RAM or DISK Ewf: which is right for me?

[jj3000]

Hi all, I have successfully setup disk overlay on my CF (thanks to
Sandisk utility), but I am still not sure which type of EWF is right
for me.

At first I wanted a robust copy of XP that is like XPE but the users
may slam off the power at anytime. But at the same time I also wanted
the data to persist, so I tried out the disk overlay.

But it just occured to me that unless the user know how to run ewfmgr
-commit at strategic times to flush the disk overlay to the ewf
protected volume, the disk overlay will eventually fill up with
changes and blow up.. and I don't really want users to mess with the
ewf anyway. (for changes, I am talking about things like setting your
color scheme etc. and not encouraging user to copy files to the
protected volume)

My decision would be so simple if the device had NO explorer shell,
i.e. just task manager shell and launch the application to get a
somewhat embedded feel of the device. But this is not the case; the
marketing dept want to expose the other windows stuff to the users so
they can maybe later use outlook, internet explorer, and other 3rd
party XP apps, and use the device like a general XP computer.

I need to learn about the RAM overlay, if I call commit (in a shutdown
script), it actually writes to the disk at that moment, and not during
restart, right? (how can it because the changes are stored in the
RAM).

I am leaning towards RAM based with a shutdown commit. Please let me
know what you guys are doing for your devices!

 

[Slobodan Brcin \(eMVP\)]

Download and read doc from how to configure RAM EWF without extra partition,
this will save you some time and space when working with RAM EWF.
http://www.xpefiles.com/a_file.cfm?custid=Components&fileid=ramewf.zip&group
Name=Other

Something about RAM EWF.

You can call commit at any time, but nothing will happen (only one internal
flag in EWF driver will be set).

During the file system shutdown EWF driver will write content of RAM overlay
to disk.
So graceful shutdown or restart is required to save content of RAM.

I am leaning towards RAM based with a shutdown commit. Please let me
know what you guys are doing for your devices!

Minlogon, and your custom shell are ideal combination with RAM EWF. I'm
sorry that you must use explorer as a shell since it is always a challenge.

Regards,
Slobodan

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