You're a virtual library of good information<g>. Inline if you
care to read; nothing earth shaking there, just ramblings and an
overly long answer:
In
Wesley Vogel said:
Just curious, why use Goback when XP has System Restore?
IMO only: ymmv of course. I find that GoBack is sometimes
preferable in a few situations. I'm not sure what you refer to
with "System Restore", whether you mean System State or, more
likely Restore Points, but in general GoBack is a more literal
application; sort of a cross between Restore and an imaging
program.
GoBack provides a roll-back to -exactly- what the sytem was on
the date/time you choose, but in whole or in part, where Restore
only brings back your -system- in which case some things may
break. GoBack keeps track of changes on whatever drives you tell
it to monitor - and that's what you get back when you Go Back to
a point in time.
Usually if I'm having trouble, especially if it's a system
problem, I'll first try a Restore point or two. If that doesn't
work, or Restore has been damaged, or it breaks something I wish
it hadn't, one of which seems to happen too often, then if
restore fails or doesn't get me what I want, I try GoBack.
GoBack is a little slower and anything that didn't exist at the
date chosen to go back to, won't exist anymore, but ... you can
do a Post-Restore Rescue of files with it to put those things
back after all. Almost all the time, GoBack will succeed. The
Post-Restore files can be a pain to recover if they're system
files though; not for the faint of heart.
I also use it for -test- installs and whenever I may want to
back out something I restored or installed or fiddled with too
much<g>. It also came in handy a couple of times for getting rid
of a virus, too, since it's rolls back to the exact files on the
entire monitored drive/s. In theory GoBack sees every file
change and so can roll back to any saved date/time. And it
automatically records new points whenever anything is
installed/uninstalled, at each boot, etc. etc..
If that should fail, then I fall back to my imaging
program<g>. It runs an incremental every night so as long as
power is on, I've always got at most data up to yesterday.
On the downside, GoBack wants ten percent of your disk space.
You can set it much lower if you want, but you give up how many
restore dates it can keep then, of course. Most times I seem to
have about a month and a half of restore dates.
Now that I have lots of drive space plus an external for Ghost
backups, and a pretty well tuned/protected system, I have a lot
less use of them, thankfully.
I guess I'm sort of a fanatic over data recovery, but I don't
mind. I even go so far as to give my sister a monthly DVD set of
my backups but rely on the external drive otherwise. So far it's
worked well.
I'm using Ghost 10 for imaging and like it with one exception:
When it does overnight backups, it doesn't seem to create an
error log should errors pop up. Either that or I haven't been
able to find it, which I find more likely. That can be important
if Shadow Copy for instance gets screwed, which happened
recently. So, you do still have to do your own due diligence, I
guess.
I looked at Bootit and True Image too but ended up choosing
Ghost for its bells & whistles and feature set. I think True
IMage would be my second choice if I had to make another
decision.
Pop, if one doesn't know the answer, there is no such thing.
Not
wasting my time, I have quite a bit of it. ;-)
Sounds like a bird of a feather there! Mine's not by choice, but
it's OK. One just has to learn to revise their goals and
priorities.
Good list BTW: I'm going to check some of those out but so far
window's defrag seems to be the most reliable. I tried Speed
Disk to see if it'd make defrags have to be done less often;
didn't see many diffs, so went back to defrag for most of the
time, especially the system drive. Speed Disk does seem to excel
on data drives though, for getting good access speeds, especially
when I'm doing video editing; it wants huge contiguous amounts of
space on the drive<g>; speed disk's just the ticket there because
it'll let me put files into specific areas.
I haven't tried disk keeper; so far haven't looked at it
though.
Regards,
Pop`
BTW..
[[Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Microsoft Windows XP, and
Microsoft
Windows 2000 include a tool for disk defragmentation. The
Windows
Disk Defragmenter tool is a limited version of the Diskeeper
program
from Diskeeper Corporation. Disk Defragmenter does not include
all
the features available in the full version of Diskeeper.]]
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;130539
Diskeeper Corporation used to be Executive Software
International.
You just can't keep up with the names of companies in any
industry
anymore. I think that Diskeeper Corp. just changed their name.
Everyone else seems to get bought out.
dfrgfat.exe Disk Defragmenter FAT File System Module ©2001
Microsoft Corp. and Executive Software Int'l, Inc.
dfrgntfs.exe Disk Defragmenter NTFS Module ©2001 Microsoft
Corp. and
Executive Software Int'l, Inc.
dfrgres.dll Disk Defragmenter Resource Module ©2001 Microsoft
Corp.
and Executive Software Int'l, Inc.
dfrgsnap.dll Disk Defragmenter Snap-in Module ©2001 Microsoft
Corp.
and Executive Software Int'l, Inc.
dfrgui.dll Disk Defragmenter UI Module ©2001 Microsoft Corp.
and
Executive Software Int'l, Inc.
In
POP said:
Huh; I guess I stand corrected, in a way: It does say 15%.
That's followed by:
"
If a volume has less than 15% free space, Disk Defragmenter
will
only partially defragment it. To increase the free space on a
volume, delete unneeded files or move them to another disk.
"
and I can attest to that being the case after further
cogitation<g>. IIRC I ended up turning off GoBack to get
back
the 10% space reserved for it, in order to finish the defrag.
It
was going very slowly, and was getting even slower as time
went
by. Shortly after that I bought a larger external drive for
storage & shipped a lot of things over to it.
Norton, on the other hand, just simply refuses to defrag if
the
space goes below 15% available; guess that's what I was
remembering.
Sorry about the misinformed question & wasting your time.
Pop`
In Wesley Vogel <
[email protected]> typed:
Pop,
Isn't that 15% a Norton Speed disk requirement and not
an XP
requirement?
It may be, but I do not use anything Norton/Symantec.
If you notice the addresses for the links I posted say
www.microsoft.com not Norton or Symantec.
Best practices
Paste the following line into Start | Run and click OK...
hh DKconcepts.chm::/defrag_best_practices.htm
To defragment a volume
Paste the following line into Start | Run and click OK...
hh DKconcepts.chm::/defrag_defrag.htm
Click on either [+]
In POP <
[email protected]> hunted and pecked:
Wesley,
Isn't that 15% a Norton Speed disk requirement and not
an XP
requirement?
I feel pretty sure I'm right because not so many
months
ago, I
got that message on a drive Speed Disk was called on to
defrag.
I think there was about 9% free IIRC.
XP's Defrag worked fine on it, although pretty slow
since
it
apparently had to work in pretty small chunks. I don't
remember
how slow, but it was measured in hours <g>.
Regards,
Pop`
In Wesley Vogel <
[email protected]> typed:
How much free space is on your hard drive?
Defrag & Free Space
[[A volume must have at least 15% free space for defrag
to
completely
and adequately defragment it. Defrag uses this space as
a
sorting
area for file fragments. If a volume has less than 15%
free
space,
defrag will only partially defragment it. To increase
the
free
space
on a volume, delete unneeded files or move them to
another
disk. ]]
Defrag
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/defrag.mspx
[[Although the defragmentation tools can partially
defragment
volumes
that have less than 15 percent free space, for best
results
delete
unneeded files or move them to another volume to
increase
the
free
space to at least 15 percent. You can also use the
Disk
Cleanup tool
to delete unnecessary files. For more information
about
Disk
Cleanup, see Windows XP Professional Help.]]
Before Using the Disk Defragmentation Tools
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/tr...prodtechnol/winxppro/reskit/prkd_tro_oegv.asp
[[After you defragment a volume, you can view the
defragmentation
report to see the results. The report includes a list
of
files
that
remain fragmented (having two or more fragments). Some
reasons
that a
file might remain fragmented include:
* The volume lacks adequate contiguous free space to
defragment
all
files. Disk Defragmenter requires at least 15 percent
free
disk
space
to completely defragment a volume.]]
From...
Files That You Cannot Defragment
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/...windows/xp/all/reskit/en-us/prkd_tro_ldtg.asp
In
larryo <
[email protected]> hunted and
pecked:
My C: drive will not defrag completely. The log does
not
state
which files can not be defragged. Have run sfc and
error
checking,
both completed successfully. Event viewer shows a
few
errors
but
after checking MS Help and support they don't seem to
be
the
problem.
Is there a way to determine which files are "messed
up"
so
badly
that they can't be defragged or a way to force
defragmentation of
these files.
larryo
