TeraByte Unlimited

Well, I'm back. No doubt this is a Win 10 issue, but recently, I've started having exorbitant wait times, an hour or two maybe. Worse, at some point during the wait, one primary partition and one volume (so far, only those two) become inaccessible for normal work. The space used/free graphs don't even show in Explorer. I'm not sure if this situation ever corrects itself or not. I usually give up and re-boot if I get into that situation.

For whatever it's worth all this is with IFW (x64) 2.98 which hasn't recently changed, so I think the source of the problem is something else in the system.

Has anybody else started seeing this? I doubt it, but might as well ask.

In limited testing, the backup starts being created in a reasonable amount of time if VSS is used.

How does VSS compare to PhyLock for maintaining image consistency?

I'm even reluctantly considering going back to BIBM/IFD for backup as IFW is becoming nearly unusable unless it's safe to switch to VSS.

You can enable VSS that's why it's there. You can also setup a max wait
time for PHYLock that is reasonable, that's why that is there as well. If
you wanted to figure out what may be writing to the drive continually, you
would use something like filemon or process manager.

"Bob Coleman" wrote in message news:11133@public.image...

Well, I'm back. No doubt this is a Win 10 issue, but recently, I've started
having exorbitant wait times, an hour or two maybe. Worse, at some point
during the wait, one primary partition and one volume (so far, only those
two) become inaccessible for normal work. The space used/free graphs don't
even show in Explorer. I'm not sure if this situation ever corrects itself
or not. I usually give up and re-boot if I get into that situation.

For whatever it's worth all this is with IFW (x64) 2.98 which hasn't
recently changed, so I think the source of the problem is something else in
the system.

Has anybody else started seeing this? I doubt it, but might as well ask.

In limited testing, the backup starts being created in a reasonable amount
of time if VSS is used.

How does VSS compare to PhyLock for maintaining image consistency?

I'm even reluctantly considering going back to BIBM/IFD for backup as IFW is
becoming nearly unusable unless it's safe to switch to VSS.

What would be the pros and cons of enabling VSS as opposed to setting a max wait time for PHYLock that is reasonable?

From a layman perspective it seems that the max wait time causes PHYLock to start even if writing is still occurring, but, apparently, VSS just starts working right away if writing is still occurring. Correct?

I've discovered something else. It seems I probably have the same issue in Windows 7. It's entirely possible this has been a long term situation for me with a "reasonable" (10 minute) wait time and I just never paid any attention until recently.

It's also possible that I'm being paranoid over something that really doesn't matter much.

You'll be fine with either one. When you enable the VSS option you live
under how that was developed by MS, but if there are things that don't
restore or reset (like restore points) that's how they wanted. But either
one, we've considered changing the default to vss (is default in simple
operations) but to maintain consistency, leaving as it always was.

"Bob Coleman" wrote in message news:11139@public.image...

What would be the pros and cons of enabling VSS as opposed to setting a max
wait time for PHYLock that is reasonable?

From a layman perspective it seems that the max wait time causes PHYLock to
start even if writing is still occurring, but, apparently, VSS just starts
working right away if writing is still occurring. Correct?

The length of the wait aside for the moment, is it normal for partitions to be inaccessible during
the wait?

when use and release lock is used, it will stay locked until phylock starts,
then unlock. So when you have something that won't lock and ones that do,
the one that doesn't has a lot of writing occurring, it can hold the other
ones until it starts.

"Bob Coleman" wrote in message news:11212@public.image...

The length of the wait aside for the moment, is it normal for partitions to
be inaccessible during
the wait?

OK, thanks. I think that description matches what I'm seeing. I still don't know why C: won't lock. Will continue to investigate.

For whatever interest, if any, it may be, the underlying cause of all this seems to be Secunia Personal Software Inspector. I don't know why it would be constantly writing to disk, but it must be either doing that or in some other way interfering with PhyLock. I still have installed, but a week ago I changed its settings to not start on boot. Every image or copy of the system partition since (more than one a day) has started well within the 10 minute timeout, most in only a few seconds.