Regarding customizing snapshots

[Naturalist]

Can anyone help me with the following issues?

I'm using Rollback Rx Pro 8.1

Question #1 -

When i take a snapshot - it includes all the drives of the HD - is there any option (as in acronis) of taking snap shot of only Drive C (the one containing the OS) so that when i revert back to it only changes made to the OS are reversed and the data in the other drives stay as it is?


Question #2 -

Where are the snapshots saved? I mean - is the location accessible normally through windows?
Can i copy any of the snapshot - copy it in some CD/DVD - and later use it to restore to a previous state - thus saving space of the HD and at the same time keeping the snapshot even more secure?

By the way - i do not want the drive image option (which takes a lot of space) but want to take a SNAPSHOT (less space consuming) of a single drive!

Any suggestions? Anyone?

[PaulT]

Question 1
When you install Rollback you will have the option of choosing which drives to protect with Rollback. This can't be changed once you have initially set this up. What I do is have 3 partition drives - with my System drive and Document drive protected by Rollback. When I want to restore my system and keep my documents the same, I sync my documents with my Backup partition that is not protected by Rollback. The syncing doesn't take very long as its only copying recent document changes. Then after the rolling back the system I sync the documents back to the Document drive. I find syncing to be much faster and more flexible than using Rollback's file recovery process. (I haven't tried v9 yet to see if this has been enhanced).

(I store my emails on the unprotected Backup drive only and also sync my Firefox profile to the Backup drive. With email this is particularly important otherwise you can loose recently downloaded messages when you rollback. I keep a backup on the server).

Question 2
The snapshot is completely unavailable to the Windows OS.
A snapshot is not an image of the drive. It is only a map / description of where the files are on your drive. That is why it is so small. So backing up the snapshot only won't protect you. To backup a snapshot you need to roll back to that snapshot and then take a drive image. I find this a relatively easy process. I do a new drive image after significant additions to my system. Even though my snapshots only go back a couple of months, my drive images go back to the system's conception. So I can restore it at a variety of stages if I want to rebuild the system. I use an external drive to store the images on, plus I add a drive image of my Documents drive. That way if my main hard drive craps out I'm backed up. In that scenario a drive image will save me and a snapshot won't.

So there's potentially 3 levels of protection - snapshots, syncing documents to an unprotected drive, and drive images.

[PaulT]

You can also use the "Keep these files and folders unchanged..." option (Program Settings > Advanced Settings). See http://horizondatasys-forum.com/roll...-question.html

I found this process too slow and inflexible when I tried it in the past. However you might want to try this. I'll give it a go again on my next roll back and see.

[spalmer]

Originally Posted by PaulT

I found this process too slow and inflexible when I tried it in the past.

Could you elaborate on this a bit, please? What was slow?

[PaulT]

I did a roll back & file recovery to test it. I selected all the folders on my Documents drive and it took max. 5 minutes during the Windows startup. (Maybe 3 min. if exclude my Windows startup). Which seemed quite reasonable. Better than I remembered.

When I said its 'inflexible' I meant that the exclusion interface doesn't allow drives to be selected. All the folders in the root directory of the drive need to be selected individually. Plus there's no way of defining an exclusion set so that it can be used next time. So each time I do a roll back I have to identify each folder. So I set up a syncing program that I didn't have to define each time. So I sync things like my desktop, recent documents list, quick launch menu, thunderbird & firefox profiles, as well as my documents. And I just press a button and I don't have to remember very 'nook & cranny'.

[PaulT]

I'm using v8.1 and I just used the file recovery feature clicking on a file in windows explorer and right clicking the context menu, selecting "recovery from snapshot". It took 2 & 1/2 minutes to recover a 93kb excel file from two snapshots (2 hours) ago. (I'm running a Pentium4 3GHz 2Gb RAM & XP)