The Internet Suspend-Resume (ISR) project

Source
About Pocket ISR
Pocket ISR lets you convert any borrowed PC into an ISR client in less than a minute, with no advance planning and without installing any software. All you have to do is boot Pocket ISR, resume your parcel, work or play, check in your parcel, and leave. Once you're done, Pocket ISR leaves no trace behind.
Pocket ISR is a live Linux distribution that can easily be installed to a USB flash drive or burned to a CD. Use it to boot any modern PC, and a fully-featured ISR client and virtual machine monitor are available at your fingertips.
Pocket ISR includes the following major features:

• Pocket ISR can be installed on any USB flash drive with at least 350 MB free, without disturbing existing data on the drive. Installation is automated and can be performed from a Linux or Windows system. The remaining space on the USB key is available for other uses.
• Pocket ISR performs well even with low-cost USB flash devices. Parcel data is stored not on the flash drive, but in free space borrowed from the computer's internal hard disk. Space can be borrowed from Linux swap partitions and NTFS, ext2, ext3, and ext4 filesystems, including volumes stored in Linux RAID or LVM. Existing data and metadata stored on these volumes is never altered. All parcel data in transient storage is encrypted for security.
• If you have a high-performance USB device such as a hard disk or SSD, Pocket ISR can store parcel data directly on the device rather than in transient storage.
• Pocket ISR will notify you at startup if a newer version is available, and can automatically update itself to the latest version.
• Pocket ISR includes the VirtualBox and KVM virtual machine monitors.

More information about Pocket ISR is available here.

GPG key

Obtaining Pocket ISR

Setting up Pocket ISR

• Creating a bootable USB key from Linux
• Creating a bootable USB key from Windows
• Creating a bootable CD from any operating system
• Getting it to work with older BIOSes
• Creating a bootable USB device with persistent storage
• Upgrading Pocket ISR

Using Pocket ISR

Using Pocket ISR

Follow these steps:

1. Plug in the USB key and boot from it. This may require pressing a key at the BIOS boot screen and requesting that the system boot from a USB device. To ensure sufficient performance, make sure you plug into a USB 2.0 port; USB hubs on some monitors and keyboards have only a slower USB 1.1 port.
2. A Pocket ISR boot menu will appear. Choose "Boot" to boot Pocket ISR using transient parcel storage on the internal hard disk. Choose "Boot using persistent parcel storage" if you created a boot device with persistent storage and want to use persistent mode.
3. Wait for the desktop to appear. Unless you chose to boot using persistent storage, you can now unplug the USB key.
4. Click the Terminal icon on the toolbar to launch a terminal. You can now use ISR in the usual manner.
5. If you are using transient parcel storage, be sure to check in your parcels once you have finished your ISR session. Once you shut down Pocket ISR, any data still in transient parcel storage will be lost and cannot be recovered.
6. Click the Logout button on the toolbar, then click Shutdown in the resulting dialog box to shut down the system

Development repository

The current release of Pocket ISR is version 0.10.1-1, 
available via HTTP or BitTorrent (312 MB). 
The GPG signature is available here. 

Inmediate System Recovery

FirstDefense-ISR is an Instant System Recovery solution that has been designed for enterprise and mid-range servers and mission critical workstations, running Windows 2000, XP, and Server 2003 operating systems. FirstDefense-ISR functions transparently and allows administrators to quickly restore their systems to any complete predefined configuration. No special hardware is required. Furthermore, you do not require special CMOS, or additional disk partitions to be created. FirstDefense-ISR works on single or multi-partitioned systems, fully supporting RAID 0, 0+1, 5, and/or in clustering environments. FirstDefense-ISR performs full-system backups for the purpose of immediate system recovery. The concept was developed as a result of years of listening to IT professionals concerned about having to deal with non-recoverable Windows blue screens, service pack installs going awry, and critical files becoming corrupted. These occurrences render the system unbootable and data is inaccessible until the problem is repaired. FirstDefense-ISR periodically (and transparently) takes snapshots of the current state of the userOCOs system and applications software. It has the capability of storing up to ten point-in-time snapshots. Following a system crash, the user can immediately fall back to the most recent and uncorrupted snapshot. This reduces the MTTR to virtually zero and enables users and IT staff to instantly repair system crashes without the loss of productivity that results from extensive downtime. Ability to create and maintain up to 10 point-in-time system snapshots. Each snapshot is bootable with no rebuild required. Differential (changed files only) copy engine for fast snapshot updates. Data Anchoring feature makes data files available to any snapshot that is booted. Ability to create a compressed snapshot using NTFS file compression for a significantly smaller snapshot. Ability to archive snapshots to another device.

Compare and Contrast: Rollback Rx Pro vs. FirstDefense ISR
horizondatasys.com/ downloads 
Forum
FD-ISR and Windows 7 ( 1 2 3 4)
XPMode
XP Mode is that it's just a Virtual Machine like VMWare Workstation. Therefore a seperate running OS.
FD ISR will install with no added tweaks needed just like a real machine with XP installed. 
Well done. You do need to download that little boot fixer file, but that should be it. 
Only works with Windows 7 Ultimate,Enterprise and Professional:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/w...indows-xp-mode
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/rev...ws-xp-mode.ars

How are you using FirstDefense-ISR?
High Availability/Disaster Recovery		65	71.43%
Software Development		10	10.99%
Beta Testing/Sandbox		45	49.45%
Optimized Build for Gaming		15	16.48%
Optimized Build for CAD, Video Editing, etc.		7	7.69%
Multiple Builds for Multiple Users		8	8.79%
Multiple Builds for Multiple OS's		10	10.99%
Other (please post)		7	7.69%

Combine FDISR with Image for DOS/Windows and even a caveman can be trusted with your computer.
I am using it for High Availability/Recovery and in combination with Image for Windows/DOS the two make me feel invulnerable.
I hear a lot of people in this forum talking about Acronis. Personally I have no experience with their software, have not even seen a screenshot. However, I have have a bad experience with the latest Ghost product. To the best of my knowledge Ghost and Acronis have one thing in common. They both operate within windows and try to take a still shot of a moving image. I like Image for Windows/DOS because you can take an image from within DOS and this allows you to get a still shot and in my opinion a more reliable image. Is it safe a idiot proof?
With FD there is never any need to reinstall XP
just keep a freshly installed XP snapshot somewhere.
There are even instructions at the Raxco website on how to do a clean install of XP on an already "polluted" system.
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Which FirstDefense-ISR you are using?
FirstDefense-ISR PC RESCUE or FirstDefense-ISR ?
There is a huge difference between both.
If you are using FDISR PC RESCUE and you want to boot in the Rescue Snapshot
1. Click on "Actions"
2. Click on "Boot to Rescue Area" and you will boot in the Rescue Snapshot
OR
Press the F1-key during reboot in the Pre-boot screen.
FDISR PC RESCUE has only two snapshots Active and Rescue.
The Active is your work snapshot for daily use.
The Rescue is for saving the Active, if the Active is in trouble.
The icon in the system tray will tell you in which snapshot you are.
These are the manuals of FDISR PC RESCUE
http://www.horizondatasys.com/323511.ihtml
In FirstDefense PC Rescue you don't have archives, you only have two snapshots : Active and Rescue.
You have to keep your Rescue healthy and malware-free with your security softwares. Each time when your Active is in trouble, you can save it with your Rescue by using the F1 key (Pre-boot) and copy/update from Rescue to Active.
In a normal situation you copy/update from Active to Rescue to keep your Rescue up-to-date every day, but run your scanners first.
You can also test new softwares in Active, if you want to get rid of them, boot to Rescue and copy/update from Rescue to Active and boot back in Active and the tested softwares will be gone completely as nothing happened.
Read also about "anchoring", you can reduce the size of your Active and Rescue this way.
I hope this helps.
PS: the terminated FirstDefense-ISR was more complicated, but FDISR PC Rescue is quite simple and very practical once you understand how it works.

FirstDefense-ISR 3.20.202 Download