Re: Off-Topic -- Goback v. CfgSafe

["J. R. Fox" jr_fox@xxxxxxxxxx]

Leslie Bialler wrote:

> > Assuming I'm right about the origin of this utility in XP (and I'm fairly
> > sure that a CONFIGSAFE lite was included with Win-2K, so this could well be
> > the same item), it has been judged superior to and more convenient than
> > Goback, per reviewers and user reports.
>
> Goback, however, will get back a prior version of a resaved file. Does
> CONFIGSAFE do that?

I'm not entirely clear on what you're referring to here. By prior version, do you
mean a replaced (deleted) file, i.e. out of the Recycled Bin ? How prior, what
sort of file ?

> > Goback carries a high resource load
> > -- specifically, *lots* of hard-drive space. From what I understand, it
>
> "It" meaning GOBACK or CONFIGSAFE?

GOBACK. From what I understand (and I visited the exhibits for both products at
Comdex, a couple years ago), GOBACK makes something much closer to a whole
partition image. It should be totally comprehensive, in regard to the myriad and
far-flung WIN files. This naturally chews up a lot of hard-drive real estate. I
guess you wouldn't care, if you happened to have a 30G h/d or thereabouts, as many
do these days, but this definitely complicates backing up said h/d.

In comparison, CONFIGSAFE concentrates on taking snapshots of the Registry. These
snapshots are small and portable enough to be be saved to removeable media.
(Probably not standard floppies, though. I could check that out -- the snapshots
might be compressed or compressable.) I'm pretty sure you can also include a
custom list of other key files that tend to change.

Now what's the practical difference, you may ask, in terms of the level of
coverage ? I would guess that 90 % of the times WIN suffers some near-fatal
calamity with lasting implications, the source of the problem will turn out to be
some corruption(s) in the Registry. In a recent post here, I related the
unfortunate tale of how the installation of Pagis Pro Suite (a pkg. for OCR and
other related app.s, the successor to TextBridge) rendered my scanner dead and
invisible to NT, while it continued to function just fine under OS/2. Which
installation also killed PhotoShop, and other previously installed and working
scanner app.s in NT. This damage in NT was unfixable, unrecoverable. Apparently,
it reached way beyond the Registry, to who knows where. So I guess that is an
example of the other 10 %. Maybe GOBACK would have had better results with a case
like this.

Jordan