First Impressions - A few questions about Image

[B00ze]

Good day.

Finished reading the Image manual. It shows this is a tool written by programmers - powerful, but with lots of almost irrelevant options (drive geometry anyone?) and a very basic GUI where the user is, for example, allowed to select mutually-exclusive options (i.e. check-boxes instead of radio buttons). You should really hire a GUI expert and take Image "to the next level" - the technology is there, but the UI really suffers from option bloat. Anyway, I don't want to bash what looks like a good tool, and I will have to use it if I want to image a whole EMBR disk. So I have some questions; can you help please?

1-What's the difference between PHYLock and VSS? Why would I use PHYLock over VSS? I don't understand why PHYLock is even there; does it fix issues with VSS? I'm debating whether I should include it at all when I install IFW...

2-Incremental -> I'm curious as to how IFW stores the chain of incrementals for later retrieval. Does each incremental store the filename of the previous step? Meaning I cannot rename backups once they are referenced by a later backup, but I *can* have completely different names for each incremental?

3-Incremental -> Appendix B in the manual seems to imply that if we want to restore a backup that has 3 incrementals afer a full, we need to restore the full, then each incremental in the correct order - this isn't true with Image is it? Image is quite capable of restoring everything correctly if I point it to the 3rd incremental? I've never seen a backup program that can't figure out the chain by itself, as implied in Appendix B, well maybe Backup Exec?

4-Restore Options: Automatic Boot Partition Update – quote "If this option is enabled, Image for Windows will automatically update the boot partition (including an EFI system partition) when a full drive image is restored" end-quote --- I don't get it. If I do a full disk restore, then there is no need to update the boot partition (e.g. the BCD) since it is included in the image and restored. Perhaps this is an option needed when resizing partitions on restore?

5-Restore Options: Scale to Fit vs Scale to Target is not clear. Why 2 options that do the same thing?

Thank you.
Best Regards,

[Bob Coleman]

2-See http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/ucf/vi ... 5499#p5499 .

You can certainly name each incremental whatever you want. Surprisingly (to me), restoring from an incremental will find even renamed predecessors if they are in the same folder as the specified incremental.

3-Appendix B seems to be some sort of generalized illustration of different backup strategies. You only need to specify the most recent incremental when restoring.

[B00ze]

Thanks Bob, this is very nice, not only can we comment on each incremental, but we can name them whatever we like! This is unusual, and very welcomed! I'm off installing the Trial and testing it out. I wish I'd had a reply on PHYLock tho, I don't know why I'd want it as Windoze comes with a capable Volume Shadow Copy function. I'm also still clueless about #4 and #5; I might need #4 one day, I don't know, same with Scale to Fit vs Scale to Target. which one do I chose if I migrate a whole disk to a bigger disk, or to a smaller SSD?

Best Regards.

[TeraByte Support]

"B00ze" wrote in message news:10263@public.image...


1-What's the difference between PHYLock and VSS? Why would I use PHYLock
over VSS? I don't understand why PHYLock is even there; does it fix issues
with VSS? I'm debating whether I should include it at all when I install
IFW...

>> There are quite different. PHYLock locks at the disk level, VSS is at
>> the volume level. PHYLock existed long before VSS. If you enable VSS
>> in IFW and it can't start, it will fall back to PHYLock.



4-Restore Options: Automatic Boot Partition Update - quote "If this option
is enabled, Image for Windows will automatically update the boot partition
(including an EFI system partition) when a full drive image is restored"
end-quote --- I don't get it. If I do a full disk restore, then there is no
need to update the boot partition (e.g. the BCD) since it is included in the
image and restored. Perhaps this is an option needed when resizing
partitions on restore?

>> yes and perhaps other things like alignment.

5-Restore Options: Scale to Fit vs Scale to Target is not clear. Why 2
options that do the same thing?

>> one will scale to fit the target, the other scales to the target drive vs
>> the source drive (manual explains more).

[B00ze]

Good day TB Team.

I have started to test drive IFW. I think my first impression from the manual was a bit harsh, there are many options but we don't need to change many of them and most can be left at default settings. I'm very early in testing; more comments later.

>> There are quite different. PHYLock locks at the disk level, VSS is at
>> the volume level. PHYLock existed long before VSS. If you enable VSS
>> in IFW and it can't start, it will fall back to PHYLock.

Ah, I see, so PHYLock came before VSS, that explains it. Ok, I'll install it alongside IFW, no real harm in having it just in case (for now I decided not to install it for my testing; so we'll see how well IFW can use VSS).

>> one will scale to fit the target, the other scales to the target drive vs
>> the source drive (manual explains more).

Lol, nope, the manual doesn't explain it well, which is why I'm asking From the names (Scale to Fit and Scale to Target) I see no obvious difference at all. Can you give examples of what happens when selecting each of these options? What if I restore an image with 2 partitions, 50G and 150G, onto a 400G drive (double) - what happens if I Scale to Fit? and if I Scale to Target instead?

Thank you much.
Best Regards,

[Brian K]

B00ze wrote:

>
> Lol, nope, the manual doesn't explain it well, which is why I'm asking From the
> names (Scale to Fit and Scale to Target) I see no obvious difference at all.

B00ze,

Consider this example. A 250 GB HD with 100 GB partition, 100 GB partition and 50 GB Free Space.

Restoring to a 500 GB HD with Scale to Fit will give 250 GB partition, 250 GB partition.

Restoring to a 500 GB HD with Scale to Target will give 200 GB partition, 200 GB partition, 100 GB Free Space.

[DrTeeth]

On Wed, 9 Sep 2015 18:23:52 PDT, just as I was about to take a herb,
B00ze disturbed my reverie and wrote:

>Ah, I see, so PHYLock came before VSS, that explains it.

There is also a small difference between the two. With PHYLock, the
system restore points are backed up and with VSS they are now - but
don't quote me. I have always used PHYLock - I just trust it more than
any MSoft s/w and any issues will be addressed in a more timely
fashion.
--
Cheers,

DrT

** You've never known happiness until you're married;
** but by then it is too late.

[B00ze]

Good day all.

> Consider this example. A 250 GB HD with 100 GB partition, 100 GB partition and 50 GB Free Space.
> Restoring to a 500 GB HD with Scale to Fit will give 250 GB partition, 250 GB partition.
> Restoring to a 500 GB HD with Scale to Target will give 200 GB partition, 200 GB partition, 100 GB Free Space.

Wow, suddenly the manual makes sense, lol. Thanks!
So it all has to do with free space. On a full drive, there is no difference...

> There is also a small difference between the two. With PHYLock, the
> system restore points are backed up and with VSS they are now[T] - but
> don't quote me. I have always used PHYLock - I just trust it more than
> any MSoft s/w and any issues will be addressed in a more timely
> fashion.

Funny you should mention restore points. I currently use Ghost, and while it does backup the restore points, after a restore Windows gets rid of them while it boots for the first time, so I've disabled System Restore (besides, it's mostly useless; if it has a problem restoring a single file, it aborts everything - and I've seen it have problems with a file very very often).

Best Regards,