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advice needed.....FirstDefense-ISR, ShadowProtect, ShadowUser, Rollback Rx???

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40hz:
With the registered version you can choose on the fly to save data at shutdown or not. With the free version you have to turn protection off, reboot, install your program or changes, turn protection back on and reboot.
-edbro (December 11, 2008, 08:21 PM)
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Thanks edbro! Found that out 10 minutes after I shot my mouth off. :-[

The really sad part about this is that I have the registered version. I just haven't installed it yet. I forgot I bought it. Talk about "dumb and dumber."

That is why it is a good idea to have your data files on a drive other than the system partition.
-edbro (December 11, 2008, 08:21 PM)
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Excellent point. In my case, they usually are. I had moved some of them back to C because my secondary drive was failing and I hadn't gotten around to installing the new one by the time I decided to get stupid. :up:

mwang:
This is a real life saver to have on my wife's computer. She is not real computer smart and my 6 year old also uses that machine. I was always having to fix it after they messed something up. Now, I have it all set up in a good state and no matter what they do to it all I have to do is reboot and I'm back to a pristine state.
-edbro (December 11, 2008, 08:21 PM)
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Exactly how I'm using Rollback Rx, except RR provides a series of states to go back to rather than just one, in case, e.g., when the latest one turns out to be less than pristine than I originally thought.

The real problem with Rollback Rx, other than not being able to degrag the protected partition (which isn't critical to me as I said), is their lousy support as J-Mac pointed out. Not really a company I want to do business again with.

Are there any similar product can also do multi-snapshots? I know FD-ISR can, but it's no longer being developed, and it takes huge space since each snapshot is a full snapshot. Various disk imaging programs can, too, as long as they do incremental/differential imaging, but the process takes longer and is more cumbersome. Rollback Rx does it smarter in this regard.

J-Mac:
That is why it is a good idea to have your data files on a drive other than the system partition.
-edbro (December 11, 2008, 08:21 PM)
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I do have all the data files that I can keep elsewhere on D: drive. But then there are the applications that insist on saving all data generated by their program in the Program Files directory, not to mention the ones that keep user data files in what MS calls the user directory: C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data.

I try to locate all those and sync a copy of them to another drive with SFFS.

Thanks!

Jim

mwang:
But then there are the applications that insist on saving all data generated by their program in the Program Files directory, not to mention the ones that keep user data files in what MS calls the user directory: C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data.

I try to locate all those and sync a copy of them to another drive with SFFS.-J-Mac (December 11, 2008, 09:35 PM)
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I use a slightly different strategy. I move those files/folders to my data drive, and then put symlinks (or before Vista, NTFS junctions) in their original location. I do this only for applications whose data/configurations/etc. on C: that I intend to keep after I roll my system back to an earlier stage. I also keep these relocation tasks in batch files, so I can easily reapply the tricks whenever I set up a new system, and modify for new applications.

For well-behaving applications, by which I mean those that have all its binaries under its own folder, easy to reinstall, and easy to downgrade to an older version if a new beta fouls up (just by installing the old version over it), I install them away from the system partition too. It helps to keep the Rollback Rx overhead small, efficient, and I don't have to reinstall them when I does roll the system back.

urlwolf:
I just found out that windows server 2008 has some built-in backup.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc770266.aspx

I wonder how good that is. For incremental data backups, I was using SFFS. For system backup, I was using FD. Now that FD left me hanging (no update path, no answer to emails!), I wonder whether I can do system backups with the built-in tool.

Anyone knows how good this built-in tool is?

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