Power Shadow

Interesting report about v2.6 Expresso. I still have the English files posted awhile back for 2.82 but really haven't had any need to update because i'm waiting to see IF or WHEN they master the feature of also Exiting shadow-mode w/o a reboot. Now THAT will be revolutionary. I'm sure if anyone will pull that off it's the PS Team.

 

I have run 2.6 on my dell laptop which has a sata harddrive in it with no problems at all, i now run 2.8 which also runs flawlessly.

 

dont understand,its not running on my SATA desk,no problems on my IDE driven rigs.Contrary to official reply from vendor your running PS 2.6 on SATA with no problems--thats strange---do you have a Sata disk afterall,normally they come with IDE ? And if its real SATA how you get around this to make it work ?

thanks.

 

I have a Hitachi HTS541080G9SA00, which is an 80gig 5400rpm sata hard drive. I don't do anything special, just a normal installation of powershadow 2.6 and it runs fine. I'm guessing that notebook and desktop sata interfaces must be different and thats where the problem lies.

 

I do think the technology of Powershadow will damage your harddisk.

When you first install Powershadow, it will find a free space in your harddisk for the "cache buffer". It maybe will take 1-10 GB space in your harddisk.

when you are in shadow mode, all the disk access will be actually saved into the "cache buffer". when you rebooting, the "cache buffer" will be clean. all the changes will be lost.

that is the theory of Powershadow.

Now, all the disk access will muster in a fixed buffer area. That means the linear accesss to disk will be changed to a point. The "cache buffer" will be used very very frequently.

Damage on your harddisk will be there soon.

Now other products of virtual solution already dropped this technology and move to new way.

But after I tested the PS 2.8, it was still in the old way.

 

There's been no real report of anything like that untill now, and why now? Is this some new discovery (bug?)

You can also just as easily damage your Hard Drive if you always run the write heads to severe xtremes excessively (other softwares), but even then that type damage would take considerable time IMO.

I'm really enjoying this. Ever since Power Shadow has surfaced here and now is spread globally like wildfire & popularity all over the net, it's become a real point of contention for some to zero in on it's potential weaknesses or even make a point to discount it in favor of sandboxes etc. but all that is really beneficial, that is to scrutinize it thoroughly and for that matter any software that is proven to back up it's claims with Positive Results!

Not to dismiss the suggestion made regarding the Hard Drive matter raised but can you offer up just a little more proof that such a potential exists beyond what's been posted so far to that? I for one would be very interested in reading more into this.

In the meantime, my own Hard Drive is not suffered any such hint of that being mentioned. In retrospect, i have run some badly coded programs B4 that have noticable taken my HD to severe task just by listening to the thrashing they were putting on it.

 

Weird. Weird. Weird.

1, If you don't have PS, you still need to write and read your drive.
Will PowerShadow drastically increase write and read times ?
On the contrary, I think it MAYBE decrease operations a little bit.
(Because I think PowerShadow may have a buffer in the software)
A couple of people in this forum even verified that performance of computer increase a little bit after running PowerShadow.

2, you said "all the disk access will muster in a fixed buffer area.the linear accesss to disk will be changed to a point. The "cache buffer" will be used very very frequently. Damage on your harddisk will be there soon. "

Are you talking about "c:\pagefile.sys " from MicroSoft ?

 

I'm certainly not the only one so fortunate but other users of Power Shadow also have experienced a welcome phenomena of noticing an improvement! in performance after installing & running PS. Don't ask because i'm at a loss to offer any reasonable explaination for that, but i have experienced the same exact boost in normal pc operation with other apps although only a very choice few, but it was so undeniable it was mind-boggling but exciting and very welcome.

If it's not a bios rootkit theory scare tactic it's always something else like this that always seems to surface in some effort to distract away from realizing total confidence is indeed within easy reach sometimes or that solid security can be achieved in enjoying a fully stable and protected PC.
I come to expect as much anymore because positive and lasting results can surely prove hard to stomach for skeptics everywhere that some windows software programs can & do indeed excell far beyond the ordinary. We all have long been conditioned to believe this can't possibly be realized or in such a fashion as this which is refreshingly shocking even for us!

 

If PowerShadow is damaging my harddisk, then EVERY software is damaging my harddisk. My harddisk has to read and write bytes, otherwise it's useless and it has to spin and move too, otherwise it keeps on reading and writing at the same spot and that is boring. Where do they get all these stories ? Pffft.
I hope this helps.

PS: This was post #785 on page #32, that's more than Rocky 1, 2, 3, 4 ... They obviously ignored Peter's advice.

 

Power Shadow is hardly a threat to HD health, for that matter neither are the "masses" of security softwares i been testing for so long, plus all the rootkits & malwares that i've enjoyed watching squirm around throughout my system only to run out of hiding spots

Now then i have encountered one really bad element b4 which was a floppy image supposedly designed to wipe a disk that actually came off a very legit commercial site offered for free that "locked" my darn hard drive from the Bios even recognizing it Never did figure that one out.

With it's lid now off it rests nicely on my glass shelf as a display item of what a disc platter looks like for the curious.

 

I think that PS is great. I love the way you can choose to go into shadow mode without re-boot. I'm looking forward to the version that can come out of shadow without re-boot.

 

I'm almost sure that this will happen in the future or at least with other similar softwares.
You just press a button and then your computer will be blocked for a short time to UNDO the changes. It can't be that difficult to do this. I even wonder why they didn't do it during the development. It was the next logical step.

 

On their forum they talk of a BETA, but as yet it hasn't been released. Now wouldn't that be something. Check out the new BETA while in Shadow mode.

 

Will probably try it in a virtual machine whilst in shadowmode!

Geez I laughed when you lost your glasses after coming out of shaowmode but I can't find that post atm.

 

I have never tried VM. I guess that Shadow mode is kind of the same thing. I have a hard time wrapping my head around a virtual machine First Defense snapshot of PowerShadow operating a Beta of PowerShadow 2.9.

 

Check this out (another PS type product)...

Returnil is protecting my Windows XP system partition, that resides on an immutable Virtual Disk Image of VirtualBox, which is hosted on Xandros 4.

Mike

 

If you have the necessary hardware then you should give vm's a try. I use Virtual PC 2007 which is free and relatively easy to use imo.

 

I have been trying to download VMPlayer all afternoon. For some reason I can't get it to download.

 

I'm not using VMplayer.MS's Virtual PC seems to work fine by itself and is a 30 meg download whereas I think VMplayer is over a 100.

MS Virtual PC 2007

 

Returnil looks interesting. I noticed that someone name 'sucilee' is one of the authors, or involved with Returnil. Wonder if it's the same sucilee posting in this thread? I'd prefer people be open about their association, if any, with a competitor before criticizing another similar product. That's only fair.

 

They (PS Team), obviously at some point like you mention, either during development or shortly thereafter it's release realized that new type of feature would be expected from them.
Just like other software projects they probably had decided to impliment it in another release/update.
From our end it wouldn't seem to be so difficult for them to pull off, but who's say what all that involves to finally compile it together. I just like to see it become reality & sooner rather than later.

 

Already been said before (December 12th, 2006, 01:33 PM)... https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=901219&postcount=5

Oh, the poster that said, "I do think the technology of Powershadow will damage your harddisk."

Mike

 

I managed to download VMPlayer. It is 145mb's. I started to download Virtual PC but it didn't say that it supported XP Home ,only Pro. I haven't done anything yet with VM . Not sure what to do.

 

When you try to install virtual pc on xp home it pops up a warning saying the OS is not supported but you can still install it and it works fine from my experience.

I've used vmware player a bit before but if i remember correctly it doesn't allow you to create your own vm's. You either have to download a vm or download vmware converter to create one.

I prefer virtual pc as its free, its a much smaller download and it allows you to easily create your own vm's. I've made myself a custom vm using windows 2003 which is only 300mb. It only has firefox installed in it and i use it for most of my web browsing, when i shut it down i delete all changes so i have my clean vm back again.