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sjf2

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  1. Have you used Defraggler or any other defrag program with the exception of Windows Defrag or Diskeeper? Only Windows Defrag and Diskeeper are "VSS Aware" and every other defrag program that makes changes to files (that's all, sorry) will destroy all your restore points. Simply put, VSS (Volume Shadow Copy Service) creates "snapshots" of your file system on-the-fly and stores them in a seprate section of your disks. Each disk, if you have more than one, has the size of this area set in the System Restore section and snapshots of that disk are written there. When the size of the snapshot files exceeds the set limit, the oldest snapshots are deleted. The system restore points are part of that snapshot so when snapshots are deleted by Windows, so are the restore points. The problem lies in the fact that all but the programs I mentioned above don't care about VSS, snapshots or restore points. Those programs do not disable the VSS service while they are defraging so VSS does a "copy and write" for all the file relocations and the VSS area on the disk fills up very quickly. In the end, there are no VSS shadow files that have enough true data to reconstruct anything for a system restore. Bottom line is that you need to check your defrag program to see if it has the option to disable VSS or disable shadow copies. If it does not AND you wish to keep restore points, you will have to either buy Diskeeper (mucho bucks) or use the Windows Defrag (free). If you don't care about restore points, then go to "System Properties">"System Protection" and disable System Protection. You will be able to reclaim the disk space VSS was usnig. See: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/312067 for another iteration of the same stuff if you didn't understand this one.
  2. Oh come on now, are you kidding me? You didn't actually type that, did you? I'm sorry that you didn't find my "quote" adequate or containing the right references. So this is forum is now an extension of Wiki? I'm so sorry, If I could have offset it from the rest of the post in any other way, I would have and I would not have used the [ quote ] syntax - but that's what I had to work with. And to think that little detail is so important to so many... Whose causing unrest here??? And you actually Google'd the SUMMARY I typed at the top -- why -- because you thought it was the title of some college kid's thesis? Did you think that you would find a copy, somewhere, and then accuse me of plagiarism? What kind of twisted thinking drives you? Or for that matter, what kind of twisted, cynical thinking drives so many of you that, instead of answering the question I asked, you decided it was more important to berate me, and on my first visit to this forum, too. Well, this will also be my last visit and my consideration of any or Piriform's products -- based solely on your attitude and that of a select few others, has ended. You obviously have no one to answer to in your self-appointed capacities as all-knowing, all-seeing software swamis. I would have to say that Piriform must not monitor this forum. So, I have to know... You have NOTHING better to do than wait around on a forum for someone to make a post that you can reply to?? What... Do you have a Superman complex and you picture yourself swooping in to help Joe User and therefore must be vigilant at your keyboard, ready to pounce. I have run into many of your type in my researching different products and that is the largest reason I wrote up those few paragraphs of BACKGROUND this time. I was tired of asking a question and then having to spoon-feed a clueless forum member with all the information he/she needed to answer my question -- and of course, wrongly. What possesses a person to think that his "contribution" to a silly "Internet bulletin-board" is so important the he/she will even go so far as to write a post saying, "I don't know the answer". I wrote that bit of a brain dump for this post and, as I clearly stated it was for "background" so newbies wouldn't be totally confused. If I had made any statement in there that suggested that I had an answer for this problem, or any mention of instructions to do this or that, I would take the criticism. However, I did not do that but instead tried to write an explanation of a problem that I had and what I learned through my research. It is unfortunate that some forum members did not read my post completely or, because they had already determined that it was wrong, read it as such and complained. I particularly enjoy when members refute something I said when I said nothing of the sort. If anyone didn't comprehend, from my short blurb, what I actually said, then a re-reading might be in order. I never said that defrag programs cause any damage or deletion of files. As I explained, the VSS process is the process that fills the disk with unneeded data and Windows (file system management) deletes the system restore points". It just so happens that "bad" defrag programs exacerbate an inherent and unavoidable deficiency in the VSS concept. I came here to find out if Defraggler was or was not VSS-Aware and by accident, someone answered my question and I came to the conclusion that Defraggler had met the requirements for an Enterprise installation at my company. However, after this exchange, Defraggler is off the table and I no longer give a s**t about this forum.
  3. >>Where did that quote come from by the way? I wrote it... >>I'm not aware of any defrag process that deletes files, or Restore Points in particular, that simply should not be the domain of a file re-arranging algorithm. You are correct. Perhaps I didn't explain it well enough. The defrag process does nothing with the VSS shadow and the restore points -- except exacerbate an inherent, and unavoidable, weakness of VSS. If VSS is running, every write to the VSS-Enabled disk triggers VSS to create a shadow of the file changes and stores it in its designated area. Now, VSS is very smart and if a Windows process writes a file, the shadow is created with just the changes (like an incremental backup) and if Windows undoes that change by writing the file update back to it's original data, VSS will remove the shadow for that very change. This helps keep the VSS data to a minimum and because, in practice, there really are very few changes on the system disk, VSS can happily run with its max size at 4Mb (unless you want to keep more than... 3 or 4 system restore points). That's where a non-VSS-Aware defrag program comes in. If VSS is running, every write that the defrag program makes is shadowed, just like a normal write. However, the defrag reads and writes (moves) all the files so, to VSS, it looks like every byte of every file is being changed and that causes VSS to try and shadow all of the defragging activity -- which is a complete waste of time -- and by "waste of time" I actually mean the consumption of CPU cycles and memory reads/writes -- and -- these are resources that Windows could use or they could get used by the defrag. Now, the unwanted effect is that the VSS process consumes its allotted space and grows to its max size -- which if left at default is 15% of the total disk space. In addition, the defrag program will use as much free disk space as it can get (but it has limits which keep this reasonable) to speed the process. As this constant increase of useless shadows continues, Windows sees that the free space is getting low so the first thing it does is -- drum roll -- reduces the VSS space and deletes system restore points. So, no defrag program does anything to the Volume Shadow on a volume – but – it can help Windows shoot itself in the foot. If the defrag program is VSS aware (or VSS configurable), the problem of VSS creating useless shadows and destroying its own system restore points is avoided (notice I didn’t say, “is fixed”). So the choices are: 1) Use the built-in Windows defrag program which is VSS-Aware and which sucks. 2) Use a 3rd party defrag program that is VSS-Aware (Defraggler?). 3) Use something else and get used to losing your restore points and hope that you will never need them. 4) Don't defrag your system drive (usually C:) and live with the slower speed of a fragmented.
  4. I have a question but I'm going to provide some background information first so that Newbies can benefit too. I've just been looking at defag programs and in comparing functionality. I have found that a major functionality is missing from most 3rd party defrag programs. Most 3rd party programs do not process "Volume Shadow Storage" disk drives properly which causes problems with all of the VSS programs and features. My question is… Does Piriform Defraggler support Windows VSS Volumes without deleting restore points?
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