Frequently Asked Questions

No. We are selling ExBoot as a total solution package: enclosure + hard disk + ExBoot software. This applies to Singapore only.

No. ExBoot software only available when you purchase ExBoot total solution package.

No. It is a one time purchase when you purchase the ExBoot solution package which comes with enclosure, hard disk and ExBoot software.

No. We presume your existing Anti-virus software is functioniong properly. Hence there is no need for a second scanner.

ExBoot has two types of interface available to support SATA/IDE hard disk.

However you have to specify which type specifically at time of purchase.

http://www.hantechnology.com.sg/content/exboot-download

Switch it to ON when ExBoot drive is running.

No.

Please contact HAN Sales at 6741 5689 or email sales@hantechnology.com.sg for further details. This applies to Singapore only.

Please see the details on the warranty card. The current warranty for all newly purchased ExBoot is 12 months against manufacturing defects from date of purchase. If ExBoot is not working properly, you can contact HAN Technology for a 1-to-1 exchange. Please do not remove the warranty void sticker on the enclosure. Else the warranty is considered void.

Warranty will be void. This applies to Singapore only.

Please contact HAN Sales at 6741 5689 or email sales@hantechnology.com.sg for further details. This applies to Singapore only.

ExBoot is a backup and recovery solution that backup everything on your machine: operating system, applications and data files.

Please contact HAN Technology at 6741 5689 or email sales@hantechnology.com.sg for further details.

Two ExBoot models: EXB-0121 (2.5”) and EXB-0131 (3.5”). EXB-0121 is a light weight, portable and it requires two USB slots of your computer to ensure sufficient power is supplied to the USB hard drive. For EXB-0131, it has a single USB port connection and it comes with a standard external power adaptor.

EXB-0131 hard disk sizes can range from 80 to 500Gb and EXB-0121 from 40 to 120Gb.

It is recommended that you select a hard disk that is at least 20% larger than your existing PC hard drive size.

This would allow ExBoot software to backup the entire existing drive and have additional space to maintain multiple incremental backup. Having multiple incremental backups will allow multiple recovery points.

In cases where the last copy of incremental is corrupted due to situations like spyware corruption or incompatible system patches, you can recover your files or system to an earlier version of incremental backup. This would enhance your ability to quickly return your system to a good working condition.

Recommended sizes based on next nearest hard drive size typically available from hard drive manufacturer:               

ExBoot can support up to a maximum of 8 partitions.

Windows clients: Windows XP Professional, Windows XP Home and Windows 2000 Professional.

ExBoot does not support server operating system i.e. Windows 2003, Windows SBS, Windows 2000 Server.

No.

It is not under the current list of operating systems support.

Check your PC/laptop bios or PC/laptop manufacturer if USB hard disk can be supported.

For computers that do not support “boot from USB hard disk” function, you can still enjoy the total recovery of operating system, applications and data files by using the ExBoot Recovery CD. This restores the whole system (C drive).

No, ExBoot is designed to backup only one computer. To backup the other computer, you will need to buy a 2^nd ExBoot.

Yes. ExBoot backup an identical copy of what is in your PC or laptop.

How long it takes to back up certain size of data through ExBoot must take the following conditions into account:

1. What is USB interface? The transmission rate of USB 2.0 is 480MB/per second. ExBoot prefers such interface.
2. What is the nature of data? If the data composition of hard drive within your PC or laptop is so complicated, including database, for example, then it will take longer to backup.
3. What is the performance of your hard drives both within PC or notebook and ExBoot USB enclosure?

It is no problem to boot and use exboot just like your internal C: drive. Still, you should be using ExBoot as your backup drive of your internal hard disk.

Before One Touch Button backup, you must conduct full backup first, then One Touch Button can perform incremental backup.

ExBoot provides two easy ways to manage this.

1) There is a something called a Synthetic Backup policy, which can be set to be manual or automatic. What it does is it automatically merges first then deletes the oldest incremental in sequence until there is enough space to do a new incremental backup.

2) You can set up Cyclic Full Backup, which essentially performs a full backup every X number of days specified. Each time a new full back is done, all previous incrementals are deleted because the new full backup is newer then all previous incrementals. Hence the older incrementals cannot be used anymore.

Yes, especially for programs like Outlook, Skype, and etc. It is a good practice to close programs during backup. But it is not necessary since ExBoot supports open file manager. This applies if you are running Windows XP. Data in some of these programs may not be written to the disk when its running. ExBoot only backups the actually written data on disk and not whats in Ram.

ExBoot Recovery CD only restores C: 40GB from the full backup drive.

This is possible if you can boot up from USB hard disk and then do restoration. When boot up from USB hard disk, first go to Disk Management and format the new 80GB internal disk as a single drive. Next, launch ExBoot software and start restoration. It will recognize the newly formatted internal drive as the destination.

Yes, the newer ExBoot Recovery CD (WinPE version) can recover any number of partitions. If you are using the older Linux ExBoot Recovery CD, please obtain a new one from our Suntec Showroom.

The Recovery CD or when you do a USB boot, the ExBoot software, during recovery allows you to select any specific time or just the Full backup to restore. If you choose a specific time, it will first apply the Full backup and followed by all the incrementals in the order it was created until the time you have specified.

The new harddisk must be equal or bigger, otherwise, the backup data may not fit into the new drive.

Enter the BIOS configuration screen of your host, and check if the USB hard disk is configured as the 1st boot sequence.

First, Your PC or notebook must support “External USB-HDD Boot up” function. Second, to make sure all the USB cables and power cord all are firmly connected to USB slots or power in-lets. Note that not all Bios which claims that they do USB boot actually works. Some only support DOS boot up in such a configuration.

It will be the time when last time you conduct full backup.

No. Its only for recovery purposes.

RESTORELIVE is a PC rollback software. It allows computer users regardless their skilllevels to easily and quickly fix their computer software problems. It can recover lost, corruptedfilesorrestoreacrashedsystemtotheworkingstatewithin secondswithout data lost. It is the ultimate computermaintenance programthat every user would ever needed

RESTORELIVE allows users to create a “snapshot” of the entire systemand data at a specific time, users can select a specific snapshot to recover files fromor restore the entire systemto. Both restoring system and taking snapshot only takes seconds to complete.

RESTORELIVE can only protect (support) one physical hard drive, disk0.

But RESTORELIVE is able to protect multiple partitions from the physical disk0, such as drive D, E etc

Any kind of PC software problems, as long as it's a software problem and as long as you have a good snapshot, you can always get back to it.

RESTORELIVE does not backup file, therefore it does not require a lot of space or extra devices to run. In addition, RESTORELIVE can recover files and system in seconds. RESTORELIVE can also recover the system when Windows OS fails. Backup software cannot do these.

No, RESTORELIVE is not designed to be the replacement of backup software. RESTORELIVE allows you to undo PC problems in seconds, which backup software cannot offer. But if you have data that you GOT to have, backup in multiple places is still a MUST.

Take snapshot will take a new snapshot of the current systems and data, it will add a new snapshot to the list of snapshots you have.

Baseline is the very first snapshot created during installation and is the foundation of other snapshots. Update baseline will consolidate all the existing snapshots and create a new baseline. After running update baseline, you will only have one snapshot that's the new baseline.

No, RESTORELIVE is a software product. It cannot fix problems caused by hardware failure.

No, RESTORELIVE is a pro-activate protection solution. Not a reactive recovery solution.

RESTORELIVE does not create system backup images. RESTORELIVE protects your system and data based on what it is. RESTORELIVE only takes seconds to take snapshot or restore system. RESTORELIVE does not require bootable CD or Floppy to recover system.

XP System Restore provides rollback for the Windows's system file and registry. RESTORELIVE provides rollback for the entire drive including Windows OS, third party applications and data. XP System Restore only works in Windows OS. RESTORELIVE stills works if Windows OS fails.

System Restore, a Windows XP feature, is similar to the "Last Known Good Configuration" in Windows NT and Windows 2000. You can use System Restore to restore the computer to a previous state, using the backups that it makes of selected system files and program files. Unlike the "Last Known Good Configuration" feature, System Restore maintains multiple restore points. This gives you the choice of restoring your computer to any number of previously saved states. Here are several reasons why installing RESTORELIVE disables Windows system restore:

1. RESTORELIVE is fully compatible with Windows System Restore, compatibility not the issue here. Windows Restore only protects Windows systems file and Windows registry. While RESTORELIVE protects everything on the hard drive including system files, data files, registry, programs and settings. Windows Restore only works when Windows works. If windows crashed, you cannot get to Windows Restore. RESTORELIVE works in and out Windows. You can still restore when windows has crashed. It is not necessary to enable System Restore if you have RESTORELIVE installed. RESTORELIVE can do whatever Windows Restore does and more, there is no need of Windows Restore after installing RESTORELIVE.

2. Windows Restore only restores Windows registry and Windows system file. There is a potential risk of restoring RESTORELIVE protected system with Windows Restore. RESTORELIVE has 3 main components, subsystem, Kernel mode drivers and user mode applications/registry settings. If using Windows restore to restore a PC back to the point of before installing RESTORELIVE, that will only remove the registry portion of RESTORELIVE, leaving other components still on the system. It could be problematic.

3. Having Windows Restore constantly backing up Windows system files in multiple RESTORELIVE snapshots will take some unnecessary extra disk space.

And finally you can still choose to re-enable Windows restore anytime after installing RESTORELIVE

Yes, you need to select Custom Setup and install RESTORELIVE in each OS. 

YES, RESTORELIVE is highly configurable. You can choose to hide the SubsystemConsole interface or the Windows application interface at your will. Go to RESTORELIVE Management Console, program settings to make the selections.

No, we don't recommend you to uninstall RESTORELIVE before defrag the drives. But RESTORELIVE has a build-in snapshot defragmenter, it's recommended you use snapshot defragmenter to defrag RESTORELIVE protected drives.

You can uninstall RESTORELIVE from

a) Control Panel/Add or Remove programs.

b) Start/Programs/RESTORELIVE/Uninstall

c) RESTORELIVE Subsystem Console by holding downthe HOME keyduring system start up cycle

RESTORELIVE allows you to have multiple snapshots, it's like to have many "faces" (snapshots) of the system. When you are removing RESTORELIVE, you need to select a "face" as the "final face". The snapshot you select will the final state of the computer after uninstalling RESTORELIVE. To return the computer to the state before you installed RESTORELIVE, select the Installation snapshot. To keep the current system and data as the final state, select the current snapshot. Or you can select any one of the snapshot in between to uninstall the system to. If you are having problem with the current system, do not choose current system as the uninstalling snapshot. The problems will be locked in the final state.

To setup RESTORELIVE on a computer, the computer must meet the following minimum hardware requirements:

IBM PC or 100% compatible computer

Pentium 3 or higher processor

64MB of memory

256 color VGA or higher video

CD ROM or DVD ROM if setup from CD

Microsoft Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows NT, Windows 200 or Windows XP already installed.

1GB of free disk space (Not required, but strongly recommended)

 RESTORELIVE supports Microsoft Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows NT 4.0 and Windows XP operating systems.

 RESTORELIVE supports FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS file systems.  However, NTFS file systemcompressionis not currently supported.

To setup or uninstall RESTORELIVE on Windows NT, Windows 2k or Windows XP, you need to log on to the computer as the Administrator or as a user with local Administrator permissions, and then perform the setup or uninstall. You must restart the computer after the setup or uninstall has completed. You must again log on as the Administrator or a user with local Administrator permissions for the setup or uninstall to complete successful.

No, you don't. But RESTORELIVE needs to write to the computer's MBR during setup. Some anti-virus software might have been set to scan for changes to MBR, it will prompt users to select YES or NO to the MBR change. Select YES to allow RESTORELIVE setup to write to MBR

When installing RESTORELIVE on a system that has an active antivirus program, you are prompted with a warning that a virus is attempting to infect your boot sector or master boot record (MBR). The setup process is interrupted. Because RESTORELIVE setup modifies the computer's MBR during setup, some antivirus programs mistake it for a boot sector virus. To avoid this, disable your antivirus software before installing RESTORELIVE, then re-enable it after the installation is completed or some anti virus software provides the option to go ahead modify the MBR. Select YES to continue

 Technically speaking, a snapshot is a map of the hard drive sectors and the map's indexing system. Practically speaking, a snapshot is a "picture" of the systemand data at a specific time.

Yes, you can create a "snapshot @ restart" schedule to take new snapshots during reboot.

Each snapshot is a "map of the occupied sectors on the hard drive", so there is no actual data backup in certain folders or files. The "maps" are stored on the hard drive within RESTORELIVE data structure area. It does not exist as files for security purpose, it only exists as sectors on the hard drive

It depends on how much data has been changed since last snapshot. Theoretically,RESTORELIVE only takes 0.07% total hard disk space to create all those snapshots.  That is the least amount of disk space required to protect the entire system comparing to any software ever been produced; however,each snapshot might contain different amount of user data; therefore each snapshot size might differ

To free disk space from snapshots, you must meet one condition: the files are not in any snapshots. The rule of thumb is that if a file is no where to be found, it shouldn’t take any disk space. But if it’s found in a snapshot, it will take disk space.

For example

1. You install RestoreLive, setup creates a baseline snapshot, and you have 5GB free space.

2. You install Microsoft Office 2003, it takes about 800MB. You have 4.2GB free space.

3. You take a snapshot "Office-snapshot"; the size of this snapshot is 800MB. You have about 4.2GB free space.

4. You uninstall Office 2003, it removes all the office files. (The free space is still 4.2GB, because the office files are in “office-snapshot”.If you restore to the “office-snapshot”, Office 2003 will be there; therefore, it’s on the hard drive).

5. You take a snapshot "no-office"; the space taken by this snapshot is almost nothing, because no data has been added since last snapshot. You have about 4.2GB free space.

6. You delete snapshot "office-snapshot". At this point, we only have Baseline snapshot which does not have Office 2003 and "no-office" snapshot which does not have Office 2003. So the 800MB space used by Office 2003 should be freed.

7. Run snapshot defragmenter. The free space should be about 5GB.

RESTORELIVE patent pending technology allows you preserve or transfer files and data in the current system to another snapshot during a restore process, and therefore prevent data lost during the process. You can select to create a snapshot of the current system before restore the system to a selected snapshot.

RESTORELIVE has a subsystem console which works below Windows OS. You can take snapshots and restore system from subsystem console. To access subsystem console, press HOME key when you see the RESTORELIVE flash screen during reboot.

1. Click "Recover files" option from RESTORELIVE management console. (If you want to recover a deleted file)

2. Right click a file and then select "Restore from snapshot" from the popup menu. (If you want to recover a different version of the file)

You can restore system with one of the four options:

1. Management Console in Windows.

2. Subsystem console below Windows

3. Command line switches

4. Scheduled tasks

Yes, you can go back and forth between snapshots.

Please contact support@hantechnology.com.sg for assistance with password related issues.