Rollback Rx

Hi Sukarof,

If you are talking about HDS Clone, I did try it but for some reason was unable to install it on my system. In fact, I had to make a power reset to be able to use my computer after trying to install HDS Clone.

Atomas31

 

Atomas, couldn't you have just used RollBack RX to "goback" in time to make sure that program was completely off your system?

Acadia

 

Yes, it's excellent that folks with limited drive space or Win98 now can do the things that us FD users have been able to do for some time. It's always nice to have a choice between two excellent programs like KAV or NOD, and Opera or FireFox.

Acadia

 

Hi Acadia,

For some reason, I don't know what HDS Clone have done to my system but the only thing I can tell is there was no way to make anything with my system unless I reset power of my tower... As for going back, after that, there was no need since the program didn't actually install anything!

Atomas31

 

Oops, sorry about that, I misread your post.

Acadia

 

Hi Pete,

Don't worry, I have done everything like it should be but reading your comment the fact that I have USB ports on wich my external hard drive his connect could be the source of my problems with HDS clone?

Personnally when I start my system with HDS clone, I got the first menu screen where you have to choose between two options, I choose one, click enter, then I see the HDS clone 2.0 logo and then back to the dos menu (where I don't see the beginning of the sentence, just like my screen wasn't big enough!) with some message and some error message and it seems I am prompt to enter something I try to enter autorun.bat but that didn't work.

For me, HDS clone doesn't work! I just hope they can rectifie the situation

Best regards,
Atomas31

 

So If I understand well, even if I was able to "install" HDS clone on my system, It would still be impossible to make a image backup disk to disk (in my case my external hard drive with USB 2.0 port)? If so, What's the point of that software?

Just like you Pete, I don't think I would backup my 56gigs drive C on CD's, no way!!!!

Atomas31

 

So, let me see if I'm understanding this correctly, Rollback will work with Acronis TrueImage, but only the Baseline Snapshot is copied? (from the other thread)

Acadia

 

Hi Acadia,

Don't know the answer to your question, but can I assume that Drive Image (from Power Quest/Norton) will do the same than Acronis TrueImage when making a backup image? I hope not?

Atomas31

 

Peter, I don't know what you mean by, "I then added back two snapshot to work with. This might not work for all, but does for me."

Acadia

 

At least, I am happy to hear that they are working to make HDS clone compatible and working for our systems... But wouldn't be more easy to include Data backup and cloning capacity into Rollback Rx? If I am not mistaking RestoreIt pro does have functionnality to backup data and cloning so as data restoration why wouldn't Rollback rx pro have all those function integrate into Rollback Rx pro? Even more if we consider that Rollback Rx seems to create difficulty to some third party backup software (I use Drive Image from Power Quest/Norton)?

@Pete, how does updating up your baseline work? Can you choose the snapshot from wich the baseline can be update or does it simply update from each and every snapshot (if that's possible - how does it do that? Should we delete old snapshot and only keep the most recent one when we want to update our baseline?)

Thanks,
Atomas31

 

Ok, you Rollback users, correct me if I am wrong here. Whenever you are in a FirstDefense Snapshot, whatever work and changes that you make in that Snapshot are automaticlly saved, just as if you were working on your normal c:drive, because technically, you are; you do not have to save anything. Whenever, in the future, that you book back to that Snapshot, all of your work will still be there.

It seems to me, and this is where I might need to be corrected, that a Rollback Snapshot does not keep all of your changes, you must create ANOTHER snapshot, but it takes only an instant to do so, no need to wait. If you boot all that way back to that first Snapshot, you will NOT have your new work or changes there; if you want those changes, you most go to the later Snapshot. Changes are not kept, but must be saved. Is this correct? If so, this is a major difference between FD and RB, in fact, I believe makes RB different from ALL of the other instant recovery programs, and may help to explain why I am having a little bit of difficulty trying to mentally picture this thing; remember, I have never installed it, I'm trying to figure it all out in my head.

Does this mean, ASSuming that I am correct about this, that you must create another Snapshot everytime that you turn off your pc, to make sure that you retain everything; what happens if you turn on your pc the next day and you forgot to create a new Snapshot the previous evening; will you have lost your previous days work?

Acadia

 

Thanks Acadia for asking these questions, otherwise I there would´ve been a risk that I would have lost the changes the few times I turn off my computer
I just did a test to shut down my PC. Usaually I have my computer powered up 24/7 so I didnt know if it did a snapshot when shutting down the computer.

Normally, when restoring a snapshot (reboot to another snapshot) RB automatically makes a new snapshot with all the changes.
But now that I turned off the computer - Rollback did not make an snapshot with the changes. That is not good. I assumed that it will automatically make a snapshot also when turning off the computer, the same way it does when restoring. But it didnt
Maybe others can verify this?

Well after the first days of honeymoon with the program, the problems starts to appear.
I noticed that, atleast for me, the snapshots seems to have some glitches....

Problem:

Today I rebooted to a previous snapshot.
I tried to start Firefox. It started but didnt load up fully. It just stayed half started so to speak. The CPU went up to 100% I guess it stopped loading when some of the extensions were supposed to load. But the same thing happened when starting firefox in safe mode without extensions.
I imported Firefox folder from another snapshot, thinking this would correct it, but it didnt. Now nothing happend at all when I tried to start Firefox, firefox didnt load at all (I did monitor it with process explorer)

Then I rebooted to my normal snapshot and noticed that I had the same problem there
I had to uninstall and reinstall Firefox to get it to work properly.
I also had some unexplained crasch when trying to uninstall some program earlier. It was idriver.exe (if I recall right) which was sume kind of uninstall program for the program (the game Call of Duty 2) I was trying to uninstall.

I am not 100% sure it has something to do with Rollback yet, but I will monitor this behaviour.

 

Like others I'm not going to burn 80 GB to DVD. I only want my 12 GB System partition on a disaster recovery DVD, so I can recover my system paritition when the harddisk fails instead of reinstalling the OS and all the programs. The other partitions are backed up using an external harddisk and file backup software.

My experience using Rollback Rx and disk imaging is that disk imaging only sees the baseline image and doesn't see the other snapshots. I even tried creating a sector by sector disk image. The other method was to boot into the Rollback Rx subsystem, choose boot from floppy and boot from floppy disk to access Ghost. I tried three different Ghosts builds, but everytime Ghost would crash. If you update your baseline you will lose all your previous snapshots. I'm not sure that if you update your baseline the baseline will be visible to disk imaging. If you uninstall Rollback Rx it will revert to the baseline snapshot and uninstalling always works with disk imaging, so my guess is that updating the snapshot will work with disk imaging. This has to be tested or confirmed by HDS.

Rollback Rx only saves what you tell it to do. You define hourly snapshot, create snapshot after certain programs are run (e.g. setup.exe or msiexec), before shutdown, etc. It's up to you how you define this. You can also define a policy to clean up snapshot and lock snapshot so they are not automatically cleaned up. You can also create a snapshot and tag it as locked.

The advantage of hourly snapshots is that you can use the synchronise feature to restore documents you've accidentally overwritten or removed from an hourly snapshot and define a policy to remove snapshots that are not locked after the number of snapshots has reached a certain treshold.

 

Yo Pete,

Is there possible that the fact that HDS clone is offer free can be because they want to test some of their cloning and backup technologie on the most computer configuration possible so when all is good they can implement those technologies into Rollback Rx? What do you think? Is this possible?

Thanks,
Atomas31

 

Peter, this just isn't making any sense to me, sounds like a contradiction. Sorry for being so dense, but is it possible to go into more detail?

When you say that your computer is "current", what Snapshot are you in at that time? How is the Snapshot able to remain current if the "photo" is of 8 P.M.?

Thanks,
Acadia

 

Peter, let me add this: If you take a Snapshot at 8 P.M., and you continue to work until 10 P.M. creating a couple of new Word docs, I assume that when you turn your pc on the following morning, the new Word docs will still be there, correct? But where will they be residing or living if they are retained? Were they added to the 8 P.M. Snapshot, or are they in some other "nether" world with the possibility of being lost?

Acadia

 

This sounds a bit like what 'SecondCopy' by PowerQuest used to do. My Dad still has this on his machine, and it takes a snapshot everytime he switches on his computer.