New Drive Snapshot build released.

whenever i tested DS in the past i would get, after restoring a DS image, a BCD corruption when i tried to enter Repair mode at boot (from the HD, not the Windows 7 DVD).
the last versions of DS have fixed this.

i'm liking DS more and more but i find the price a little high (53$ canadian dollars).
especially considering that Windows 7 own imager does a very good job.


is there anyone here aware of promotions/rebate for DS?

 

did you test it?
did you email to the author?

what i don't like is the absence about a history or at leat about bugs fixed

 

i 'm triling DS,restore disc only to floppy,no cd?
would be great if this app coild save images to dvd
thanks

 

@ moontan, I don't believe you can buy a DS license for less than that.

@ mantra, if more users complained to Tom Ehlert, we just might see release notes!

@ acuariano, you can initiate a restore from within DS' (Windows) GUI - that's a lot easier than using the DOS floppy!

Aaron

 

but what about when pc crashed and is not bootable.

 

then you can use a boot disk to either go into a Windows GUI or a DOS mode.

 

i did not bother because i was getting good results with Windows 7 imaging.

DS affords me more control about naming, notating, and saving images to a specified location.

 

DS' executable (snapshot.exe) is truly portable, so you can place a copy on the same external drive that holds your image-files (or elsewhere). Now, if your system drive won't boot, you could use a boot-disk such as the free UBCD4Win to boot into a WinPE environment, navigate to snapshot.exe and run it (of course if your internal system drive crashed you would have to replace it before restoring).

Aaron

 

it seems like i talked too fast.

i am still having problems with DS trashing the Windows Recovery Environment after restoring an image with DS.
Windows 7 still boots normally though.

i get these messages when repairing with the Windows 7 Repair disk:
- Windows Boot Manager will be repaired
- Windows Recovery Environment will be added.

since Windows boots normally and this problem can be fixed with the W7 Repair disk it's not that big of a deal.

still, i'll contact the developer to let him know about this issue.

 

Actually ,the price is not high, seeing that you don't have to pay for upgrades.
I bought a license about 4 years ago and am able to use the latest version.
And what do you get for the price: a very reliable program, 300 kb , no installing of bloatware,and very good support(fast email reply)

 

If the program is well written and solid, then why three to four updates a month to fix bugs?

 

Fair remark ,there was a long period with hardly any updates , i guess since the option was introduced to "autorestore" bugs appeared in the implementation of this option.
I don't use this after experiencing a few problems with it.
I use DS like i always have; restoring with a PE disk or from within another os
Over the years i must have made 30 restores this way ,not one single problem.
So for me personally, except the "autorestore" option ,DS has proven to be very reliable.

 

Dear linp,

Thank you for the above explanation and giving us insights to this marvelous program.

Best regards,

KOR!

 

i'm no expert but after searching around i think what is happening is that DS overwrite the 100 Mb hidden partition that Windows 7 creates, which contains the Windows Recovery Environment.

unfortunately, i don't have the know how to verify that this is the case.

anyway, i've e-mailed the dev.
i'll let you know if i get an answer back.

 

Well, one new little feature I discovered in the April built is that you don't have to manually register the snapshot executable anymore. It's sufficient to place your lic-yourname.txt file in the same path as snapshot.exe, and voila, your copy is registered.

 

mantra, in my experience drive snapshot can restore to smaller partitions. if the target partition size doesn't match the source (smaller or bigger), it will ask you if you want to adjust for the difference. if it detects problems in target's bootability, it will also tell you to run the checkboot command. as far as reliability goes, restoring to different hardware or partition size is always tricky, and I've only tried it with mini-windows VHDs intended mainly for USB flash drive use. ymmv.

the attached pics show how Drive Snapshot behaves when I restore an image made of a 2 GB Windows 7 system (75% full) to a new 1.8 GB drive (mounted VHD):

 

thanks a lot!!
great! and does it works great the w7 restored in a smaller partition?

 

As for the first screenshot, I would like to ask, which option you chose? Yes or No?

 

is password for DS encripted?
also i i save the image to another partition[drive..should i encrypted that partition?
-think this little app is the fastest for saving images.
also i found a xp live cd from where i can access the store image on another partition in case pc gets unbootable.

 

Perhaps this will answer your question.

Aaron

 

my main systems are windows xp based and my restores to smaller partitions have also been with mini-windows xp systems -- snapshot works very well with those, although for real hardware independent restores i still trust shadowprotect more.

as for the small Windows 7 installations (installed on virtual hard disks (VHD) and intended as emergency systems to be booted off USB sticks), I just did it as a quick experiment to confirm that it also works with Win7 and to to get the pics. I haven't tried booting to that particular VHD yet, but I will give it a go and report back.

In general, I was experimenting with how make a mini Windows XP and mini Windows 7 systems work and how to boot them off a VHD and/or VHD files placed on USB flash drives. so some of them worked and others didn't, but I'm not sure what part DS played in that since I also testing different boot loaders and other things.

in general, i assume drive snapshot should work correctly when adjusting the size or fixing the bootability of the partition, but the author has released many updates recently, so there are probably still some bugs in the system involving some features (maybe these) that he's fixing or improving...

 

Just a regular restore. Whenever the source and target partition sizes don't match, Drive Snapshot automatically alerts me with the screen about whether or not to to fix the system for the drive size discrepancy, to which I always answer yes.

About the restore in the pictures, I just booted to the 1.8 GB test.VHD, which was made from a 32-bit Windows 7 Ultimate -- in fact, I'm typing this very post from that system. So yes, Drive Snapshot worked in this case, but not perfectly, because at the moment I'm stuck in some limited user privileges account with no access to system files, probably nothing too serious... Also, I had to boot twice because Windows 7 detected the change in disk size, made changes (3 minutes of 'preparing windows' start-up screen) and then requested a reboot for the changes to take effect. But basically it works...

edit: the problems with the user account may also be the result of missing files -- obviously I had to strip out lots of files and folders otherwise standard to Windows 7 to shrink it down to 1 GB (+ 500 MB of programs and maybe a small pagefile with 300 MB still left to spare on this 1.8 GB VHD).

 

If I press "Yes", will it really adjust the partition size automatically? Or will it affect/damage another partitions if I press "Yes"?

 

I don't know what it does exactly, but I assume it adjusts the partition table or some sector with that info on the target partition to make the info it contains match the size of the target (which differs from the source partition size).

Several times I've used FastCopy or ShadowCopy to transfer Win XP or 7 files from one VHD to another smaller VHD, and then (because it didn't boot) I ran snapshot's checkboot command on it (plus chkdsk) after which the VHD booted again.

If you are concerned about it, just try to boot the partition first as is, if it doesn't work, then use bootice or similar to backup the drive's MBR and/or other boot sectors, and only then run the checkboot command.

 

Hi,
I'm giving DS a trial and my first impression is that I like it. I have used successfully the Drive Image that used to come with Eaz-Fix and since installing Win 7 on the realease date, I have used it's built in version. I no longer use Eaz-Fix because I like Comodo Time Machine better and it plays well on my setup. Win 7's built in System Image quit working for me about two months ago. I get the error about not enough drive space which is not true and for the life of me, can't figure out how to correct. I downloaded DS last night, thinking that it was going to be a waste of time because it would probably use whatever Win 7 System Image is trying now to use but can't. I was wrong. It worked fairly well, CPU was a little higher than Win 7 System Image but the same as Eaz-Fix's Drive Imager.

Drive Snapshot has some options that I don't understand. I have dual boot setup with one drive, two partitions. XP = C:, Win 7 = E:. I don't know the proper syntax for the $DISK option. Is that option to make just one image of the entire drive? If yes, where do I type that in at? I may not use that but just in case. Also, has anyone used the option for including used/unused sectors while having one of the ISR apps installed such as CTM, Rollback, Eaz-Fix?