Hello,

 I have purchased a license for SPD and was wondering if a have to actually install it in order to use it if I will only ever backup/restore by booting from the recovery CD?

 
The backups appear to be OK (verified) and I can mount the image.

 
Thanks,
Dan
 

Under normal circumstances you can use SP strictly from the Recovery CD. HOWEVER there is one operation that does require SP to be installed. If you every want to restore an image to a completely different machine (a "bare metal" or Hardware Independent Restore), the image MUST contain Shadow Protect. In other words, you must install SP to your hard drive so that it will be a part of the image that you create. An HIR recovery cannot be performed if SP is not contained within the image.

 Ah, that makes sense. So, if I want to restore to a completely different machine, SPD must be installed within the image, but to restore to a replacement disk (of the same type), then not...correct?

Sounds like it is best to install and then make backups...

Can the service be disabled? The reason I ask is that this machine is a Digital Audio Workstation and I like to keep it as lean as possible.

Thanks,
Dan

"Can the service be disabled?"
I would assume that you can stop the service if you are going to do everything from the Recovery Environment. This shouldn't affect an HIR recovery, but I'm not really sure. Perhaps someone from SP can give us some information on that.

See this post for insructions on disabling (but not uninstalling) a ShadowProtect installation (and re-enabling it later):

http://forum.storagecraft.com/Community/forums/p/739/3393.aspx#3393