I'd like to try ShadowProtect Desktop, but I don't see how I possibly can...

I currently use True Image 11 to image my system partition. I understand I have to uninstall TI in order to use SP Desktop. However, the trial edition of SP Desktop doesn't restore a system partition (the StorageCraft Recovery Environment is not made available with the Trial Version). To me, it's risky to be unable to restore my system partition for as long as 30 days.

Yes, it's true that I can register Desktop during those 30 days and the images I created using the Trial Version can be restored using the Full Version, but that means I have to buy the full version...some 'trial'. And if I need to restore my system partition because my computer can't boot I have to call Storagecraft, convince them I'm legitimate and obtain the full version in some way...meanwhile I have a non-functioning computer. Sorry, I just can't work that way.

There is also some mention in this forum about needing to remove Acronis Disk Director in order to use ShadowProtect Desktop. I don't know if this is a fact, but if it's true, I'm not going back to Partition Magic or some other product just for ShadowProtect Desktop.

It's my understanding that the Evaluation Version will restore a system partition during that trial.

It's a downloadable .iso image that needs to be requested to be downloaded and burned to disk, and then booted to.

http://www.storagecraft.com/products/ShadowProtectDesktop/Desktopedevalrequest.asp

The Evaluation Version download page has this notice:

"Please note, this is an Enterprise product. This product is not intended for home computing."

I'd rather not have a technical support rep tell me "you know, this product wasn't intended for users like you."

Can you confirm whether or not I need to uninstall Acronis Disk Director to run SP Desktop? 

While it's true that we focus primarily on the Enterprise market, our Desktop product is good enough for home users that it just received PC Magazine's Editors' Choice award.  It's not for the computer illiterate, but if you're comfortable with the technology then you shouldn't have any problems using it.

If the Acronis' snapman.sys driver (usually found in the Windows\System32\drivers directory) is installed on your system then you will experience blue screens when you backup using ShadowProtect.  It's possible that some of Acronis' products may install snapman.sys even if they don't use it, and if Disk Director is one such app then you very likely disable snapman.sys and continue to use Disk Director (for non backup-related tasks).
 
To manually uninstall snapman.sys (as the True Image uninstaller often does not remove this driver, which will cause a BSOD if it is installed alongside ShadowProtect), follow these steps (in this order):

1. As an administrator, run regedit.exe and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E967-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}. Remove the snapman entry from the "UpperFilters" values.  This will unregister the snapman.sys driver as a PnP filter for disk devices.

2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{71A27CDD-812A-11D0-BEC7-08002BE2092F}. Remove the snapman entry from the "UpperFilters" values.  This will unregister the snapman.sys driver as a PnP filter for logical volume devices.

3. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\snapman and add a REG_DWORD value named DeleteFlag with a value 1 inside this snapman key.  Next, change the Start REG_DWORD value inside the snapman key to 4 (disabled).

4. Reboot

5. After the reboot, snapman.sys will not be loaded, and its service key will be gone.  You can now delete the snapman.sys file (may be located in windows\system32\drivers directory, or in an Acronis install directory) if you wish to do so.

Alright, here's what I'll do:

    [1- Image my system partition.]

    2- Remove both True Image and Disk Director.

    3- Remove the snapman driver as above.

    4- Reinstall Disk Director.

If reinstalling Disk Director also reinstalls snapman.sys then I'll thank you for your time and stick with my Acronis products. It's not like I'm miserable with True Image. If reinstalling Disk Director does not reinstall snapman.sys, I'll install the Evaluation Version of SP Desktop and give it a try.

Bulldog:

It's not like I'm miserable with True Image.

Then I suggest that you stick with True Image.  Yeah, I know, everyone says ShadowProtect is better, and of course, being the utterly unbiased person that I am, I'd have to agree...   But if True Image is working for you, why mess with that.  Switching will just cost you time and money.

Nate,

Disk Director does indeed depend on snapman. I had previously uninstalled ATI 10 from my desktop machine, prior to installing ShadowProtect. While this uninstall did not remove all references to snapman, the True Image related services were removed. I've been able to create and verify ShadowProtect images both from within the Windows Vista environment and from the WinPE environment, even though the snapman.sys file was still present within the c:\Windows\System32 folder and even though the registry still had references to snapman.

On then reading this thread (and others), I decided to remove the references to snapman as indicated in your post:
1. As an administrator, run regedit.exe and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E967-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}. Remove the snapman entry from the "UpperFilters" values.  This will unregister the snapman.sys driver as a PnP filter for disk devices.

2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{71A27CDD-812A-11D0-BEC7-08002BE2092F}. Remove the snapman entry from the "UpperFilters" values.  This will unregister the snapman.sys driver as a PnP filter for logical volume devices.

Following a reboot, the Acronis Disk Director Suite generated a "cannot find any disk drives" error message. Replacing the two snapman registry entries resolved this problem.

I assume from this experience then, that as long as any of the True Image services or processes are NOT running, ShadowProtect will function properly, whether or not snapman.sys remains on the system.

I'd be interested to know if any others have had a similar experience.

Thank you for sharing your experience, Nate. I obtained the evaluation version of ShadowProtect Desktop, and will try my luck over the next few days. I'll post back with my own experience.

John:

Nate,

Disk Director does indeed depend on snapman. I had previously uninstalled ATI 10 from my desktop machine, prior to installing ShadowProtect. While this uninstall did not remove all references to snapman, the True Image related services were removed. I've been able to create and verify ShadowProtect images both from within the Windows Vista environment and from the WinPE environment, even though the snapman.sys file was still present within the c:\Windows\System32 folder and even though the registry still had references to snapman.

On then reading this thread (and others), I decided to remove the references to snapman as indicated in your post:
1. As an administrator, run regedit.exe and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E967-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}. Remove the snapman entry from the "UpperFilters" values.  This will unregister the snapman.sys driver as a PnP filter for disk devices.

2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{71A27CDD-812A-11D0-BEC7-08002BE2092F}. Remove the snapman entry from the "UpperFilters" values.  This will unregister the snapman.sys driver as a PnP filter for logical volume devices.

Following a reboot, the Acronis Disk Director Suite generated a "cannot find any disk drives" error message. Replacing the two snapman registry entries resolved this problem.

I assume from this experience then, that as long as any of the True Image services or processes are NOT running, ShadowProtect will function properly, whether or not snapman.sys remains on the system.

I'd be interested to know if any others have had a similar experience.

That makes sense.  You could probably keep snapman.sys on your system (together with ShadowProtect) as long as you cripple snapman.sys so that it no longer participates in the storage stacks for disk and volume class devices.  In other words, I think things would work (well, Acronis' stuff would be somewhat crippled) if you left snapman.sys on the system, and left its service registry key along, but only deleted the string "snapman" from the UpperFilters values in the disk and volume class keys.
 

John: Sorry to confuse you with Nate. I mean, Nate's a great guy and all that, but you're John and he's Nate and...I better stop before I make more of a fool of myself.

I'm in the exact same position as Bulldog. I have already paid for ShadowProtect Desktop and uninstalled TrueImage, but I do not want to give up DiskDirector.  Unfortunately, I have found the same thing as John did, DD won't work with the Snapman removed from the Upper Filters.  The only way I can see to keep both DD and SPD on the same system is to replace the Snapman Upper Filter entries and reboot when I want to run DD, then reverse the process to run SPD.  Is there no way you can get SPD and DD to coexist peacefully on the same system?

If this was a bug in our driver, stcvsm.sys, then we would already have fixed it.  Believe me, it's very annoying.  Unfortunately the source of this issue is snapman.sys, and we have no control over their driver. 

Ned,
As I indicated above, I do have both SP and DD installed and working correctly. When I removed the snapman registry entries, DD failed and so I simply reinserted them. I've found that the uninstall (via add/remove programs) of TI was all that was required. This, along with removing the program itself, removed any Acronis TI services. I did try to clean up some of the remaining TI entries in the registry, but in one instance my machine blue-screened and in the other, DD failed.

On my machine at least then, Disk Director and ShadowProtect co-exist peacefully without the removal of the snapman references and without the removal of the snapman.sys file. I've successfully created and verified images both from within Windows and from the WinPE CD.

John, 

Thanks for the additional info.  It wasn't clear to me that SPD still worked after restoring the Snapman Upper Filters entries.  I'll do that.

Thanks. 

Well folks, I gave it a try and here's what happened:

I uninstalled Acronis True Image 11 Home (build 8027) from "Add or Remove Programs" and left Acronis Disk Director Suite 10 (build 2160) untouched. Didn't do anything more than that. No registry editing; snapman.sys still installed. I then installed the Eval version of ShadowProtect Desktop 3.1.

After familiarizing myself with the program, I made my first image (of my system partition). No blue screen, everything seemed to be fine. I next booted from the Recovery Environment (i.e., the CD) and restored the image I had just made. Once again: No blue screen, no problems.

Disk Director opens just fine. I haven't done any disk operations with it since installing SP Desktop, but I will in time.

Things seem to be looking good. On with the evaluation...