SSDs and "Light Virtualization"

If you disable TRIM you should be able to use Shadow Defender on an SSD without problems. Disabling TRIM is not that bad, lots of people with SSDs on RAID setups can do just fine without it. On newer SSDs internal garbage collection is almost as good as TRIM anyway. If you occasionally leave your computer turned on overnight at the BIOS/UEFI screen, then GC should kick in and optimize things throughout the night.

 

If you are using Rollback Rx, then both DF and WTF will not work. Especially, DF.

Uninstall Rollback Rx and you will see that DF will work. All three, Rollback Rx, DF and WTF are virtualization software, with low level drivers, thus creating entries in the UpperFilters.

I don't understand why people want to use more than one virtualization software at the same time?

And, why if they are using Rollback Rx, then they want to use another virtualization software in combination with Rollback Rx?

Best regards,

 

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=2078036&postcount=8

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=2078054&postcount=9

 

I won't be using them all together. I think my setup is pretty much complete but I kinda wanted to try out some of those LV apps. I haven't been using them since I bought my SSD. After my tests I just loaded the previous snapshot of Rollback Rx and the program was gone. It was just a poor method of testing some softwares. I don't have VirtualBox or Vmware

Also sometimes it is indeed handy to have one of those LV apps on your machine because there are certain apps that just don't install under sandboxie and taking snapshots every time before installing things eats quiet some disk space at least on my machine...

So you could just turn on your WTF or something else, turn on protection and install whatever you want to test out quickly and see if you like it or not.

Running Sandboxie and another LV together doesn't really make much sense I have to admit.

 

Hi Arcanez, in my opinion this is a simplistic approach. Here is why:

With Sandboxie you can safely test suspect executables, then browse the sandbox and see at a glance what changes an executable would have applied to the real system if it was allowed to run outside the sandbox. Priceless.

Snapshot apps on the other hand (like Comodo Time Machine and Rollback RX), are invaluable for software testing and for undoing non-malicious system changes. They also good for reversing the changes cause by unsophisticated malware, as well as for undoing system crashes. This last feature alone is worth the price of admission for me: They allow the user to experiment with overclocking, and there's no need to check the disk for file system errors after every crash. When the system freezes you just hard reset, enter the BIOS and choose a more moderate clock, then restore an older snapshot on the next reboot; and all this happens before Windows even has the chance to complain about an improper shutdown: The crash is instantly undone. Again, priceless, at least for me.

Still, snapshot apps are vunerable to sturdy, sophisticated malware (like TDSS). For that you'd need a light virtualization app like Shadow Defender (SD). SD is my safety net against any malware that somehow may creep in through my other defences. Nothing has beat it so far. Again, priceless, at least for me.

These three different computer technologies (snapshoting, light virtualization, sandboxing) can work well together, and they really complement each other. Each provides its own unique functionality, and when combined they give more options and more control at the hands of the user.

 

Thanks! How about Sandboxie & SSD's?

TH

 

You're welcome Helix! I use sandoxie, SD and Rollback RX together on Win7 x64 with a Vertex 3 Max IOPS, no probs there as long as you disable TRIM with SD. Sandboxie doesn't care about TRIM anyway. Each provides me with its own unique functionality, and together they offer superb control. Look at my previous post on this page, plus on some of my older posts on other threads, for tips on such functionality. I have to warn you though, some of my posts are huge!

 

does anyone have experience freezing a 3TB HDD with any light virtualization software. Are there any problems occuring when freezing these huge drives?

also besides shadow defender, which other light virtualization apps are capable of freezing additional harddrives besides the system partition??

 

Returnil System Safe Free 2011 has that function, you can enable virtual mode in other hdd's as well. I have 2 Tb drives in desktop, havent had freezing issues with it at all. Dont know about other's.

 

I was reading the post about Returnil vs. Shadow defender. It seems that the free version or the trial version are slowing down the system quite a bit.
Then I saw this post. I'm a little lost on the 11page thread. This is recommended? i'm looking for something for a netbook (quite old one) so it won't crash like it used to be.

Thanks!

 

Thanks for this btw - doing so has allowed me to use Shadow Defender without any problems whatsoever (have been testing for over a couple of weeks now). Hopefully, there isn't too much of a negative performance impact (haven't really noticed one anyway).

I had been running Deep Freeze, and while it is compatible with TRIM, it just doesn't have the same versatility as SD. Not to mention Deep Freeze (v7.5) has a bad habit of BSOD'ing my system when disconnecting external drives (DfDiskLow.sys being the responsible driver).

 

Thanks for the update Daray. For the benefit of new SSD users I'd like to mention a few things:

Most modern SSDs have decent garbage collection (GC) algorithms anyway so you'll be able to get a certain degree of the performance back even with TRIM disabled. The efficiency of TRIM/garbage collection varies between manufacturers. How much performance you get back depends purely on three factors:

1) The controller of the SSD (Sandforce, Indilinx, etc). Sandforce SSDs may not recover as well as others, especially when using GC without TRIM.

2) How empty is the SSD (the emptier it is, the more effective is TRIM and GC).

3) How optimized is the firmware on the drive. The efficiency of TRIM and GC algorithms varies between manufacturers. Some manufacturers use basic reference firmware without many optimizations (e.g SanDisk), whereas others tweak the reference firmware (e.g OCZ) for better TRIM/GC efficiency.

On the following link you can see a test regarding Degradation and Steady-State Performance. It shows how much performance deterioration SSDs experience after being filled with data, and the degree in which they recover using TRIM and GC:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/sandisk-extreme-ssd-240gb_4.html

Essentialy this test shows the efficiency of TRIM/GC between different manufacturers. As you can see the king of the hill is the OCZ Vertex 4 which sports an Indilinx controller and a firmware that has been optimized nicely. For drives with SandForce reference (non-tweaked) firmware like the SanDisk Extreme, TRIM/GC recovery is not as optimized. Hopefully SanDisk will fix this with a future firmware update.

Tip: If you leave your computer idle overnight either at the BIOS/UEFI screen or at the Windows Log Off screen, then GC should kick in and use the idle time to get some of the SSD performance back even when TRIM is disabled.

In everyday usage most users wouldn't notice the difference in speed with TRIM on or off anyway, even when the GC algorithms are not optimal. SSDs are so fast that even a used-and-abused SSD will be much faster than a HDD, and the opening of programs will still be almost instantaneous. Without benchmarks users most probably won't notice any real-world difference - unless of course they frequently tranfer a lot of large files over to the SSD.

 

Same corruption on my Crucial M4 and Intel 520 SSD's with Shadow Defender and Returnil. Faronics Deep Freeze v7.3 worked great past couple months, until v7.5, BSOD upon removing external hard drives eSata or USB 3.

Are there any more reliable Light Virtualization apps to try?

 

I wonder if what others are saying here (about SD possibly creating hidden partitions on a drive), what happens if there is no unallocated space for this creation and if a SSD behaves in a different manor when this might be attempted, causing some corruption in the original partition, or the file structure or data!

Food for thought!