Off to a bad start with ShadowProtect - PLEASE HELP

Aaron,

Thanks again for the information.

My OS partition is similar to yours at 13 GB and has 5 GB free space. I did a Raw image recently (as a test) and it was around 9 GB. Normal full images are just under 5 GB. Differential images, even a month from the base image, are just over 100 MB so it is not an issue keeping multiple differential images. A single mouse click can produce a differential image; I guess similar to your Rollback.

It is interesting how we have our preferences.

 

There's little doubt that my continuous RB snapshots account for my much larger differentials. But even with your very quick and very small differentials, if you wanted to perform a restore....
....whereas with RB it's no more than 90 sec to restore any of my snapshots.

But whatever works!

 

Accepted. But 7 minutes isn't bad. And it's a single click restore. I click in Windows and walk away. When I return, it is back in the restored Windows.

 

I'm afraid we are getting more and more off-topic, but I am very curious as to how you run your restore with 1 click in Windows?

 

It's fully explained in this link. Basically, after clicking the icon Windows shuts down, boots into Image for DOS, runs the restore and boots back into Windows. I have a series of these auto restore files set up so I can choose which image to restore.

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/howto/howto-ifd-bootfile.htm

 

I'm not sure where 7 minutes came from. I just timed a restore. It took 2:44 plus shutdown and startup time.

 

...with performance like that I can see why you really don't need anything else!!!

 

Yes, I understand that, but my post was in relation to the supposed need to spend a lot of extra time to create an image that would permit a straight forward reinstall. If you use RXs imager you can image with RX installed, you do not need to do a sector by sector in order to be able to reinstall and have RX functioning at the end of the restore, and the MBR will work the way it always does with RX installed. No need to do an unistal of RX before you image (or as noted do a sector by sector) and therefore no large expenditure of time.

However,

I agree with you the RX imager is no great shakes, in fact I don't entirely trust it so I do periodically go through the uninstal, image with a 3rd party imager, and reinstall process. This is not as onerous as it might sound since I would uninstall anyway so I could defrag my drive. I just take the opportunity to do a 3rd party image once RX is uninstalled.

I really like the speed and reliability I get with RX. I never unistall programs any more. I used to do a lot of this because I am a big one for trying out interesting sounding software. Of course most interesting sounding software is not so interesting once you try it so I know I have a very fast way to clean the trial completely of the PC using RX. There are a number of other features that RX provided that I like very much as well. In fact I like it so much that now that i know I can do a sector by sector image with SP of my C drive and get my PC back to snuff even with RX installed I will be doing just that.

While I am on the topic of sector by sector,,,,My C:drive is a 500 gig drive (the OS drive is the C drive as noted above, my data drive is 1 Terabyte and my backup drive is also 1 Terabyte). Would I be correct that to do the imaging of the drive as a sector by sector I should partition the drive so the volume is not so large? How much space should I leave if I do do this?

 

That is very good time. I would say its probably similar to RXs restore time when you take into account shut down and reboot etc.

I recently did a OS restore with SP and it took about 8 min, which I thought was fast (I am used to ATI and it would take much longer to do a restore with it).

Which imaging program are you using again?

 

I'm using Image for Windows to create the image and Image for DOS to restore the image. I think SP is a little faster.

 

Thanks.

Hard to imagine faster than your times though.

 

My point was that this can be done with other disk-imagers just as well. I've done it with ATI, DS, and SP, and my system always restored 'successfully'. The limitatation of this method is that it only captures/restores the current snapshot without the RB environment (subconsole), so RB has to be reinstalled. This is the very same result I experienced using RB's disk-imager (Drive Cloner Rx)! Surely you are not suggesting that when you restored your system using RB's imager it also restored the RB subconsole and full RB operation (precluding having to re-install RB).

Yes, you would have to create a much smaller C-partition to avoid the issues cited by Peter.

Just determine the space Windows plus all of your apps consume and add a few more gigs for updates, new apps and RB snapshots. Doubling the space Windows and your apps now consume would be more than enough.

 

Sorry if you misunderstood. I underfstand this but was pointing out only that if you are satisfied with RXs imager then its not a lot of extra time involved to image with RX installed (there was a post staing this as a conclusion drawn from the threads comments). It does take longer to do sector by sector and the resultant files are larger,,,especially if the PC in question is a laptop.

Got it, thanks. I guess Paragon would be the program to use, seems to me its one of the safer ones out there (correct?)

 

Whatever...

Why is Paragon any safer than other disk-imagers...

 

Just from what I have read/heard. Is there a different program you would recommend?

 

Vista, Win7 and BootIt NG can create 2048 sector aligned partitions. What other partitioning apps can do this? What sector alignment do you get from SP when you create a partition in unallocated space prior to a restore?

I understand you need this alignment on a SSD to get the best speed out of your Win7 OS.

 

That's nothing! I have a second WinXP partition that I use for tests. Because it is a different WinXP OS, I can do the restore from my main WinXP without having to shutdown. The image restore takes 17 seconds.