Snapshot - DiskImage Restore for Windows NT/2000/XP Test the Snapshot Userinterface Obviously, a disk image program would be of little value without a restore. Snapshot does restore disk images, but has some limitations. However, these are the same limitations that apply to FORMAT and CHKDSK, which result from the fact that WinNT won't allow access to open files. So most important, the system drive and all drives with a PAGEFILE cannot be restored while WinNT is running. To restore a System Volume you have to use DOS restore. All other volumes can be restored from WinNT. See some Screenshots of a restore operation.
Thursday, 29 September 2011
Disk Image Restore 1 2 3 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Screenshots Drive Snapshot can restore a drive completely to its former state. If you restore a drive, all current data on the drive will be lost !! Proceed as follows: First, you select the disk image file to be restored. To aid you, all known properties about the image at creation time are shown. After selecting the image, please click [Next]
1. Select the Volume to be saved For each Partition, you see detailed Information. Select the Drive you want to back up, then click Next Drive The usual Windows drive letter (C:, D:,...) HD (HardDisk) The hard disk, which hosts this drive (in case you have more then one hard disk). PartNo The Partition number and type, primary or logical PartStart The Partition's location on the physical disk PartSize ... and its size P... (Partitionstyp) Label the volume's name FS (FileSystem) is usually FAT16, FAT32, or NTFS Size The size in the Partition that is used by the file system, regardless of how full the file system is. Usually, it's slightly smaller then the Partsize above, and can never be larger. However it's entirely legal to have a logical, used size much smaller then the available space in the partition. Used The amount of used data, that will have to be saved Free free space .
Exploring the created Snapshot disk image is extremely simple and powerful : use the normal Windows explorer - or any other program you like. Snapshot achieves this by creating a virtual drive - like W: - usable by any Windows program. This virtual drive can be used by the normal Windows Explorer. Here are Screenshots how to view a saved disk image. Main use: You can view/compare files without restoring them first. First you have to select the disk image you want to explore. You see some information about the saved disk at the time of Backup to help you to find the right image, should there be more than one. Additionally, you may choose the drive letter the virtual drive shall have; Drive Snapshot will automatically use the highest drive letter available (Z:). Click Map and Explore Virtual Drive to mount the drive and start the Windows Explorer on the drive. Click Map Virtual Drive to mount the drive only without starting Windows Explorer. Partial Restore You can do a partial Restore, simply by dragging and dropping files with Windows Explorer. And, since it's a virtual drive, the image can be used by any other Windows/DOS program, not just an 'explorer like' browser. Simply use the tools you like most to view/compare/restore files. When viewing a saved NTFS partition, the virtual drive will have exactly the same security attributes, owner ship, compressed state, encrypted state,... as the original disk. Performance Snapshot virtual disk has performance similar to a real disk. Depending on the conditions, expect 50-120% of the speed of the real disk (yes, sometimes it's faster:-). For instance, Win2K backup will back up my Win2K System disk in 7:43; while saving the same drive as a virtual disk takes 10:28, or about 35% slower. Most important - it will never feel slow.
Snapshot - DiskImaging for Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 Test the Snapshot Userinterface SnapShot is disk imaging software that enables the user to back up, restore and view backed up hard disk data, easily and safely. Using WindowsNT driver technology, Snapshot brings two new features to disk imaging: 1. Snapshot Backup - create disk images while Windows is running This allows the user to work in his usual environment when backing up his data. Any device suitable for file storage can be used for the image destination, like your local drive, a network drive or any removable drive And - most important - the image will be an industrial quality image, even though WinNT constantly writes to the disk. The user may continue to work normally, while a backup operation is in progress; the image will still be valid and consistent. This enables one of the most important things in backup business: backup often It is even possible to make an image backup for servers, that must be online 24 hours a day. More details about Snapshot Backup Snapshot Backup - Main use Snapshot Backup is aimed at the backup/disaster recovery market. There is little use for on the fly disk image creation, if you want to deploy hundreds or thousands of workstations. We think however, that the possibility to do on the fly backup is very important for the end user to regularly protect his data. At least, this was our reason to create Snapshot. No need to shut down and boot from floppy, no need to create network disks, and no need to wait half an hour for the backup process - we think that's nice. 2. Snapshot View - Explore saved disk images the friendly way The image file is presented to the user as a virtual drive. This virtual drive can be used like any other drive, using any Windows program, be it Explorer, Norton Commander, or your favourite MP3 Player. More details about Snapshot Image Explorer Snapshot View - Main use Snapshot View is a very easy and powerful method to explore disk images. This technique could be easily adapted to disk images created by other disk imaging programs. Compatibility SnapShot works on WinNT4, Win2000, WinXP and 2003 Server. You need administrative rights to use Snapshot.
Snapshot - DiskImage Backup for Windows NT Screenshots Snapshot is easy to use The Snapshot user interface is Windows Wizard-like with few surprises, even to inexperienced users. Anything with a drive letter (like C:, E:) can be backuped. Anything with a drive letter (like X:) can be used for the image destination. See some Screenshots of a backup operation. Snapshot can be used often For DOS based image backup, the user has to stop his work, boot into a different configuration, wait for the backup to finish, then boot Windows again. With Snapshot, there is no need to reboot. Simply start Snapshot, then continue to work normally. This enables one of the most important things in backup business: backup often It is even possible to make image backup for servers, that must be online 24 hours a day. Snapshot is safe to use The problem with Windows based disk imaging is that Windows may constantly write to the disk, even with no user interaction. As the image creation takes some time, you may end up with a disk image that partially reflects the disk status at program start, partially at a later time. Snapshot handles this. Once Snapshot has been started, you may continue to work, delete anything on the disk, install new programs,... The created image will always reflect the disk status at program start. Compatible Snapshot is compatible with Windows NT 4.0, 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, 2003, 7, 2008, 2008 R2, PE, x64 all file systems supported by WinNT/Win2K (FAT16,FAT32,NTFS). Linux Ext2/Ext3/Ext4/Reiser (but no explore possible) any IDE/SCSI/USB/...local disk drive. If WinNT can access it, Snapshot will back it up. any disk mirroring/striping/spanning/RAID scheme. Windows 2000 basic and dynamic disks. Fast and efficient Both speed and image size are data and configuration dependent. In short: Snapshot saves about 400 MB/min on a P700, and ~1,5 GB/min on a P4 4GHz. The compressed image size is comparable to the best other DOS-based disk imaging products. More of detailed performance data can he found here. How it works Any disk image program takes some time to run. Depending on computer speed and disk size, this take a few minutes to a few hours. So a 1GB disk on a P200 will take ~10 minutes to store, and ~1 minute on a P4 4GHz. As WinXX constantly writes to the disk, what do you get? SnapShot takes the image at a certain point of time. When SnapShot gets started, it will take some time to collect information about the disk to be saved, such as disk size, used disk space,... Then the OS is instructed to write all data from the disk caches. And then, Snapshot takes the SnapShot. All you will get in your Disk Image is what is at this very moment on your disk. What's on the disk is saved; nothing else. If you would POWER OFF the computer at this moment and make the image from DOS, you would get exactly the same. Because we flushed all data to the disk, Windows will boot without CHKDSK, because the data on the disk are consistent. You would lose the changes of any open (unsaved) files, of course, but the original would be exist and be valid. The magic The idea is simple: By using WindowsNT Driver technology, Snapshot chains itself between the file system and the disk driver so that it will see any request to the disk. When any WRITE request is detected, before the data are saved, the data are read first from the disk and saved, before the WRITE request is allowed to proceed. So the data are completely safe against change; and this allows the user to work while Snapshot is running and no changes will be reflected in the image produced. Whatever happens, the image will contain the disk data at start time. You may work as usual, clean up the disk, install/uninstall Software, or even catch a virus of his choice. SnapShot even tries to minimize its influence on other programs. Snapshot uses about 7MB of memory during Backup, 0 bytes when not activ. Snapshot runs at low priority, giving the foreground application as many CPU cycles as needed. As SnapShot uses a huge amount of disk IO (~40 MB/sec for a Pentium IV 3 GHz), Snapshot would bring down a typical Windows program start to a crawl. So Snapshot watches for any user disk activity and will pause for a short while, so the user application runs at nearly full speed. However, SnapShot still makes sure that no unsaved data are overwritten. In this case, SnapShot will buffer these data up to a few Megabytes in memory, and then simply delay the application, until these data have been saved to the SnapShot destination. This won't happen often, as applications tend to modify the same data over and over again, like a database's index files. These data will be saved the first time a change is detected and later requests will proceed at normal speed.
SCHEDULER - Geplante Tasks more Tips Instead of developing yet another scheduler, we prefer to use the built-in Windows Scheduler; that's one less thing to worry about. Usage Win2000/WindowsXP (for WinNT4, use AT/WinAT): Start -> Settings-> Control Panel-> Scheduled Tasks-> Add scheduled Task Start->Settings->Control Panel->Scheduled Tasks->Add scheduled Task [Browse] and insert "C:\Program Files\Snapshot\Snapshot.exe" (*) weekly and [*] Monday [*] Friday und enter a user name that has administrative rights on the local machine, and possibly can access (with this account) a network server. [*] advanced properties, and [finish] in the following dialog, enter: either [start] 'c:\programs\snapshot\SNAPSHOT.exe C: X:\C-DRIVE.SNA or (much more powerful and flexible) [start] 'cmd /c c:/programs/snapshot/SuperDuperBackup.BAT'' more Tips
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