Introduction
One of the worst fears of novice computer users is the potential damage to their computer system by making some sort of mistake such as deleting the wrong file or changing a setting. Coincidentally enough, system administrators who are quite computer savvy and oversee many workstations often have the same fears of users crippling machines, ultimately resulting in costly downtime. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a way to keep a machine in the same state no matter what the user did? This certainly would be a plus for the user who is new computers and worried about making mistakes or having the computer be infected with viruses and/or spyware. System administrators and IT managers that oversee a large pool of computers would not have to deal with constantly reinstalling individual workstations if one becomes inoperable due to user errors.
The problems just described have been taken up by the computer industry and a wide variety of solutions have been developed ranging from simple software solutions that essentially “freeze” the system in a certain state, to more advanced hardware devices that also protect a machine by not allowing permanent changes to be made. In either case, if changes are made, a simple reboot usually resets the machine to its previous state, thereby undoing the user made changes. These type protection mechanisms are not only marketed to individual users but also to major organizations, businesses, and educational institutions where they can save an IT department a great deal of time and headache.
For today’s review, I will be looking at a system protection device called the Armor Card, marketed by JacskonArmor.com. This card not only allows for protection and recovery of data that’s located on the harddrive, but also offers additional security by being able to recover BIOS/CMOS settings. In this review I’ll walk through the installation process of the card and also do some testing of its recovery/restore features. How does the Armor card fare, and does it live up to its claim? Read on to find out.
Package Contents and First Impressions
After receiving the Armor card package, I was immediately impressed with the compactness of its contents. The card itself and corresponding installation material arrived in a box no bigger than a DVD case, which is impressive. Inside the DVD case is the expansion card itself, a sheet with installation instructions and an installation cdrom.
Upon closer examination it turns out that the Armor card is uses the PCI expansion bus and is really quite tiny when compared to other peripheral cards such as sound cards, network cards, etc.
The card itself has a pretty simple layout with its one distinguishing feature being a Flash ROM chip in the upper left corner. Before going any further though, many of you are probably wondering at this point, how exactly does the Armor card protect data that’s on the harddrive? The card essentially takes a “snapshot” of all data that is protected and then stores that data as an image across unused sectors of the harddrive. This allows for the image to be restored instantly should detrimental changes occur on the machine. All this sounds like a great way to protect data, but how easy is all this to install and configure? Read more to find out.
Installation
As previously mentioned, the instructions for installing the card are outlined on a one page sheet that comes included with the Armor Card. Before doing any physical installation, the user is encouraged to defragment the harddrive, update windows, spyware and virus software, and also remove any temporary files. The reason for this is so that a good, clean image can be used recovery once the card is installed. Once these initial steps have been performed, the card is installed into a free PCI expansion slot. Next, the PC is started back up and chosen to boot off network/LAN in the BIOS. This configuration change results in the Armor card installation menu to pop up before booting the OS.
Initially the Armor card setup is skipped so that the drivers for the card can be installed in Windows (of which just about all flavors are supported including Windows 98 and NT). Once in Windows the included cdrom is inserted and drivers are installed. Besides the drivers themselves, the installation cdrom also includes a manual in PDF format, as well as other useful utilities such as software for recovering machines over network, which is possible with a separate network version of the Jackson Armor card.
Once the OS install is complete, the machine is rebooted again and the Armor card installation menu seen previously reappears. This time the Quick Installation option is selected and few seconds later the card is installed. The machine reboots again and on the first boot into the OS after the install the system beeps a couple times to signify that things are working (if continues beeps are heard on each reboot, there is a hardware conflict and the Armor card is not working properly). Now on each subsequent reboot, the Armor card menu screen pops up before the OS is being booted presenting several hot key options.
The hot key functions are basically as follows:
enter – This just puts the card in protected mode and is the default. In protected mode changes the user makes will only stick until the system is recovered/restored (by default on every reboot).
crtl+w - Enables open mode and disables protection on the harddrive allowing changes to be made. This is useful in case certain system updates would need to be installed.
crtl+r – This combination allows for a manual recover/restore of the system should it have been corrupted.
crtl+s – If changes are made during open mode that need to stick, this option allows them to be saved and show up in subsequent restores/recovers.
home – This enters the setup of the Armor card where more detailed configuration changes can be made.
The advanced setup allows configuration of what partitions on the harddrive to protect, as well as setting up details on the recovery mode (i.e. when the system should be recovered, daily at X:XX, or on every reboot, etc.). The password can also be changed here and options regarding CMOS protection are represented. If the network version of the card was purchased another menu presents configuration options for the network restore operations. And finally, the card can also be uninstalled in the advanced configuration options.
Installation and configuration proved to be fast and painless on a older Windows 2000 SP4 system I had sitting around. After doing all the initial preparation, the card was installed and functioning only minutes later. At this point I was very curious how well the card worked and went off to drive to cause some damage to the Windows 2000 machine.
Testing
Initially I tried only simple things, such as deleting a file from the desktop or another common place. Sure enough, each time I rebooted the machine, the file was restored and the system looked and act just the same before the file was deleted. I turned on open mode and sure enough the file was gone for good the next time I rebooted. After using open mode the system goes back into protected mode by default next time it is rebooted (this can be changed via configuration options though) None of these files were mission critical however, it was now time cause some real damage. Making sure protected mode was turn on, I went and navigated into the system32 folder and started looking at what to delete. I scrolled down and started deleting of what I believed were variety of critical system files needed for booting the OS, such as ntoskrnl.exe. Windows started warning me at this point about files being replaced, but I went ahead and ignored the warning and rebooted. Thankfully, once again, windows booted right up with no trouble whatsoever. As the matter of fact there was virtually no lag noticeable at all as the image was restored from the harddrive so that the OS could boot. It is really quite impressive.
Final Thoughts and Conclusion
Before reaching a conclusion, let’s look at some of the pro’s and cons of the Armor Card:
Pros:
- fast and easy installation
- fast recovery/restoration time
- very configurable and plenty of advanced options
- CMOS settings restore
- optional network restore with network armor card
Cons:
- price
I must say I was very impressed with the Armor card. The high amount of configuration options and fast recover/restore time make this a very appealing product not only for individual computers, but also major organizations managing hundreds of workstations at a time. The pricetag of ~ 80 dollars is a little on the steep side, but for some no price can be too high to have protected computer. All in all, I recommend the Armor card to anyone who is looking for an easy, no hassle way to protecting their machines(s) against today’s ever increasing computer threats.
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