How good is Vista's System Restore

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I have been using Symantec's GoBack for many years and it has saved my bacon
on many occassions. But will not be available for Vista. I have been looking
at Rollback RX which is supposed to be really good but you have problems
defraging your hard disk. You have to uninstall rollback, defrag and then
re-intsall and then you lose your restore points. So how good is Vista's
system restore? Would I be able to bank on it in an emergency? Any thoughts
and ideas would be appreciated. I did think of Acronis True Image as a
companion, but was rreally looking for something along the lines of GoBack.
Many thanks,
Alan.
 
Alan said:
I have been using Symantec's GoBack for many years and it has saved my bacon
on many occassions. But will not be available for Vista. I have been looking
at Rollback RX which is supposed to be really good but you have problems
defraging your hard disk. You have to uninstall rollback, defrag and then
re-intsall and then you lose your restore points. So how good is Vista's
system restore? Would I be able to bank on it in an emergency? Any thoughts
and ideas would be appreciated. I did think of Acronis True Image as a
companion, but was rreally looking for something along the lines of GoBack.
Many thanks,
Alan.
Click to expand...
Vistas system restore is very good as is the VSS which allows you to
restore several previous revisions of a file.
 
I have uses Vista's full system restore and it works.

That being said, I much prefer Acronis TrueImage HOME Edition 10.0 to image
the system partition and then restore from the saved image. www.acronis.com

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
Hi Alan,

I would not recommend using rollback applications that were designed for XP,
and nothing from Norton, who purchased GoBack.

Previous version/Shadow Copy can be used to recover single files and folders.
http://bertk.mvps.org/html/shadow.html

System Restore in Windows Vista well for recovering from system problems.
http://bertk.mvps.org/html/vista.html

For Vista Business and Ultimate users there's Complete PC Backup.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/insight/sof...C_Backup_utility/0,139023769,339272295,00.htm

For Vista Home users, Acronis True Image is a good choice.
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage

Regards,
Bert Kinney MS-MVP Shell/User
http://bertk.mvps.org
Member: http://dts-l.org
 
Alan Robinson said:
I have been using Symantec's GoBack for many years and it has saved my
bacon
on many occassions. But will not be available for Vista. I have been
looking
at Rollback RX which is supposed to be really good but you have problems
defraging your hard disk. You have to uninstall rollback, defrag and then
re-intsall and then you lose your restore points. So how good is Vista's
system restore? Would I be able to bank on it in an emergency? Any
thoughts
and ideas would be appreciated. I did think of Acronis True Image as a
companion, but was rreally looking for something along the lines of
GoBack.
Many thanks,
Alan.
Click to expand...


I agree with Bert. The system restore in Vista uses Shadow Copy and is much
more robust than the System Restore in XP. It is however only one part of a
disaster recovery plan. It is not a substitute for a backup.

I would avoid GoBack for any OS.
 
Alan said:
I have been using Symantec's GoBack for many years and it has saved
my bacon on many occassions. But will not be available for Vista. I
have been looking at Rollback RX which is supposed to be really good
but you have problems defraging your hard disk. You have to uninstall
rollback, defrag and then re-intsall and then you lose your restore
points. So how good is Vista's system restore?
Click to expand...

It's very good at what it does, but it does something different to what your
post implies you think it does. VSS, System Restore, etc. are no substitute
for a backup.
 
Windows Complete Backup and Restore is good, you might want to give it a
try. Windows Vista has at least three different ways to backup for
disaster: System Restore, Backup and Restore wizzard, and Windows Complete
Backup and Restore.

--
/* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* Robert Firth *
* Windows Vista x86 RTM *
* http://www.WinVistaInfo.org *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * */
 
Unfortunately, CompletePC Backup is not available in all versions.
It only comes in Business and Ultimate.

-Michael
 
While i agree Vista's complete PC Backup has its uses it isn't something i
would rely on. From my experience of using it, it doesn't have any
compression options, so if you are imaging (or shadow copying) a drive of,
say 50GB, then you need 50GB available for the image. I haven't tried
imaging to DVDs but, again, from other conversations, i gather that the
'restore' process for DVDs has to go in reverse order. In other words if you
have disk 1 to 5, the you insert 5 first to get the restore going. Insert
disk 1 first and Vista complains.

There are far better third party imaging options available. As manu have
said, Acronis is one, Paragon is another, so is casper.

As for anything from Norton i'd bin it. They were good back in the Windows
95/98 era, but i find Norton applications nowadays cause more trouble than
they actually cure.

--
John Barnett MVP
Associate Expert
Windows Shell/User

Web: http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org
Web: http://vistasupport.mvps.org

The information in this mail/post is supplied "as is". No warranty of any
kind, either expressed or implied, is made in relation to the accuracy,
reliability or content of this mail/post. The Author shall not be liable for
any direct, indirect, incidental or consequential damages arising out of the
use of, or inability to use, information or opinions expressed in this
mail/post..
 
While i agree Vista's complete PC Backup has its uses it isn't somethingwould rely on. From my experience of using it, it doesn't have any
compression options, so if you are imaging (or shadow copying) a drive of,
say 50GB, then you need 50GB available for the image. I haven't tried
imaging to DVDs but, again, from other conversations, i gather that the
'restore' process for DVDs has to go in reverse order. In other words if you
have disk 1 to 5, the you insert 5 first to get the restore going. Insert
disk 1 first and Vista complains.

There are far better third party imaging options available. As manu have
said, Acronis is one, Paragon is another, so is casper.

John:

I have been evaluating the Acronis True Image 10.0 backup product.
Very impressive product.

As a test, I did a backup and restore of Vista RTM, all from within Vista
RTM.
No problems.
Using the Normal compression setting:
Op system vol: 9.2 GB used
Compressed file size: 3.6GB
 
Best backup software? Acronis True Image Workstation® - any version after 9.1
(build 3,832) works on Vista RTM without problems. Compresses to about 40%
(on a medium setting), is super fast for backups and restoring, works from
‘outside’ Windows as well as from ‘inside’, allows image mounting in either
read-only or read & write modes, and uses its own highly secure file-system
partition. Beats anything Microsoft has to offer!
 
Alan Robinson said:
I have been using Symantec's GoBack for many years and it has saved my bacon
on many occassions. But will not be available for Vista. I have been looking
at Rollback RX which is supposed to be really good but you have problems
defraging your hard disk. You have to uninstall rollback, defrag and then
re-intsall and then you lose yourrestorepoints. So how good is Vista's
systemrestore? Would I be able to bank on it in an emergency? Any thoughts
and ideas would be appreciated. I did think of Acronis True Image as a
companion, but was rreally looking for something along the lines of GoBack.
Many thanks,
Alan.
Click to expand...

Hi, Alan

Paragon Drive Backup 8.5 supports Vista perfectly.
http://www.drive-backup.com/
I tested it on my home PC with Windows Vista installed. I use Paragon
products for 3 years and absolutely pleased with it. The function of
differential backup helps to save free space and gives the ability to
restore system condition on the certain date. Schedule backup is very
usefull too, once scheduled, it will be done, for example, every night
without any actions from your side. If something happens with your
windows installation, you can always boot from recovery CD and restore
your system. And another very important thing is Paragon's Support. It
works divinely! There is no situation when they can't help me!
 
ozziaj said:
Best backup software? Acronis True Image Workstation® - any version after
9.1
(build 3,832) works on Vista RTM without problems. Compresses to about 40%
(on a medium setting), is super fast for backups and restoring, works from
‘outside’ Windows as well as from ‘inside’, allows image mounting in
either
read-only or read & write modes, and uses its own highly secure
file-system
partition. Beats anything Microsoft has to offer!
Click to expand...

Acronis True Image is a good product, no doubt...I have been using it long
before Vista...But they are indeed having Vista issues...TI-10 is the
current version for Vista, but there are still problems for quite a few
folks...Check out their support forum...
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/forumdisplay.php?f=65

I am currently unable to do a confident backup of my vista drive nightly
like I did under XP/MCE and True Image 9...The backup runs successfully but
the validate fails...

Greenwing
 
Acronis True Image is a good product, no doubt...I have been using itbefore Vista...But they are indeed having Vista issues...TI-10 is the
current version for Vista, but there are still problems for quite a few
folks...Check out their support forum...
http://www.wilderssecurity.com/forumdisplay.php?f=65

I am currently unable to do a confident backup of my vista drive nightly
like I did under XP/MCE and True Image 9...The backup runs successfully but
the validate fails...

Greenwing:

Do you have the latest build: 4940
 
In my view Vistas System Restore stinks. I created 2 backups one DVD based
and one Reserve disk based, then I attemted test restoration to a couple of
test disks ( I have dual boot XP and Vista) which I connected in stead of the
origina disks.

My findings so far:
Vista did not find the DVD based backup. Some people here wrote that the
DVDs must be inserted in reversed order. I belive I tryed this too but with
the same negative result.

When trying the Disk based backup Vista complanied that it either is not
finding the disks or that they are too small. Correctly the are of smaller
size than the original disks but large enough to contain both Operative
systems each. From what I found on the net Vista suppots only restoration to
the exact disk the backup was taken from, if so this is an unexaptable
limitation for a backup and restore software.

In addition, I have XP on my C: and Vista on V: Most likely upon failure
only one of them fails and needs restoration while the other is still in tact
but VIsta forces me to restore both.

I have been using Ghost 2003 before which I was very happy with but
unfortunately no longer supported for Vista.
 
If you are just trying to make a backup image of a disk and not restore an
entire computer, you can use the wbadmin command-line tool. Complete PC will
always back up the system and boot volumes (in your case C and V) so that it
can restore the computer to the same functional state. Wbadmin does not have
this requirement and you can back up an individual volume.

I'm not sure what you mean by "Vista did not find the DVD-based backup." I
see a lot of customers do, say, a File Backup and then try to restore using
Complete PC and vice versa. This might be what you are running into. Also,
you mention trying System Restore but this doesn't use DVDs, so I'm not
clear on what you tried to do here.
 
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