EWF or CHKDSK- which way???

[Guest]

Hi.
Over the last 4 weeks I have tried to decide if EWF is the way to protect a
user from crash and corruption.
I have raised several questions on the list but I do not seem to have been
able to make a decision as a result.

My user has no ability to access the O/S. The product is for blind users.
The user may/ most likely disconnect the system by pulling out the plug.

I understand that EWF DISK will only offer original system if there is
application intervention but the application can not know. It cannot recover
from crashed files!

I have seen on this list items about making chkdsk run by setting DIRTY BIT
= SET at each reboot, ie. power on.
My question is: Should I make a system that always sets DIRTY = SET and not
use EWF, Or make an automatic EWF disable/reboot/enable/reboot application
for each power on, ie. Reboot.

I would be very interested in any comments or suggestions on this problem.
Many thanks
Regards
Graham.

 

[JustinH]

Hi.
Over the last 4 weeks I have tried to decide if EWF is the way to protect a
user from crash and corruption.
I have raised several questions on the list but I do not seem to have been
able to make a decision as a result.
<...deleted...>

I would be very interested in any comments or suggestions on this problem.
Many thanks
Regards
Graham.

Hi,

we have a similar situation, where the user has a much reduced
interface to the computer and cannot respond to normal Windows dialogs
and messages. I decided that in the long term the risk of corruption
due to poor power down compliance is likely not always to be cured by
simply doing a chkdsk. Some problems can only be overcome by deleting
the faulty chains and thus files can be lost and if these are critical
then the system will no longer work as expected. For our application
we have decided to have a system which boots from a DVD which
accommodates the complete operating system, and additional speech
support. This medium is uncorruptable and on reboot you canbe sure
that you will return to a known good state. Writable and heavy use
files are stored on the local hard drive and drive, being copied there
from the DVD if they are not present or are corrupted.
This arrangement suffers from a very slow boot time (more than 4
minutes - ~2-2.5mins for the OS and about 2 for the application), but
is highly secure and allows us to upgrade everything by simply shipping
a new DVD to be replaced by the user - no technician has tovisit to do
the upgrade. In our case this will happen fairly regularly anyway in
order to update the user's database. An alternative would be to use a
DVD to allow a complete OS to be copied to HD if there were any signs
of damage, but this is much more complicated to set up initially.
Of course this solution is not ideal for everyone and you will always
have to find a set of trade-offs which make the most sense for your own
situation.
I hope that this is of some aid to you

Regards

justin

 

[Guest]

Hi Justin.
Thanks for your comments. I cannot wait that long or use a DVD method you use.
My build is 300Mb so can't use EWF RAM. I seems a great pity that MS do not
provide the EWF DISK ability to refresh as the EWF RAM does. Particulary in
view of the platform being capable of crash and corruption.
I am still hoping to get a MS response but that may be too much to expect.
Regards
Graham.