Rollback RX v8

3 questions:

1. So how long did your snapshots take in version 7 and how long are they taking now?

2. What are RAID drives

3. How do you know if you have RAID drives?

 

While your first question is certainly applicable here, 2 and 3 are OT. However, you could read this.

 

The snapshots vary in time. With version 7, it never took over 5 or 6 seconds, and most of the time much less, like 2 or 3.

Version 8 takes from 5 to 10 seconds up to about 30 seconds, depending on the snapshot and the size of the snapshot.

I usually do my snapshots from the GUI open. travellinman stated earlier that Version 8 is much quicker if snapshots are taken from the taskbar with the GUI off. I have not tested this yet.

 

Is 8 a free upgrade from 7 or what would upgrade price be if not and thanks.

Gary

 

You will get a 50% discount on the upgrade if you had 7 for less than a year. There are other present/future stipulations, but you can find those out by going to their web site.

 

Thanks for the information. Using from the Taskbar brings the speed back to what it was in Version 7.

Silver

 

I notice on the RB forum that they intend having a facility to stop RB thus allowing a user to defrag (and I imagine imaging using a third party image programme) without uninstalling. This would be similar to Go-Back's disable facility that allows the user to disable, rather than uninstall, when doing either a defrag or image recovery.
This will simplify the procedure that you presently go though. Expected sometime in the third quarter.

John.

 

Thanks John, I was aware of that and I'm sure all of their future enhancements will stregthen what I believe to be an already great product. However, it's worth noting that early builds of new RB versions have a history of problems, so imho it's worth waiting before 'boarding the bus'. In the meantime, I'm quite comfortable with my current routine and most importantly, it works!

 

Well i have given up on RB8 - had a few boots with error initprotectsydatafailed

So I uninstalled - with the intention of reinstalling version 7 for a while.


but on uninstall the system was left with a boot ini error and a damaged HAL.

So I restored the image I used last week to fix the system - but Paragon could not complete the restore to the c drive.


At that point I decided enough was enough - found a spare drive reinstalled windows - kept the old drive (might fix it in the future)

Not sure what you guys are using I have been using RB with a dual boot system , SATA drives and KIS.


I don't think the uninstaller is multi boot aware - why does it always trash the system. Also don't think that KIS and RB get along that well.

I off to get a refund on the version 8 lic and another copy of FD ISR

 

starfish, I'm sorry, but not surprised to hear your bad news. I've been trying to warn you guys that whenever a new version of RB is released, the first couple of builds have always caused Windows-related problems (and in particular, the boot.ini / HAL problems you just ran into)!

However, I am very surprised that Paragon was unable to restore your C-drive! What was the specific problem that Paragon had in doing that?

 

Pete, other than being a Rollback user I'm not connected to the company (HDS) so I don't have a definitive answer to your question. For that matter, I don't even know whether HDS or EAZ is the actual developer! Furthermore, I am not on their beta-testing team (although wilbertni may be).

But as I have a Software-QA background, it sure seems to be a matter of inadequate testing in both the Alpha and Beta stages. And that's really too bad because once they do get the bugs out, RB does what it's supposed to do very well (as evidenced by the final build of v7.2.1).

 

Have you verified this, and have others found it to be true? I have just started using Rollback Rx v8 and found the backup snapshots feature to be not ready for prime time. I was looking for an independent bare metal recovery method to compliment Rollback that would restore all the snapshots. I tried Paragon, including 1:1 sector and include aux. files, but the restore left me with an uninstalled Rollback Rx and no snapshots. The restore did work, but not with the results of having Rollback and the snapshots in place. Has anybody performed a recent restore with Paragon (or anything!) and had a working Rollback v8 with snapshots after the restore?

 

Brian, I don't use Paragon (although it has a fine reputation), so I can't answer for osip. However, I have used Acronis True Image to do a raw (sector by sector) image and it was able to successfully backup (and restore) RB v7.2.1 and all of its snapshots.

But as I pointed out in #24 of this thread, it takes too long and too much storage to make this option worthwhile for me. So I am very content using the procedure I outlined in #13.

 

If I'm reading you correctly your procedure means uninstalling weekly, do you have any problem with reactivating this many times?

John

 

I uninstall RB whenever I feel it's prudent to capture a fresh disk-image, whether that be weekly or monthly (that really depends on what I deem to be the extent of changes to my system since my last disk-image).

I did have a problem with frequent activations a number of months back, but after sending an email to HDS (explaining my 'procedure') I no longer have any such problem.

 

Um - Like Peter I have spent quite a lot of time talking to Andrew Shen during the version 7 revisions. So I guess I always new that I could get burnt.

I have Acronis and Paragon Images so felt pretty confident about trying version 8. But the system I use with RB has always been configured in a way not compatible with FD and I never really wanted to rebuilt it.

I guess the fact that it is multiboot with the primary disk on E rather than C finally caught up with me. Been exchanging emails with Eric - HDS says that they don't touch the boot.ini

I do think that HDS need to take a great deal more care when writing uninstallers - I uninstalled from the console - no clash with other SW and it housed the boot ini and the HAL on E and left the C drive very dirty.

I guess that this could be fixed by repairing the boot.ini and Hal but .....

Rather than mess around I just put a new disk in and rebuilt - probably due for this in any case - much quicker boot etc.


Not sure why Paragon failed - used the very same image to recover last week. This week the e drive restored but the Paragon was unable to wipe and install the C: C drive left dirty.

I have now installed First defence and Acronis - my standard config

 

I have had some success with Paragon and complete failure with the same snapshot.

Drive snapshot works quite well but I settled on Paragon with RB - now I will no longer use RB. Just not relaible enough I have 2 lics 1 version and 1 version 8

 

I have used V7.2.1 for some time with very few real problems. I recently upgraded one machine to V8 as I was using Vista and V7 does not work with Vista. Well, it seems that V8 does not work with Vista either!

I also have V8 installed on XP, and it seems quite ok there - although I have not done a rollback yet to see if it really works.

But on Vista it is a real mess. My first install worked ok, but everything was so slow as to be completely useless. Boot time was over 2 minutes, but the main problem was inside Vista itself. It would take minutes to load a program (ie Firefox). I had to uninstall it for that reason.

I decided to have another go a few days later, and this time it did not seem to have the speed issues (although it was still very slow to boot). I tried a rollback and it crashed the system - it went into the continuous reboot cycle that we all love to see. I eventually had to uninstall Rollback as that was the only way to get my Windows back.

HDS has since accepted that this is a real issue and they are working on the problem. To date they have not fixed the problem.

 

I had heard of success backing up RB with Paragon and that's why I gave it a try. There was a comment in another thread about the difficulty in using any backup program that didn't "understand" the file structure of something like RB. I guess that means that the only ultimate solution is to wait until RB snapshot backup is working. Until then I will probably do the uninstall RB/Image drive & defrag/reinstall RB routine on something like a monthly schedule with daily Doc backups. I really like the functionality of RB and am willing to be inconvenienced for a while to have it. I also don't like doing a whole disk image just to make sure I got all the RB stuff, even if it worked. Uninstalling RB before the image will avoid that.
If anybody gets some new info. on this subject, please share it! Thanks.

 

Any imaging program that does 1 for 1 copies should be able to image RB. But in my experience Paragon does not always work. Drive snapshot always worked (but I only tried it twice), Acronis always lost the snashots for me.

But as I said above - I will retain version 7 lics but I have asked for a refund on version 8. This is a beta at best - Bucksnort has reported that my scehdule issue is related to screen resolution.


I am much happy with First Defence installed rather than RB

 

Yesterday I did a snapshot defrag from RB 8 and it corrupted all of my snapshots. This, with the fact that I could never restore backed up snapshots, has caused me to uninstall RB. This is really too bad, because it has some very nice features. They are giving me a refund, minus a 15% restocking fee. Maybe they are making all their money on restocking fees!
I went away from Goback because of the incredible resource burden on my laptop, but there is just nothing that replaces the features. RB was close, but without reliability it really is useless. I have tried FD-ISR, but it just doesn't meet my needs. I like to be able to rollback 30 minutes after doing some stupid install. FD is just too slow. Plus Goback allowed me to right click on any file and restore a previous version. I think AJC Active Backup will do this function. Now if I could just find some fast "safety net" software...

 

I'll bet you ran RB8's snapshot defrag from its Windows interface when it resulted in corruption as that was one of the earlier problems with v7 as well. When I experienced that in those earlier v7 builds, I found out that the only safe way to run the snapshot defrag was from RB's boot-time console. They finally found that 'gremlin' and fixed it in later builds of v7.

Instead of losing 15% for their restocking fee, why not convert it to a v7 license (perhaps they will even allow you to retain your v8 license as well for future use)? As I've said a few times in this thread, the final build of v7.2.1 is stable and reliable.

 

That's exactly what I did - Windows interface defrag. Strange, though, that they lost the fix going from 7.2.1 to 8. I'll ask them about getting a license for the older version, or maybe just wait until they get their entire act together. What do you do for a offline backup? Uninstall, then run ATI?

 

That's correct (see #13 of this thread). You don't have to uninstall RB before creating an image (using ATI) from within Windows, but if you don't uninstall RB before imaging, you will have to run a FIXMBR upon restoring. In either case, the restored image will reflect your most current RB snapshot. Also in either case, you have to reinstall RB.