Drive Snap: Drive Snapshot Frontend

Strange. It's still happening. I tried unraring other files. No problems.

 

@Brian K All is fine here. I suggest you upgrade to the latest WinRar 3.71 which i used to pack it.

 

Yeah, that´s OK allright, unticked and visible. A wild idea, not sure if there is an advantage to do this in compare with FDISR:s export function...A spontaneus thought. I´m not sure of the eventual gainings, BartPE FDISR image snapshot restore availability, special snapshot restore, burning a special FDISR snapshot to a DVD and so on..., my mind is overspinning ? In spite of that a great addition to DS and you always have my attention...
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and also: the preboot thing in FDISR, do you have to disable this prior to DSsnap imaging with $ISR exclusions, othwerwise it could mean that the preboot could contain snapshot info which is excluded in a DS image restore...
Well, if this seeems to be unsufficient brainwashing I beg my pardon...

 

Mark. I am getting the same as Brian K when unpacking, but.......the program still shows and works. Using WinRar 3.71. very strange but not a problem.

 

I just caught this thread and d/l the rar file. It unpacked without a problem using Power Archiver.

Thanks markymoo!

 

I found the problem my WinRar folder came up corrupt running chkdsk and the help file and key were garbled. NOD32 reported the archive damaged but it unpacked ok. The authenticity info was corrupted hence the error. Drive Snap.exe will still be 100% ok. I use 7zip for now. Thanks Brain, kennyboy.

 

Mark, all OK now.

 

Same here Mark.

Havn't had time to try it yet, but it looks brilliant.

Many Thanks

 

DriveSnap appeaars to be a nice front-end - but would someone please explain the use of the 'Filename' selections in the column on the right-side?

Also, I'd like to make a WinPE CD (with DriveSnap & snapshot.exe) that boots-up directly into DriveSnap. Can someone point me in the right direction?

 

and there i was saying it was your end . everything was looking good at the time.

Thanks lodore, appster, kennyboy, Brian K, Aaron - Help file soon.

Aaron i bring out the plugins for you to do that.

Example: Today being Thursday ticking Disk,Weekday and Year would give a image filename of C-Thursday-2008-full.sna

This is so you can see what partition you took the image from and day and year made easier by being in the filename and know it's a full image.

If you make a differential from the filename above it automatically selects C-Thursday-2008-diff.sna as the filename so you can tell them apart but can easily tell keeping the same filename(apart from the diff) that they are related .

As a request from nexstar testing it(thanks wherever you are). i gave more choice to wildly change the diff filename if you need to but for me keeping the same filename and just adding diff is enough. The choice becomes available when you click on a full image. There is no need to click on the right Filenames or Custom if you just want the filename to stay the same but just end in diff.sna making differential. It's upto you how you want the differential filename to be.

Note: Drive Snapshot Filename strings use .ful and .dif but Drive Snap uses .full .diff. as it looks better in the filename. If you use the Drive Snap all the time then it isn't a problem. The $type string gets automatically added thats why it's not selectable.

The command line options explaining the Filename strings are in the Drive Snapshot help.

http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/commandline.htm under 'Creation of filenames with date, weekday'

If you just want to use own filenames just forget the Filenames on the right and use the CUSTOM filename box to type in your filename but full.sna and diff.sna will be still be added to the filename so you know what type of image it is.

 

Thanks again markymoo. Am I to understand that when you develop a DriveSnap plugin, that will enable a WinPE CD to boot directly into DriveSnap?

 

Aaron,

I have a USB stick and a CD that will boot to WinPE and automatically start Drive Snap. The USB stick takes less than a minute to boot into Drive Snap. But my build method is convoluted so let's wait for Markymoo to release a simplified method.


Correction: VistaPE, not WinPE

 

This is pretty exciting and serious stuff and a tremendous asset for users of DriveSnapshot, and why not? DS i found to be as efficient if not more so then many, and i do mean the many other backup image programs dare i say including ShadowProtect!

Thanks again markymoo, while i'm going to have to re-arrange some internal hard drives to put it to the acid test, if it comes thru with all these exceptional features added in it, i would say this is a milestone of sorts and many credits and compliments are in order for markymoo for his craftsmanship in Drive Snap and even taking the effort to formulate such a fantastic front-end for our beloved DS.

EASTER

 

I am not overly familar with FDISR as regular users like on this forum so can't say about the FDISR export function. I don't have experience of recovery using FDISR so i don't know if Drive Snap would have any benefit now or later. I have used it but not to a big degree. You or someone here can answer that better. I do know that FDISR is still a worthy program to continue to use even if production has stopped if the version you use has no bugs or problems and works for you. You coming from another angle and thinking of things and benefits i not considered.

If i implement the DOS auto restore then it will make for faster restores and can do away for the use of needing BartPE for image restore all together. Yet it wouldn't have the speed of restore as it does from BartPe. It what is acceptable to you for the time it takes to recover.

No you do not have to disable the FDISR boot interface. I never tried it but if you backed up using Drive Snapshot from within Windows or outside of Windows it would backup all the FDISR essential boot info. I'm quite sure the boot part of FDISR isn't protected like Eaz-Fiz. If you restoring to a new drive then restoring the MBR from the image would be essential for FDISR to work correctly. Drive Snapshot doesn't do this automatically but as it can be automatically done from the command line Drive Snap could be made to automatically restore an image and MBR from the image in one action.

 

I'm keen on DOS restores again. We need to remember that DOS boots much faster than BartPE so that's a time saving. All of my testing on Snapshot DOS restores lately has been with IDE HDs. I've found if you load UDMA drivers in DOS, Snapshot runs at double speed. It's an impressive speed increase.

Your auto restore disc will be another winner.

 

A major benefit!

 

I haven't compared sounds good. There's a UDMA util that loads but i didn't think it made any difference to SATA drives nowadays only old IDE drives. Plus you can't beat the speed of Drive Snapshot. What about using smartdrv.exe also?, maybe a little or nothing i not sure. i think only for caching files that load up.

When you restoring from a recovery or Windows and you restoring back the image to an existing drive then the MBR is usually there but if it's a new drive you have to right click the HD X and select Restore Master Boot Record, in this case no it doesnt automatically restore but in DOS it looks like Drive snapshot would restore the MBR to a new drive from an image by using AUTO in it's command line. I haven't done any testing on this in DOS. I'm sure it would. Get a new drive and use AUTO or just use an existing drive and wipe the drive writing 0's over every sector and then see if it restores and boot's with and without using AUTO and partititon structure in the command line.

 

Correct. It isn't loaded if you have SATA HDs. But for IDE HDs it makes a big difference although it does depend on your BIOS.

The Snapshot boot floppy/CD has these drivers.

 

I've just made a VistaPE CD that can do an automatic Snapshot restore. Building the CD is a bit messy. There is some trial and error getting the correct drive letters but that applies to the DOS CD too. Drive letters may be different from what you see in Windows but once it's sorted out the CD works every time.

 

Phew. I have finished the Help Guide for Drive Snap . It maybe already obvious for some how to use which i hope it is, but it is here with everything explained for those who want to know more. Be grateful i hate writing help files lol plus the 'forcevss' and 'enable cmd line' options were not being loaded back in after been saved which is now fixed. I included the help and updated the download.

http://artco.adsl24.co.uk/markymoo/Drive%20Snap.chm


@Brian

Yes that's the thing! Knowing the right drive of where your images are in DOS. My drives are not setup correctly. I have C drive listed as Drive 1 which means Drive 2 when i go into DOS it be as 0. It's fine doing it manually on your own system you can adjust accordingly. The challenge is it see the right location work on every system . The BIOS can shuffle them around if they not in the right order.

 

Brian, does your WinPE USB stick drive also mess-up your hard drive letters?

 

thats why it pays to label your partitions.

 

Aaron,

Yes. In Windows my first HD has (in order)

C: N: D: M:

My second HD has

E: F:

In VistaPE (both from the CD and USB stick)(Windows drive letters on the left)

C is C
E is D
F is E
N is F
D is G
M is H

Weird isn't it. But you only have to boot to it once to sort this out. Then you have to make the VistaPE USB stick again with the correct batch files. It only takes 10 to 15 minutes to make a VistaPE.

My backup images are stored in F: drive in Windows which is E: drive in VistaPE. So the VistaPE batch file must reference E: drive.

 

Very true.

 

In DOS, using ntfsdos.exe, It's like this....

C is D
Hidden partition is E
N is F
D is G
M is H
E is I
F is J

The hidden partition doesn't show in VistaPE

Unfortunately, labels don't show in DOS.