OS snapshot or steady state software

[BlueWeasel]

Anyone use snapshot/rollback software like Deep Freeze, Shadow Defender, Rollback RX, etc.?

I'm curious about using this type of software in addition to my normal imaging software (Macrium Reflect). For those that use this type of software, how do you implement it?

 

[Deleted member 245375]

I personally just use True Image (which technically isn't what you asked about I suppose but it's in the same category in general) but I don't use the Windows application itself meaning I use the software to create the bootable disc (still using optical media myself although I do have plenty of USB sticks around) and then uninstall the Windows software. Or at least that's what I did like 5 years ago when I bought True Image as I still use the same CD/version years later. All the newer versions haven't really done anything but explode in terms of actual size of the CD itself, pretty sure the next version for 2017 will probably be so large it requires a DVD aka over 700MB which is insane.

I do images manually as required, full backup images of my 80GB system partition (always 80GB regardless of the OS) stored on a reliable Hitachi hard drive. I tried an incremental backup once and it just didn't go well so, differential won't do for me either and since I have a small system partition it never really takes more than about 12 minutes tops (that's for the full backup image using normal compression and with a verify of the image after creation, always.

If you want some serious discussion of just the type of software you mentioned like DeepFreeze and others of that vein, check out the Wilders Security Forums where they have a subforum dedicated to such things:

backup, imaging & disk mgmt

Tons of info there, comparisons, reviews, user opinions and methodologies, everything you'd probably be interested in knowing about backups and imaging.

 

[MrHandee]

I was hanging out at a trade show a few years ago and this company was giving away an XBONE to anyone who could crash their software. There were droves of people trying and it was impressive seeing people try to crash the software. I eventually found out it was Rollback Rx.

Use it on my two PC's at home and on the wife's computer. It works really well. I like the speed and the overall ease of use (my computer illiterate wife can't use most programs and she gets rollback).

I checked with HDS a while back and you have to uninstall any program like this to run a disk imager. So that can be a pain. I use their disk imager I'm blanking on the name but it can take a disk image without uninstalling the software everytime.