Rollback91 and Hot Imaging

I performed some further tests with various programs (image for windows, paragon, ds, driveimagexml, easus).
Even though all of them correctly backuped all the sectors, only "Image for windows", and only when PHYLock is enabled during the imaging, can restore correctly.
All the others during the restoration, restore as visible filetable, the filetable that was active in the current snapshot and not the one of the baseline shield.

The weird thing is that RBRx could load the previous snapshots without any problem and hide the newer files, but when I selected to reset to the baseline snapshot it actually reverted to the one where the image was taken all the files inclouded.

Conclusion 1: only IFW can make a hot image of a RBRx system with all the snapshots included.
Conclusion 2: Raw (Hot or not) Imaging is not an actual raw, since all the other programs except maybe? IFW (if the PHYLock is disabled IFW fails also the test) take in acount not only the raw sectors but also the visible file system (filetable). If they treated the ntfs partition as an unknown partition all of them should be able to correctly restore the RBRx raw.

Panagiotis

 

Panagiotis,

Amazing information. Thanks.

 

What you write now confirms my findings at the time, several years ago. The PHYLOCK is a superior lock. I said at the time Phylock locks deep. This means more chance of creating a reliable, consistent backup image and with super high restore success. This one of the reasons why Brian and I used to bang on why IFW is such a worthy program and excellent value for money. Always found image integrity second to none. Another reason why I had never had to move away from Drive Snapshot or IFW/D.

Aaron, slick suggestion thanks.

Drive Snap now supports GPT. You can backup amd restore all of the 5 parts of GPT data.

 

You are very welcome, Brian.

Personally, I consider IFW a bit superior to DS (mainly because of its extreme configurability), but I agree they both are excellent apps.

Now, I'm running a final test with IFW and PHYLock in RBRx. PHYLock obviously gets direct read access to the disk and now am curious if it also has direct write access for creating the PHYLOCK.SWP, which if proven true, can be very dangerous for the RBRx enviroment.

Panagiotis

 

Mark, I happen to have saved that post - you were right-on in Nov. 2007.

Glad you like my name-change idea - remember, if you use it you owe me a royalty (i.e., a free copy)!

Aaron

 

I just finished the test and my suspicions were confirmed.

I had left only 657mb free for the RBRx enviroment and set IFW to use a buffer of 2048mb. During the hot image a PHYLOCK.SWP of 2gb were created and the process started.

Bottom line, even with IFW and PHYLock, is extremly unwise to create a hot raw image from inside the RBRx enviroment.
Every RBRx user that needs all the snapshots, should stick with the offline raw image and forget about hot imaging.

Panagiotis

 

Panagiotis, what a let-down. After all of the effort that's gone into hot-imaging throughout this thread.

Well, after a few years of practice I have the PE-Raw method down pat, so as it's now second nature to me I'll just continue doing that.

Of course there is one hot-imaging option known to work - creating a normal image from within an RB partition and being content with only capturing the current snapshot (and having to restore RB)...

Thanks for all of your testing!

Aaron

 

What if you disable "Use Disk Storage" setting, is it still dangerous?

 

Those softwares are not used by the average user. They are decent but used by the minority.

It is possible to install Plop into the BIOS if you dare. if the hard drives die, the boot manager will still be there.

 

@Aaron
You are welcome.
I contacted DS about the restore mbr and partition structure and they answered me that they'll check it in the next few days. By the way a new version 1.40.15449 is out.

@Sadeghi85
Thanks for reminding me of that setting (I had completly forgotten about it).

I just tested it and it works fine and it is safe. Image For Windows with PHYLock enabled and "Use Disk Storage" disabled worked like a charm.

Panagiotis

 

With 25% discount, Image for Windows is only for $30.

Best regards,

KOR!

 

Please let us know of their findings (you may have indeed uncovered a bug).

Exactly what does that setting do? ...having recently downloaded IFW (trial), it just blows me away with all of its check-box settings!!!

Aaron

 

For those that are interested in buying with the discount...
-http://www.bitsdujour.com/software/image-for-windows/

OK.

It just disables the creation of the disk cache file and force IFW to use only the RAM cache. (use the help file, it explains everything thoroughly)

Panagiotis

 

Aaron,

I leave everything on its default setting.

 

Brian,

I did that as well, but somehow they have got to make it a lot simpler if they want 'the average Joe' to understand it all (gheez)!

Aaron

 

There are "scores" of settings mentioned in the userguide that I don't understand and aren't needed for ordinary use. I don't know who uses those settings. Try reading the section on Geometry if you want to lose your hair.

 

@Aaron

Drive Snap will go out free to all current Wilders members who are interested. Updates will go out more to those who supported it in past. Cheers.

If you have Drive Snap already. There is a BartPE/WinPE plugin for it. It tracks and restores a DS image stored on hard drive soon as BartPe boots.

IFW. settings look bewildering but you can forget most of them. The default settings work for nearly everything. Even if you have Windows 7 you dont have to select Win7 MBR.

If you auto restore it works out some of them which is usually enough. Just trust the default.

 

i'm definetely interested mark.
i have just been trying it this afternoon and this app is amazing!

 

Cool, thanks for testing.

 

Me too, dear Mark!

LOL!

Best regards,

KOR!

 

You can turn off hibernation from a cmd box with powercfg.exe /hibernate off. It should delete hiberfil.sys in root and that save 10GB.
Yes DS doesn't backup hiberfil.sys or pagefile.sys.

 

Panagiotis,

Based on the above statement, can I conclude that a Hot-Raw backup of an RB-partition using IFW (with Phylock and 'Use Disk Storage' unchecked) can faithfully restore the partition with RB and all snapshots intact? If so, have you tried an incremental/differential backup using IFW and the same conditions?

Aaron

 

Yes, the result is the same as if you took an offline raw.
I have not tried the differential backup in those conditions but I'm confident that IFW won't have any problem to do it.

IFW differentials are not faster than full images but are way smaller in size. (IFW use bit per bit comparison for the differential and not hashes as drive snapshot does.)

Panagiotis

 

If I deliberately avoid installing apps, my differential images one month after creating the base image are only 40 MB.

My diff images are created in about half the time of base images.

 

Hi Aaron,

Yesterday they verified my results and indeed it was a bug; drive snapshot saved only the first 32 sectors and not the first 63, during the backup.

They already provided me a new version 1.40.15451 were it is fixed (great support, they checked and resolved it in less than a day).

Panagiotis