| FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS |
ShadowProtect™ is StorageCraft's backup and disaster recovery solution for Windows. It allows the users to schedule (or manually create) frequent, image-based backups of their local disks and store them on disk-based or network destinations. The backup images include all files, settings, programs and operating system files on the volume, and are an exact representation of the entire volume at the time the backup was created.
ShadowProtect uses Microsoft's VSS framework to create snapshots of local volumes in a way that is both quick, unobtrusive and does not require applications to be closed before the backup. ShadowProtect creates a clean and usable backup while programs are running, even enterprise applications such as SQL Server and Exchange.
More information about ShadowProtect Desktop Edition™, ShadowProtect Server Edition™, and ShadowProtect IT Edition™ can be found on their respective product pages.
ShadowSurfer™, ShadowUser™, and ShadowServer™ are applications that secure your system by protecting it from unwanted changes. When ShadowMode™ is turned on, a snapshot of your system is created. All changes to your system while in ShadowMode are written to the snapshot (including creation, deletion, or modification of files, and installation of programs or viruses) and can be manually or automatically committed to the actual disk, or reversed with a simple restart.
More information about ShadowSurfer, ShadowUser, and ShadowServer can be found on their respective product pages.
The 30-day trial of ShadowProtect is fully functional, but does not come with a recovery CD. Backup images created with the trial version do not expire and will be usable if the software is purchased later on.
The 30-day trial versions of all ShadowMode products are fully functional during the trial period.
If you need assistance with any of our products, please refer to the User Guide for your product, which is found on your product CD or in the Downloads section of our online Support Center. Answers to many common technical questions may also be found in our searchable support forums and knowledge base.
If you are unable to find the answer to your question, you may request help using the 'Request Help' form in the Support Center.
ShadowProtect may be purchased from our online Web store or from any of our reseller partners. If you originally purchased ShadowProtect from an authorized StorageCraft Value Added Reseller (VAR), you may wish to purchase any additional licenses through that reseller.
ShadowSurfer, ShadowUser, and ShadowServer may also be purchased through the StorageCraft Web store or through our reseller partners.
The latest prices (MSRP) for StorageCraft software are posted in the StorageCraft Web store. You may view them by going to the web store and selecting the appropriate category for the product in which you are interested.
We do occasionally run promotions, but presently there are no competitive-upgrade pricing options available.
ShadowProtect Desktop Edition and Server Edition are licensed per machine. If you wish to install and activate ShadowProtect on multiple machines, you will need to purchase additional licenses.
Currently we are not offering any license bundles for multiple home computers.
There are volume discounts available beginning with 10 licenses for ShadowProtect Desktop Edition and 5 licenses for ShadowProtect Server Edition. For more information about volume licensing, please contact the StorageCraft Sales department at sales@storagecraft.com.
Academic pricing is available through Academic & Collegiate Software, one of our reseller partners. Just search for 'ShadowProtect' on their Web site to find the software.
You will have the option during the purchase to request an StorageCraft product CD by mail (there is a shipping fee), or you may choose to download the software. The download comes in the form of a small installer to install the software in Windows, and a larger ISO file, which can be burned to CD to create the recovery CD.
The ShadowProtect Desktop Edition, ShadowProtect Server Edition, and ShadowProtect SBS Edition are currently identical in terms of features and functionality, though this may change over time. Right now the only difference is in the license that you purchase.
Each ShadowProtect version will only install on its respective operating system type. For example, ShadowProtect Desktop Edition will only install on desktop operating systems (such as Windows XP or Vista), and will not work on server operating systems (such as Windows Server 2003 or SBS).
At the present time, ShadowProtect Desktop Edition and ShadowProtect Server Edition are compatible with the following operating systems:
ShadowProtect Desktop Edition:If you have purchased ShadowProtect, you will find the User Guide on your product CD. If you are using the trial version, you may download the User Guide from the 'Downloads' section of our Support Center.
The recovery CD is a separate download. When you purchased the software, you should have had the opportunity to download an ISO file. If you purchased ShadowProtect from our Web store, but missed this download, you should be able to log back in to the Web store (using the email address and password you used during your purchase) and access the download.
The download starts by downloading a small executable file, which is a download manager. Simply run that executable to start the download. Once it is finished, extract the ISO file out of the .zip file and double-click it to burn the ISO to a blank CD using your CD burning software (such as Roxio or Nero).
The ISO file may be burned to CD to create the ShadowProtect Recovery CD. This can be done using most commercial CD-burning applications, such as Roxio, Nero, and many others. If you do not have a CD-burning application, there are free tools available on the Internet for burning ISO files to CD. In the burning process, the software will extract the necessary files from the ISO image file and place them on the CD.
Once the CD is burned, you should be able to boot to it or, if you insert it into a running Windows machine, it should open the install page for ShadowProtect. You may also browse to the CD in Windows Explorer and see that multiple files are on the disc. If you do not see this, it is possible that the CD was not burned properly. For example, you might have ended up with a CD containing a copy of the ISO file (which, of course, would not work). In this case you may need to refer to your CD-burning software's documentation to get help with burning the ISO to CD correctly, or to verify that the software is capable of dealing with ISO files.
To manually activate ShadowProtect, fill in the necessary information on our manual activation form and submit it. Note that the Machine ID required in the form may be found on the Product Activation dialog in ShadowProtect. After submitting the online form, you will soon receive an email with the activation key you need.
To move a ShadowProtect license from one machine to another, you will first need to deactivate the license on the machine where it is currently installed. To do this, go to the Help menu in ShadowProtect, select Product Activation, and click the Deactivate button. After deactivating, you should then be able to activate on a different system.
Note that the number of allowed deactivations per license is limited. For testing purposes, we recommend using the free 30-day trial period rather than moving a license from machine to machine.
The most common reason for blue screens during ShadowProtect backups is the presence of Acronis TrueImage. Certain versions of their snapshot driver cause the crashes when our backups are run. The only work-around is to uninstall TrueImage.
If, after uninstalling TrueImage, the blue screens still occur, the snapshot driver may have been left behind and will need to be removed manually. Instructions for doing this may be found here.
A bare-metal restore is a restore of your entire system to new or existing hardware. To restore a system volume, you will need to do so from the ShadowProtect Recovery Environment (boot to the recovery CD). Note that it may be necessary to press a key during boot to tell the system to boot to the CD or to bring up a boot menu that allows you to select the CD-ROM drive as the boot device. You may also need to change the boot priority in your system's BIOS settings so that it will check for a bootable CD before booting to the hard disk. Refer to your computer's documentation for more information.
Once you are in the recovery environment, there are a few things you'll want to do before you begin:
Once everything is ready, step through the Restore wizard. Choose the image file you want to restore, and the partition (or unallocated space) to which you want to restore. In most cases, when restoring a system image, it is okay to restore the MBR, disk signature, and hidden disk track. (If you were using a full disk encryption product on the machine the image was created from, or to learn more about what these options mean, search for them on the StorageCraft Support Forum.) Also, check the HIR (hardware independent restore) box if you are restoring to a different machine than the one from which the image came.
Restoring to a virtual machine is much the same as performing a bare-metal restore as described in the previous question. Simply create a new virtual machine, making sure it has an adequately sized virtual hard disk and access to the host machine's CD-ROM drive and network. Then boot to the ShadowProtect recovery CD inside the virtual machine.
Follow the steps for a bare-metal restore (including HIR), then reboot the virtual machine and it should load Windows. Depending on which virtual environment you are using, you may not have the ability to restore the image from an attached USB drive (as not all virtual environments support USB devices), so you may need to restore the image from a shared network folder on the host or another machine.
With VMWare version 6 and higher, there is the additional option of converting a ShadowProtect image directly into a virtual machine by selecting Import from the File menu (in VMWare), and stepping through the conversion wizard. Note: For this to work, the ShadowProtect image you are converting needs to be in a separate folder with no other files.
ImageManager is a utility specifically for use with the Continuous Incremental backup schedule. It monitors the folder where your backups are stored and, according to the schedule you specify, collapses regular incremental backups into daily, weekly, and monthly backup files. This helps to minimize the number of backup files on the destination and the amount of space used for storing them. It also ensures that all backups except for the initial full backup will be comparatively small in size, which can be useful in situations where backups are being sent off site.
Use of the Continuous Incremental schedule and ImageManager is not recommended for most home and desktop users. If you are using a Weekly or Monthly backup schedule, you do not need to install or use ImageManager.
To update to a new version, simply visit the StorageCraft home page, download the latest 30-day free trial, and run the installer. It should carry over your existing license, activation, and settings. Note that if you did not purchase the annual maintenance agreement along with ShadowProtect, or if your maintenance agreement is expired, you may not be able to activate the new version with your current serial number.
To purchase an upgrade to the new version, or to renew a maintenance agreement, please contact our Sales department.
While ShadowProtect Desktop Edition and ShadowProtect Server Edition install on a single machine and run regularly scheduled backups, ShadowProtect IT Edition does not install any software. Instead, it runs directly from the CD, allowing the user to create instant, on-the-fly backup images of any system at any time.
ShadowProtect IT Edition is licensed to a technician as an annual subscription and allows the technician to backup and restore any number of machines to new or existing hardware. ShadowProtect Desktop Edition and ShadowProtect Server Edition, on the other hand, are licensed to protect a particular machine, and require that ShadowProtect be installed and activated on that machine before backups can be restored.
ShadowProtect IT Edition CD expires every three months, at which point a new CD may be downloaded.
Compatible operating systems include:
ShadowProtect IT Edition expires quarterly both to ensure that all ShadowProtect IT Edition subscriptions are current, and also to allow us make sure our subscribers get regular updates of the software.
Near the end of each quarter, the ShadowProtect IT Edition disc will begin notifying the user that it is about to expire. There is a 20-day grace period after the expiration date, during which time the software should continue to work (even though it says it is expired). This allows us some flexibility in releasing the new quarter's disc, since we are often working to include new features, drivers, and bug fixes.
When the new ShadowProtect IT Edition build is ready, subscribers will be notified by email along with instructions for downloading the new quarter's ISO file. The ISO file can then be burned to CD to create the new ShadowProtect IT Edition disc.
ShadowSurfer is a basic security solution for desktops and laptops that provides the ability to place the system in ShadowMode. When in ShadowMode, all changes to the system are temporary, and will be reversed when the system is restarted.
ShadowUser and ShadowServer are essentially the same, but are meant for desktop and server operating systems respectively, and include additional features and settings. With these two products, users may manually or automatically commit (or make permanent) specific changes made while in ShadowMode, or exclude certain files, folders, or volumes entirely from the effects of ShadowMode. Also included are settings for scheduling ShadowMode sessions, changing the ShadowMode wallpaper, viewing reports, and many others.
Our ShadowMode products are compatible with the following 32-bit operating systems:
ShadowSurfer and ShadowUser: