EAZ-fix/Rollback RX and disk imaging

Via Gparted i made following disc arrangement as shown below( I have no idea this is OK or not to do so).
Same problem, ather worse, HDS Clone never recognized FAT32 drive as destination( or even as source if try to do image verification/ restore).

 

That is disappointing.

Here is my disk manager, and it worked each time.
I don't know why your's doesn't work.

http://www.geocities.com/wilbertnl/eazclone/fat32.png

 

That,s really disappointing for me!!
I noticed a very interesting thing.
When I tried to restore the image from my FAT32 Pri partiton F, HDS cone did not recognize F as source drive. I booted into windows, moved image file to NTFS partition E, did a quick FAT 32 re-format of partition F. Moved the image file to F again. Then i rebooted from HDS clone CD and it recognized patition F with a sucessful restore of image. O very next reboot with HDS Clone CD, F drive again became undetecable.
I repeated this twice with almost similar results.
Conclusion is that--- immediately after a quick format of FAT32 Primary partition HDS clone will recognize FAT 32 partition as a source drive during image restore but stop recognizing it after rebooting into windows once and coming back to HDS Clone boot CD.
It is really weired but I tried it twice with similar results.
( I always do a quick format, may be i need to do a complete format??)

 

I noticed u have extended partition on a second hard drive and in my case it is on same HD as I have a single HD. It might be the reason of failure on my system?

 

I've been following this thread with interest as I've been trying out EAZ-Fix/Rollback recently and have been getting on very well with it. I have also tried EAZ-Clone/AYGhost with the same results as Aigle.

I first of all tried AYGhost with a FAT32 partition as a second partition on a second drive and it didn't detect the partition at all. I then used a different drive with the whole drive being a single FAT32 partition. This was also not recognised. These are ide drives in a laptop.

I have sent a query to their technical support but as it has the limitation of requiring a FAT32 partition and, on my system at least, not actually working then I may give it a miss for now. It is also not free anymore as it appears to have gone up to $100. Quite an increase

However, I decided to try out Drive Snapshot to see how that got on with backing up a EAZ-Fix protected partition. I had 25 EAZ-Fix (EF) snapshots and I did a differential backup using Drive Snapshot (DS). I then did a second full backup with DS checking the option that allows you to save the disk including unused sectors. I never normally check this but I thought it might stand a better chance of keeping EF's snapshots.

I verified the backups and then deleted my system partition. Always a worrying move

On rebooting, the EF window came up and going into its menu it actually still knew about all the snapshots. On selecting any of them it was unable to restore the system which I appreciate is pretty much expected as I'd deleted the partition

I then restored the partition using the differential backup I'd made. DS took about 8 minutes to restore the 11GB complete system and then about the same again to restore the differential files.

I rebooted and XP booted up fine. On examining the snapshots, EF showed them all to be there so I restored to 5 of them. The only issue at all was that the Amon module in my Nod32 antivirus package came up with an error and wouldn't run. This happened on a couple of the more recent snapshots but was fine on the older ones. I discovered that if I let Nod32 carry out an update then the problem went away and it ran without a hitch.

I didn't get around to trying the DS 'unused sector' backup as there obviously wasn't any need to use the option. I have to admit to being a bit of a fan of DS even though I feel they should implement a GUI for the recovery disk side of it. I tend to use the Ultimate Boot CD and then run DS in GUI mode but it does seem a bit like over-kill for such a tiny program. It is good to know that it works well with EF though

I will most likely buy Eaz-Fix or Rollback RX but I'm not sure which is the best one to go for. I know they are the same software but I'm not sure if one is likely to be updated more regularly than the other. It is a bit confusing when there are so many vendors for it!

 

Interesting testing. Thanks for that. So another success wih RolbackRx. That,s nice to have choices.

It,s a joke, 100 dollar for such a buggy software.
Ac to HDS Clone support and EAZ Clone it is free but no support and rather discontinued at least by HDS. AYGHOST support told me that it is not discontinued but it is not free as well, 100 dollar is the price, that,s rather funny. BTW the trial they provide is fuly functional I think.

 

Hi Wilbertnl,

I have done some interesting testing with HDS Clone.
As I told you I was able to use it successfully on my test laptop but failed to do so
easily on my main lapop.
I think I have found the issue. On my test laptop arrangemen of partitions was such that FAT 32 partition was second( D)
while on my main laptop it was fourth( F).
So on my main laptop I formatted D partition ( Primary) as FAT 32 and all of a sudden all prblems solved. HDS Clone now detects this partition without any problem during restore/ validation of image inspite of the fact that this partition is primay, not
extended/ lgical, as you suggested.
It is even more weired but I have checked it many times and my findings are consistant on my working laptop though I can,t explain why it is so.

This is my current disk arrangement and I use partition D for images. However I am going to delete extended/ logical partition
F as it is useless now. Any adavantage of having an extended/ logical partition over primary?

 

I tried DriveImage XML via BartPE Plugin with rolbackRx. I tried both default mode imaging and Raw mode and it does images sector by sector rather than on files basis but it only restored the base-line snapshot in each case just like IFD. Also it is a bit slow esp raw mode.
BTW, if u don,t have RolbackRx it is a nice freware imaging option. Tried first time and it worked like a charm, nice GUI and easy to use.

 

Welcome to the growing world of eazFix customers.
Your post is interesting reading and I would like to test the support of eazFix snapshots by Drive Snapshot.
I have to say that I have a strong preference for making disk images offline, which means that I boot from floppy or CD to accomplish a accurate backup.

I wonder if you can boot from a regular DOS floppy and access your FAT32 partition?

 

Hello Aigle,

Great that you discovered that FAT32 on the second partition works well!
I can imagine that MS-DOS has lots of trouble with partition arrangements that are complex, this OS is from the decade that harddisks were smaller than current smallest USB flashdrives.
There is no advantage of extended over primary partitions, but there is a limit: you can have a maximum of four primary partitions.
Or you can have less then four primary partitions and one extended partition. The extended partition can hold an unlimited amount of logical partitions.
So, it all comes down to the limits of the partition table.

 

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=140230

Why not build a bartpe disk and add DS to that - full gui and support for anything that a windows Pe disk can boot

 

I can understand the reluctance to do imaging within XP. I have never (I have been using it for a couple of years now) had any problems with any of the backups it has made. However, you can simply make a boot CD with it and use it in command line mode <a:/snapshot hd1 auto d:/image.sna> would backup your system drive to d:/image.sna.

Alternatively, a BartPE or Ultimate Boot CD disk would allow you to use it in graphical mode without any files being in use on your hard drive.

I tried a DOS boot disk and the FAT32 partition which was the second partition on the second drive was visible as the C: drive. I'm not sure why that is!

 

Maybe I need to be more specific. Especially when disk access is controlled by software like eazFix, that basically offers a peekhole to the whole disk, which we call snapshot, I don't want that kind of interference where it concerns backups.
I have less concerns when I'm using a plain Windows installation.

Last week I submitted a problem ticket to eazSolutions, and they asked me to do specific tests with a debug version that they provided to me.
After running my tests, that are the foundation of the ticket, I learned that snapshots are not identical when you take them inside Windows with the application console compared to taking them while running the subsystem console.

The snapshots taken with the Subsystem Console are solid integer.
My experience is that you take chances with snapshots taken with the Application Console.

As soon as the developer finds the cause of this inconsistency and comes up with a modification, I will continue the test.
By the way: eazSolutions support is very responsive.

 

I always prefer to do so in any case.

 

Has anybody tried terabyte IFL( Image for linux) with Rollback? I wonder if the results could be different from IFD. I tried to do but the boot CD I made never worked on my PCs. I get message Boot Error while booting from IFL boot CD.

 

Yes, I sent a query to them earlier and they reponded within 2 hours

I wanted to know whose software was updated first and they insist that EAZ-Fix and Rollback are updated at the same time. HDS seem to have more flexible (ie cheaper!) pricing but I don't know about their support.

I contacted Drive Snapshot's support the other day as I was getting an error when trying to backup with ShadowUser installed (another option I was testing) and within three hours they had sent me a fixed version

 

They use the same support service. You actually get response from the same people.

 

How about this?

 

Hmmm...I'm sure I could find something to suggest! HDS have these options. With 5 PC's in the house, the cost becomes a bit of an issue. I know at least a couple of people though who I would gladly recommend the product to, so that could save a bit!

 

i find any solution that i can try any software and the same time protection in my system and easily restore to my previous state. i try shadowuser but if the program needs to reboot, this is not applicable. so i came with this software: rollback rx and firstdefense-isr.

i like both but i need to choose one that suite my needs. im running windows xp in fat32 file systems. i have one 40gb hard drive, partition into two with 20gb each respectively. i convert to ntfs to test firstdefense-isr and rollback rx.

i conduct a test in rollback rx only because there is no problem in firstdefense-isr if you combo it to a imaging software. so this is my simple test that i conducted.


i install rollback rx and after install i put 10,000 folder in c: and other files (like iso file, etc) in desktop just for difference between snapshots and i delete all the 10,000 folder and take the snapshot again. i used paragon drive backup rescue cd. i try this software because it support sector by sector copy.

i boot into cd and then conduct a backup image. after this i reboot again to windows. and then reboot again and conduct a restore. and then i reboot again in windows and i went to the rollback rx console and i see all my snapshot there (a total of 3 snapshots. i restore in my baseline snapshot and reboot. after login to windows and went to my c: i see my 10,000 folders there. i went to rollback rx console again and restore my last snapshot and reboot. after login to windows and went to c:, all my 10,000 folders are gone. i think paragon drive backup works.

just a simple test here. i hope someone test this in a torture test.

but as of now i being think if i used rollback rx or firstdefense because i dont want my file system in ntfs because i notice that ntfs is bit slower in my system compare to fat32. but the disadvantage if i going to use rollback rx is i cant defrag my drive and the only hope that i defrag my drive is with the use of built-in defragmetor of rollback rx which it only defrag the snapshot.

this forum is excelent! when i have a problem is softwares, i always here to read.

thanks to all! =)

 

Hello Vhick,

If you prefer a FAT32 filesystem, then you don't meet the requirements of Firstdefense-ISR. My experience is that both FD-ISR and eazFix/Rollback RX are excellent solutions.
Have you looked at Farstone RestoreIt? That is great software too.

 

i try it. maybe some configuration to work it out. in my first installation i assign 1 gb to my d: drive for my incremental backup and file system restorer of my c: drive. but when im going to copy an 3.5 iso file to my desktop, all my incremental backup (3 of them) are lost. maybe just because my iso file is too large to be incremented. i like rollback rx just because it never bother me everytime i copy a to large kind of file. but it has some issue in some software.

sir wilbertnl, may ask a question for you?

is restoreit support defragmenter and a imaging backup tool? which one?

if im going to convert my file system to ntfs file system (actually, only my c: drive), what defragmenting software and imaging software can support firstdefense-isr.

im now using winternals defrag manager boot cd (never try it as of now because rollback rx is installed in my pc) and paragon drive backup for my imaging backup (actually i use powerquest drive image 2002 boot cd).

thank you very much for your informative post.....=)

 

I understand that, I disabled the automatic incremental images and also I disabled document backups in RestoreIt.
Only a incremental backup when I wanted that (before some new software installation, for example).
When you do a defragment under RestoreIt, you get the same problem: recovery space used up and backups deleted.
That is one minor disadvantage of Farstone.

Actually, RestoreIt creates disk images itself! No other software needed. But any other imaging solution supports RestoreIt.

Here also: they all support FD-ISR, Winternals is fine. If you are able to exclude files in the defragger, you should exclude the $ISRBIN file.
If not, you might see an error message complaining about not finding that file, but FD-ISR is able to fix that by itself, nothing serious to worry about.

 

thank you very very much sir! im always wait for you to answers this. im always online this tread to read this about.

now i have two things in mind...

convert my c: drive to ntfs and use firstdefense..

and

use rollback rx with paragon drive backup but no other defragmenter.


if i decide, i will do a fresh install of my system.

thank you very very much sir!!!!