Restore Points Vanished

A hard drive will make the backup go much faster, won't it? But I'm not sure what you mean by drive + enclosure. Can you suggest an example?

And what backup program do you use? I've heard people say that Ghost and other imaging programs are superior to true backup/disaster recovery programs such as PC Backup by Migo software.

http://store.migosoftware.com/product.php?productid=16134&SourceId=&cat=0&page=1

I've always used PC Backup because it allows you to fully restore your system without installing any of the original software or operating system. You just boot up the recovery disk, recover the system backup and everything is put back exactly as it was -- and I mean exactly!

But what do you think: Ghost or PC Backup?

 

To give you an idea of what they look like and the price range: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...cription=drive enclosures&bop=And&Order=PRICE

Things to look out for:

Internal drive size is 3.5 - 2.5 are laptop size HD's.

SATA drives are newer and tend to be more expensive. ATA's are the type that's been used for years.

So the drive enclosure you would get is for the 3.5 size and either for ATA or SATA depending on which type of drive you purchased.

I use a drive imaging software called EZ GigII http://www.apricorn.com/product_detail.php?type=reg&id=1180 which is not for sale, Apricorn uses it as bundling software for HD sales from various OEM's, which is how I got it - I'm a cheap guy

I can't comment on which is superior - never used a "true backup/disaster recovery program ". If you create images and or data backups, that pretty much is disaster recovery. Sounds like what you have "automates" imaging and data backup.

I image the OS partition and backup my data more or less on a weekly basis, and along with SR (works for me - never had trouble with it), I think I'm covered in the event of a disaster.

I'll also create an image before a major install/upgrade or any significant change to the OS - it takes me 5 minutes.

Acronis, EZ Gig, and Ghost do exactly that - bit for bit image.

As an option, Acronis and Ghost do incremental image backups.

Here's SD2 describing Acronis in a post about SR http://www.windowsbbs.com/showthread.php?t=64941

EZ Gig is just a straight drive image, I feel I don't need incremental image backups, I have OS only partitions (I dual boot), and that's all I drive image. All my data reside on data only partitions and I use HD to external HD copying to back up the user data. And of course, I image to my external HD's.

Regards - Charles

 

That was really helpful, Charles -- thank you so much.

But back to System Restore, guess what: I walk into the office this morning and my restore points for Monday and Tuesday are gone, although yesterday's remain.

This is different from what's happened before. Usually, every three-four days all my restore points vanish. Now, only the previous days' points disappeared but the latest one remained.

Not only that, unlike on previous occasions, this time event viewer showed no activity -- no shutdown and restart of SR. IOTW, System Restore stayed on, but some of the restore points were deleted anyway.

Do you have ANY idea what could be causing this?

 

Hi Dave,

The symptom is from quick RP cycling. The smaller the SVI file allocation is, the less room for RP's, the quicker the cycling. I have 3% allocated for SR's file. Usually, I have, depending on whether I create manual points or not, about a week's worth of RP's hanging around.

The max cycle time for RP's is 90 days.

How big (actual file size) is the SVI file on C? It's a hidden system file.

Regards - Charles

 

What's the actual name of the svi file, and where is it located?

I searched for "svi" as file name, and got a bunch that don't seem to relate -- things like DMBSVINN.dl_.

My cycle time in the registry is set to 90 days, I think. At least the RPLifeInterval key is set to 777,6000.

 

I think I found the answer! (maybe). Read this from a Zone Labs user forum:

The 6.5 version of ZA corrupts the IAMDB.RDB (holds all the program permissons info). Its not noticeable until you check your hardrive space and see that you are dwindling. Because the IAMDB.RDB is corrupted ZA writes to the System Volume Information/_Restore... /RPnn folder a copy of the IAMDB.RDB every 1 to 2 minutes! Over the course of 5 days my system restore folder jumped to 7gig. It appears that you have to go to Windows/Internet Logs and delete the IAMDB.RDB and the BACKUP.RDB (which can only be done after rebooting to safe mode without ZA running). This forces ZA to start a new database unfortunately. To reclaim your hardrive space you would need to stop system restore and restart it back.

If you look in the System Volume Information/_Restore.../RPnn (where nn is the highest numbered RP folder you will see A000nnn.RDB files...a bunch of them. You can literally watch it for a few minutes and see them being added.

And indeed, in my system volume information folder, in one of the restore point folders, I can see these .RDB files being created every minjute. Each one is 5 MB.

Now, I can't say for sure that these file creations will cause System restore to max out and delete restore points, but it sure seems possible.

So I'm not exactly sure how to correct the problem. Do I follow the advice of that Zonme Labs user above?

 

Or what do you think of this possible solution:

You can avoid the multiple .rdb files in system restore points with ZA by a simple registry edit, which tells system restore not to include the file backup.rdb, which is the one that ZA is repeatedly rewriting.

Use regedit, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\BackupRestore\FilesNotToBackup

In the right pane, right click, click new, string value. rename the value to anything you like (I called it Internet log, or you could call it ZABackup).
Right click on it click modify and set the data to C:\WINDOWS\Internet Logs\backup.rdb

ZA will still update backup.rdb, but the changes are not stored in the restore point.

 

By the way, Charles, as you can see I'm not exactly a genius at this stuff.

I finally figured out, of course, what you meant by SVI. And just to answer your question, my SVI folder is 3.24 GB, and within that, my RP8 (yesterday's restore point, I'm guessing) is 2.61 GB, and my RP9 (today's RP) is 641 MB, but it's growing by 5 MB every two to three minutes.

 

Yes, ZA is the problem. The symptoms: a huge file that SR monitors and the rapid cycling out of RP's because of it. Easy enough to test: disable ZA, make sure XP's FW fires up, restart SR, and run for a few days.

Try that first, that's the simplest. Now that you know what the problem is, if it doesn't work or the ZA file goes corrupt again, then do the steps below.

Either do the Reg fix, or

Upgrade the ZA version - up to v7.x or back to an earlier version.

BTW, I ran v6.5.737.000 Pro version w/o any problems, so you can also try uninstalling/reinstalling and see if that fixes it. Did you upgrade ZA over a previous version? if so, that may be the origin of the problem.

Do a clean install. Make sure there are no files left in ZA's folder from the current ZA before reinstalling it again. There are sticky's on the ZA forum site on how to do a clean uninstall/reinstall. You should do this in any case if your going to the newer version. That particular ZA file is notorious for going corrupt, I always uninstalled ZAP before installing a newer version.

And finally, I hate to say I told you so but you have to check the basics. In this case, disabling apps to eliminate and narrow the problem down. If you would have disabled ZA, you would have known the origin of the problem.

BTW, the yellow shield in the title line of this post is from my twitchy finger, and I can't edit it out.

Regards - Charles

 

Thanks to your help, I'm closing on the solution, I'm sure of it.

Just to update you, I did upgrade my ZA yesterday from 6.5 to 7.0.337, but it still kept spitting out those 5 mg. RDB files every two minutes. So I disabled ZA and enabled the Windows firewall.

Now, what to do about ZA? I think rather than clean out the IAMBD files, etc., like the person in the ZA forum recommended, I'll instead follow your advice, Charles, and to a clean reinstall after uninstalling ZA and clearing out all its files from the directory. I'm not sure how to do it, but like you say there's probably a sticky on the ZA forum site that will tell me how.

Anyway, after the clean reinstall, then I'll open up SVI and watch what happens. If ZA still keeps popping out those RDB files, then maybe I should just get rid the program completely and rely instead on Windows firewall and Norton Anti-Virus 2005.

So here are three last questions:

1) If ZA still spits out the RDB files, then instead of giving up on the program completely, would I be safe to simply do the registry exclusion fix to prevent those files from being monitored by SR and then keep using ZA?

2) If not, and I really do have to kill ZA, can I trust the Windows firewall?

3) Should I turn SR off and then on again just to get a fresh start with it?

 

Safe or not safe in what way? The only effect it would have is to not backup that ZA file in SR.

In the pro version, ZA settings can be backed up as an option in ZA itself. Not certain the free version has that option or not.

No outbound blocking, with some exceptions and not worth talking about. XP's FW's in bound blocking is as good as any other.

Yes, get the ZA stuff out of there.

I understand your reluctence on giving up ZA - it took me a awhile to give up on it - I like it and have been using it thru the various versions, but I just don't like Checkpoint and the decisions they have been making about ZA: not being Vista ready is only the latest example.

The OS that I used ZAP on, I've substituted XP's FW for it and run a process control program that monitors all executes.

On my other desktop OS I run Kerio which is just as good if not better than ZA.

If after the registry change, and no problems, then you have some time to think out whether to keep ZA or not and research other firewalls.

Regards - Charles

 

Okay, between me and Zone Alarm, it's now personal!

Here's why.

I followed your suggestions (thanks Charles) and made the registry change to exclude ZA backup files from being monitored by System Restore. Then I deleted the IAMDB.RDB and BACKUP.RDB files from \Windows\Internet Logs to force ZA to start a new (hopefully uncorrupted) database. And then, just to make sure, I turned off Zone Alarm completely and deleted it from the starup folder. Then I stopped System Restore and turned it back on just to get rid of any residual ZA garbage.

But like a romance gone bad, ZA still wouldn't leave me alone.

That's right, my friends, even though it was turned off, Zone Alarm still kept vomiting up those 5 MB RDB files into my restore points every two minutes, hour after hour, like some software version of Night of the Living Dead.

Forget "spyware" -- this program is definitely Zombie-ware!

So I uninstalled ZA completely and erased any remaining traces of it from my computer.

Things look okay now -- at least there are no more ZA backup files polluting my restore points. And I'll know in a few days if SR is finally back to creating daily system checkpoints.

But I must remain vigilant. It's not easy to kill the undead, is it?

 

In addition to excluding backup.rdb, exclude iamdb.rdb from being monitored by system restore, by adding it to the FilesNotTo Backup key.

 

Okay, everything is fine now -- finally!

System Restore is once again working properly, and generating daily system checkpoints just like it's supposed to.

Zone Alarm is uninstalled, and I'm relying on Window's firewall now.

So thanks to everyone who gave so generously of their time to help figure out this unusually-difficult problem.

In fact, that's why I love this site -- if you keep at it, then with everyone's help you really can solve almost any issue that comes up.

Thanks again!