, same here and I have tried downloding it 3 times over a number of hours. Will try again later but it does not look hopeful. Perhaps they are waiting for the relaease of Rollback Rx v9 on 15th February...for some strange reason.

 

No, it uses a windows pe enviroment.

 

Due to the nature of Rollback they will never be able to deliver a backup of the snapshots. The same reason that they will never make the snapshots visible and that they will never be able to update without uninstalling first.

The only way to do it is a raw image... even for the devellopers of RX.

Panagiotis

 

Why the objection to the Linux recovery Cd? Is your objection to Linux only?

In case of a hosed OS partition, it seems you would need some alternate-OS language start-up (DOS, Linux, WinPE) booted from CD, DVD or floppy.

Just curious about your statement.

 

I'm not sure I agree with this entirely. I do agree that the snapshots will never be visible and that updates without uninstalling are also unlikely to happen due to technical issues. However, if the imaging software were properly integrated with RB/EF (rather than bolted on...and off...as the drive image option seems to be) then it should, uniquely, be able to have access to the RB/EF tables such that it knows exactly what sectors on the disk are being used for snapshot data.

Indeed, a year ago, Andrew Shen for HDS/Eazsolutions indicated that an option could be provided quite simply for this but that the management took the view that backing up all snapshots could generate large backups which were slow to make and would reflect badly on the software. This is, of course, potentially true but it would have been nice to have it as an option.

Graham

 

I imagine it's because Linux doesn't have the approriate drivers to see his hard drives.

On the other hand, I don't have that problem with Linux but I do with BartPE.

 

Although I don't agree with this I can't help but wonder why the big interest in a 'home-spun' complete imaging solution from EF/RB when this can be accomplished by most disk-imaging products (when used properly) and many of us are successfully doing that. I am very satisfied using EF 7.2.1* with Drive Snapshot as a complete IR & backup solution.
-------
*I got a full working version of EF 8.1 free from Giveaway of the Day, but (speaking as a WinXP user) after using EF 8.1 for a while, I saw no real benefit over EF 7.2.1 to justify it's much larger 'footprint'.

 

The problem, or at least my problem, is that I want to image my drive but also want to use RollBack Rx to protect my system between images. It has been made fairly clear that before imaging a drive, or restoring a drive image, that RollBack Rx needs to be uninstalled. The reason for this is that RollBack Rx and supposedly all imaging programs do not get along. There has been some suggestion that doing a sector by sector image from outside Windows will avoid the problem but I hope that Drive Cloner, since it is from the same folks that produce RollBack Rx will be able to get along with RollBack Rx thus making the problem of imaging and restoring a system with RollBack on it disappear.

Now, there has been some almost cryptic statements on the Horizons Data Systems website that it is possible to image drives with RollBack installed and to maintain the integrity of RollBack snapshots. The first clear reference to this can be found on page 55 that reads as follows

Sounds pretty straight forward except that "Rollback Rx Snapshot Backup Help" does not seem to exist.

I have been trying to get a definitive answer from Horizon but they seem to be very good at being obscure. I went onto live chat with a Horizons sales person on Jan 30 and he referred me to the users guide as to where I could;d find the referred to information. I told him I could not find the information in the users guide and I would appreciate it if he could point me to the correct section or let me know where I could find the information elsewhere. He was unable to do so and told me he would suggest that I submit a support ticket, which I did but the reply I got from the tech was as rather non committal but he did say that an appropriate backup regime would have to be implemented to meet my needs.

Then there was a mention from Horizon (I think somewhere on these forums) that RollBacks internal imaging module (the module by which you can save snapshots to an external drive) which was available in RollBack 8 had been split off from RollBack Rx into a separate program called Drive Cloner Rx. Sounded promising to me so I went back to live chat and posed the question directly. First I was told no, it would not do what I was asking if it could do. I pressed the issue a bit and was told that I would have a tech get in touch with me within 24 hours. That was Feb 4 and I still have not heard from a tech.

Below is the transcript of my live chat dialoge

Now you know why this thread is alive and why there is a question about Drive Cloner being bandied about......and you know about as much as I do as to Drive Cloners ability to backup system files and data if RollBack Rx is on the system.

PS: sorry for the very long post.

 

Could I trouble you for a description as to how you are doing this. It says very clearly on the Horizon website that this is not possible

 

For me the process of creating the recovery CD fails with errors. These have been reported to HDS and they have advised that this would bechanged to use BartPE in the NEXT version of ROLLBACK RX but as we now know it will be in Driver Cloner RX so if I want that I will have to buy a license for that product too.

(Cheekily I have suggested to them that they should provide existing Rollback Rx customer with an initial complimentary copy of Driver Cloner which if you then want to continue using you can by taking out the annual maintenance...but I suspect that nothing will come of it...shame )

 

As I and others have posted several times over, it is accomplished by booting into another OS and then running the disk-imaging program with its 'sector-by-sector' option to backup the entire C-drive. Using ATI as an example, you would boot its Recovery CD (into its Linux operating environment), then check the Sector-by-Sector backup option and then proceed to backup C: That will capture everything on C: including all EF/RB snapshots!

Your quotes from Horizon's site are referring to what happens when you perform an image-backup from within Windows (with RB installed). If you insist on backing up from within Windows, no disk-imaging program will perform a complete backup of your C-drive with all RB snapshots. Backing up from within Windows will only capture RB's current snapshot (RB's Drive Image will capture any one designated snapshot). It remains to be seen if a future version of RB will circumvent that limitation.

 

I have read of others who also incurred errors creating RB's Drive Image CD. I was successful in creating it (albeit I used EF 8.1), but I found their imaging process to be much slower than my favorite disk-imaging program, Drive Snapshot...
...and since I can backup all EF snapshots with DS, I went back to using EF 7.2.1 which I find much lighter on resources.

 

Sorry, of course you are correct. It would be nice if Horizon made this point instead of saying no 3rd party software can do this ---period----

I should have known to make this distinction myself based on what has been posted here before. If I can avoid having to do a sector by sector backup that would be nice as the difference in backup size is significant (about 3 times larger if TIs guesstimate is correct) but all that would be nec is to pick up another terabyte drive (or larger) and its not a big deal. As long as the data and system is safe its worth it.

Thanks

EDIT: mind you, given that it takes TI about 2 hours to do an incremental backup and validation of my drive from within Windows going from 2 hours to 6 hours could be a bit of an issue.

 

Well there are faster programs than TI, such as Drive Snapshot and ShadowProtect - based on my tests DS is 25% - 35% faster than ATI for backup/recovery. But the bottom-line is that backup/recovery time is proportional to the amount of disk-space being processed. Since I only image C: that's why I partitioned my C-drive into a 16GB C-partition (for WinXP and Programs) with the rest of the drive allocated to a larger D-partition.