D7's DataGrab vs. Fab's AutoBackup 4 Tech

[Xander]

Hmm... point taken. I'll add Quicklaunch to DG backups just in case.

EDIT: now that I think about it, what I really should do in addition to that, is add Quicklaunch to D7's broken desktop/start menu shortcut detection. I've taken to running that D7 feature after restoring data to a system with DataGrab, as it can auto-delete all of the restored shortcuts to software that isn't installed on the fresh OS install. That would make me feel a lot better about backing up / restoring possibly dead shortcuts in Quicklaunch...

I'm probably in the minority on this but I like to copy over the dead shortcuts to the desktop. They serve as reminders to the customer as to which software they may wish to reinstall.

 

[Larry Sabo]

+1


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[FoolishTech]

I've found D7 a little more reliable when permissions are screwed up - at least it gives a warning, while FABs either pukes or misses users.

Hehe, I should add that to my feature list

The deal killer for me, though, is DataGrab sees absolutely no users on my personal Win7 machine - a serious drawback. Fabs sees everything.

Steven we've been over this on my forums - your personal PC is seriously screwed somehow The combobox you select the drive from sets the variable with the appropriate drive letter, which in turn reads the current user directories. On your PC, somehow the combobox simply doesn't set the variable. I attribute it to possibly broken / corrupted vb6 runtimes or some microsoft common components in your Windows install. Either way, it's just you, man

Actually, if you want to test we can prove my theory; I would be curious to see if DataGrab stand-alone edition (completely different code base for the selection/variable set, but utilizes the same windows components for the combobox) sees users on your personal PC. If it doesn't, then I'm right about corrupted MS components on your system; if it does see users, then I have code issue in D7's DataGrab...

 

[slaphappyprince]

How does DataGrab handle permissions?

 

[FoolishTech]

How does DataGrab handle permissions?

When you launch D7/DataGrab with System access, (meaning it is running under the "local system" user account) then basically it completely bypasses any NTFS permissions restrictions in place, so you don't need to take ownership or assign yourself permissions to restricted files/folders. So for example a "private" user profile will copy/backup even when you don't have access to it.

 

[gazza]

Hehe, I should add that to my feature list



Steven we've been over this on my forums - your personal PC is seriously screwed somehow The combobox you select the drive from sets the variable with the appropriate drive letter, which in turn reads the current user directories. On your PC, somehow the combobox simply doesn't set the variable. I attribute it to possibly broken / corrupted vb6 runtimes or some microsoft common components in your Windows install. Either way, it's just you, man

Actually, if you want to test we can prove my theory; I would be curious to see if DataGrab stand-alone edition (completely different code base for the selection/variable set, but utilizes the same windows components for the combobox) sees users on your personal PC. If it doesn't, then I'm right about corrupted MS components on your system; if it does see users, then I have code issue in D7's DataGrab...

Yeah Steve, Nick is correct, I had a similar problem. I use D7 all the time and I remembered that it had in fact identified all the profiles roughly 2 weeks before. All I did was do a system restore back to a time prior to that time and ran D7 again and it picked up the profiles OK.

 

[DCGPX]

Nick - Is it possible to have datagrab backup up the activations files for a system as well? I cant see it in D7 other than product keys.

Thought about this due to another thread and I usually have another tool that does it, but to have it in D7/Datagrab especially with an ability to do it on an offline system would be awesome.

 

[FoolishTech]

Nick - Is it possible to have datagrab backup up the activations files for a system as well? I cant see it in D7 other than product keys.

Thought about this due to another thread and I usually have another tool that does it, but to have it in D7/Datagrab especially with an ability to do it on an offline system would be awesome.

DG does backup MS Office activation files (if found) however not Windows activation files. I'll look into trying to include this.....

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Can any Fab's user tell me if your Outlook and Outlook Express mail is automatically restored to the appropriate profile, without having to RE-IMPORT the PSTs/DBXes manually via Outlook / OE's import process?

I have just about completed a DataPut tab in D7 to address data restoration to a fresh install, however I'm not quite complete on the mail end of things.

Windows Mail and Windows Live Mail clients will be automatically restored, however I've held off on trying to do this with Outlook and Outlook Express.

One neat thing I've done with DataPut is have it automatically reimport various user profile settings that are now backed up by DataGrab - including MAIL settings (Windows Mail/Windows Live Mail/Outlook Express/Outlook.) What I'm unsure of, however, is if the mail settings include the locations of the DBX files in OE, for example. So I need to run some tests before sticking a fork in this one and automatically copying over the DBXes to their new home. Same with Outlook...

If you want to try DataGrab / then DataPut right now, I'm about to upload D7 v6 Pre-Release with the functionality.

DataPut should work even when upgrading XP backups to new Vista/7 installs.

DataPut will also work regardless if you are putting the data on the current OS you are running D7/DataPut from, or also if the OS you are putting data on is an "offline" OS partition.

The one thing DataPut doesn't do (yet) is to automatically create the user accounts and log them in for you on a live system. So you will need to login to each user account you create on the fresh install before running DataPut. ........just like you do with Fab's......... (still, hopefully I can figure out how to properly generate a user account profile so I can automate the user/profile creation, then I can 1up Fab's on that end.)

 

[uprighttech]

Can any Fab's user tell me if your Outlook and Outlook Express mail is automatically restored to the appropriate profile, without having to RE-IMPORT the PSTs/DBXes manually via Outlook / OE's import process?

Yep, seems to restore everything (mail, settings, sigs, etc) except for passwords. No reimporting necessary.

 

[FoolishTech]

OK I'll have to step my game up a notch then thanks. I was afraid that, at least for OE, it would create a new numbered subdir rather than use the DBXes in the existing one that I would restore to the fresh install; if Fab's does it without that happening that must mean that OE will use the backed up / restored store directory if I export/import the right .reg settings.

 

[FoolishTech]

Yep, seems to restore everything (mail, settings, sigs, etc) except for passwords. No reimporting necessary.

With v6.0.3 (Pre-Release) just uploaded, DataGrab / DataPut can restore Mail settings, Mail, etc. with no importing!!!!!

At least it works in my testing environment - flawlessly. (Windows Mail, Windows Live Mail, AND Outlook Express!) I have not yet tested Outlook profiles but I don't have a test machine with Office on it handy at the moment...

 

[FoolishTech]

OK, does anyone know if Fab's can restore data to different user profiles?

ex: backup a user profile named "Owner" and restore that data to a user profile named "Jimbo"

DataPut can do this (I believe I will require this to be a registered feature however) - regardless I wanted to know if Fab's was also capable so I could list it on my comparison spreadsheet.

 

[ell]

So there have been several threads on these forums where DataGrab and Fab's have crossed paths, and some questions gone unanswered. Plus I had a guy on my forums recommend Fab's product to another forum member and I was shocked... LOL I also know a lot of D7 users also use Fab's excellent product and have it integrated into D7, but I always figured they paid for Fab's before discovering DataGrab! If that were the case, I'd use Fab's too!

Mostly I'm just bored atm, and thinking about how competition spurs innovation!

So I set out to create a comparison of the two apps. Currently I have a spreadsheet of each app's feature set in side-by-side comparison, however having never used Fab's I only have the information to go by that is printed on his website and it isn't much.

So look over the list and let me know what I have mistaken or left out in Fab's feature set. Back to the competition and innovation theme, let me know what Fab's has that you would like to see in DataGrab. Not everything would I want to include in DataGrab that is in Fab's, (ahem, modem settings, WHAT?!) but I'm already seeing a few things I need to get off my bum and do something about. Mostly various browser profiles and of course get DataRestore.exe fully functional.

Without further ado, Spreadsheet Comparison Here.

I've only tried d7 a couple times, very impressed, I use fab's regularly, especially the bart pe plugin, its awesome for unbootable drives. Does datagrab recover data to the same directory's as simply as fabs too? even across diff windows versions?

 

[FoolishTech]

I've only tried d7 a couple times, very impressed, I use fab's regularly, especially the bart pe plugin, its awesome for unbootable drives.

Thanks, and yes DataGrab works to backup data from unbootable drives as well.

Does datagrab recover data to the same directory's as simply as fabs too?

DataGrab (DataPut) can not only restore data to the same directories on a fresh install - it can now (as mentioned in the previous post) restore user profile data to differently named user profiles on the fresh install. e.g. restore the backed up "Owner" profile to a new profile named "Jimbo"

even across diff windows versions?

In a word, yes. When restoring XP data to a Vista/7 partition, that is. That part is trivial; the fun fact is that Windows itself (Vista/7) handles all of the conversion thanks to junction points.

On the other hand, restoring a backed up Vista/7 partition to a Windows XP partition, that's not in the cards yet. I guess it would be easy to add support for downgrade restoration, however. I'll consider that, but having only done one downgrade (from Vista Biz to XP Pro) ever, (and even then, the downgrade was performed when the machine was first unpackaged, so there was no data to migrate of course) I'm not inclined to make support for a 'downgrade' restoration a priority unless it's a real deal breaker for ppl.

 

[ell]

Nick - Is it possible to have datagrab backup up the activations files for a system as well? I cant see it in D7 other than product keys.

Thought about this due to another thread and I usually have another tool that does it, but to have it in D7/Datagrab especially with an ability to do it on an offline system would be awesome.

Yes!! that would be great, you must be referring to ABR that you introduced me to. A PE plugin would be awesome, then removing the drive is not required if it just need a nuke & pave.

 

[uprighttech]

OK, does anyone know if Fab's can restore data to different user profiles?

ex: backup a user profile named "Owner" and restore that data to a user profile named "Jimbo"

Yes. Fab's will restore to whatever user profile you are logged into when you initiate the restore. You pick the profile to restore and it restores to the current profile.

 

[FoolishTech]

Yes. Fab's will restore to whatever user profile you are logged into when you initiate the restore. You pick the profile to restore and it restores to the current profile.

What if you profile you are logged into is not what you want to restore to? That sounds like a HASSLE that you wouldn't have with DataGrab.

OK let me break this down for you. Pretend you have 3 profiles backed up from a system: Owner, Bob, and Jimmy.

...and you of course want to restore bob to bob, jimmy to jimmy, but you want to restore "owner" to a differently named profile, "Gary"

Now on the fresh install you're logged in as Bob, and ready to restore your data. At this point DataGrab can restore Owner to Gary without having to login Gary and run the restore from that account. Can Fab's? Or are you saying with Fab's you would have to login as Gary to restore the old Owner account to the new Gary account? If so, that's the hassle I'm talking about. DataGrab doesn't have that limitation.

 

[uprighttech]

Or are you saying with Fab's you would have to login as Gary to restore the old Owner account to the new Gary account? If so, that's the hassle I'm talking about. DataGrab doesn't have that limitation.

Yes, with Fab's you would have to login to Gary's account to restore the Owner data. It is a little bit of a pain, but you really have to log in to each account anyway to do certain things and make sure everything restores properly. It would be nice to only have to run a restore once, but you're still gonna need to login to each account regardless.

So, do you still need to login to each account once before running the DataGrab restore or have you figured out a way around that?

 

[FoolishTech]

Yes, with Fab's you would have to login to Gary's account to restore the Owner data. It is a little bit of a pain, but you really have to log in to each account anyway to do certain things and make sure everything restores properly. It would be nice to only have to run a restore once, but you're still gonna need to login to each account regardless.

So, do you still need to login to each account once before running the DataGrab restore or have you figured out a way around that?

Yes, unfortunately a newly created account still must be logged in. I'm working on that, kinda waiting on Jefferynya's RegShot report of the ... I think it was Altris program's ability to create account profiles properly without login.

But that is being actively worked on and I hope to reach a solution soon, so that DataGrab will be able to automatically create the accounts and put the data back without prior login.

WORST CASE SCENARIO........ I automate DataGrab to create the accounts, login to each account automatically, log off, then restore the data all with one click!

 

[uprighttech]

Sounds like a great plan! Think I'm gonna give DataGrab a try on my next reload.

Altiris is a beast of a program. My father works in IT for a Department of Defense school system. It is what the DoD uses to do all of their setups, imaging and app deployments. It's pretty fancy.