Reviewed by Barry Little - May 23, 2007

Manufacturer: Eksitdata

Model: HD-PRO

Price: 37,50 Euros ($50.74 U.S.) at Eksitdata.com

Whether you share your computer at home with multiple users or own a business, you’ve probably spent more than your fair share of time and money fighting problems caused by viruses, spyware, unauthorized downloads and bad software installations. Wouldn’t it be great if you could recover from these problems simply by restarting your PC? Impossible? Not if you install the HD Guard Pro from Eksitdata.com!

You’ve probably heard it a thousand times: regular backups are the best defense against computer problems. And it’s true. There’s no substitute for having a reliable backup when recovering your system from a major disaster, like a hard drive failure or a Windows installation that has become corrupted to the point of no return. Or if important data has been deleted or overwritten and can’t be retrieved. The hardest part of any backup is waiting for it to restore your system. That’s why Eksitdata came up with the HD Guard Pro, which allows you to automatically roll back you PC to its last good working state, simply by rebooting it. You don’t have to load any recovery media or run any backup programs. Just restart the PC, and any damage done by viruses, malware, or user error—gone! We’ll see just how well this works in practice later on, but first some background on the company from Sweden responsible for the HD Guard Pro:

About Eksitdata

Eksitdata is a Varberg based company that was founded in 1997. Our customers vary from private customers to government departments. We sell our products exclusively on the Internet therefore we can offer low prices and administration fees. The products on our website are a selection of our products. We are retailers for the biggest computer companies.

Your questions are welcome and we will answer you as fast as possible!

Packaging

The HD Guard Pro arrived in a box packed with pre-cut foam dividers rather than bubble wrap or foam packing peanuts, to protect its contents. Considering the size of the product and how delicate it is, it’s good that Eksitdata took this extra step to protect the HD Guard Pro from the hazards of transit via International Mail. The product itself is in a slim, blue box designed to hang from a display rack in a store, with a photo of the product on the front, and a list of its features on the back, in English.

Inside, you’ll the HD Guard Pro sealed in an anti-static bag, a Mini-CD disc that contains drivers and software for remote/network use, and a user’s guide in Microsoft Word format. There’s also a “quick install” sheet.

The HD Guard Pro

HD Guard Pro is a recovery card that creates what Eksitdata refers to as a “virtual mirror” image of your PC’s hard drive partitions, which is stored in the chip. Upon initialization, the card creates the image. Whenever you reboot your PC, it automatically restores that image back to the hard drive. With the HD Guard Pro, a menu is displayed whenever you boot the system that allows you to configure how often the card creates the virtual mirror image (the previous image is always overwritten), and when to restore it to your hard drive. Images and restores can also be performed manually, rather than automatically based on the settings specified by the user. For security, password protection can be enabled on the HD Guard Pro to prevent its settings from being tampered with. It can even protect the CMOS of your PC from incorrect settings that can prevent it from booting into Windows.

Compared to most expansion cards and when you consider its capabilities, the HD Guard Pro’s design is deceptively simple. The card has a single, socket-mounted EPROM (Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory) chip with an HD Guard Pro sticker. A protective rubber “dome” is glued to what is probably an additional support chip, next to the main EPROM. Turn the HD Guard Pro over, and you’ll see an arrow with “PC’s Rear” silk-screened on the circuit board—leaving no doubt how to orient the card when plugging it into the motherboard, even though the card is keyed and can only fit in one way.

Installation

If your CD or DVD-ROM drive has a slot-mounted mechanism rather than the more common tray mounted one that can accommodate both standard and mini-sized media, you’ll need access to a laptop or PC that has a tray-mounted drive so you can copy the contents of the Mini-CD included with the HD Guard Pro, to a USB Flash Drive. Or you can download what you need here:

HD Guard Pro Manual

 

HD Guard Pro Drivers (Windows NT/2000/XP)

The minimum system requirements in the User Manual for installing the HD Guard Pro are:

–         CPU: 386 or above

–         Memory: 8MB or above

–         Hard Disk: IDE, EIDE, SATA and SCSI

–         One available PCI slot on the motherboard

I’d say those specs cover most of the PCs out here today. For this review, I’ll be using the following test-bed for the HD Guard Pro:

Since CMOS settings vary from one motherboard to the next, you’ll need the manual that came with your motherboard for the first step. If you can’t find it, most motherboard manufacturers have copies of manuals for their products in Adobe Reader .PDF format on their web site.

Before you get started, I recommend that you print out the 27-page User’s Manual for the HD Guard Pro and look it over, or at the least have it handy to refer to. You’ll need to go into your CMOS (or BIOS as it is often called), and find the setting called Boot from LAN First or one similar to it, and enable it. No doubt it will be phrased a little differently for your particular motherboard. You may also have to enable your Onboard LAN Boot Prom before you can activate the setting elsewhere. For example, on the ASUS A8N-SLI Premium motherboard, go to AdvancedàOnboard Device Configuration and then enable the Onboard LAN Boot ROM for whichever LAN adapter you have enabled. Then, go to BootàBoot Device Priority and select Legacy LAN as the first boot device; save your settings and exit.

Also, check to see if there is anything in your CMOS for Virus Warnings and Hard Disk Recovery. If these particular settings are enabled, then disable them.

Next, if you are running Windows NT, Windows 2000, or Windows XP you will need to run Windows Driver 606.exe from the CD supplied with the card, or the .ZIP file that you downloaded and extracted from the link above. Either way, you’ll find the file in the Hd Guard Pro English folder (A Swedish version is also included). If you have DOS, Windows 3.1/95/98/ME installed, then you can skip this part. The drivers take less than 15-20 seconds to install (mouse-clicks included). Just accept the defaults as they’re presented. When you’re finished, you can either reboot your PC or have it automatically shut down to install the HD Guard Pro. I chose the second option because it saves time and is more convenient.

Now we’re ready to pop in the card. Turn your system off and unplug it. Find a vacant PCI slot and insert the HD Guard Pro. Make sure it’s snug in the slot, as the card does not have a mounting bracket to secure it like other expansion cards. Then plug your PC in and power it on.

You should see a number “1” followed by a series of dots somewhere among the usual POST (Power-on Self Test) messages that display on your screen during boot-up. That’s the HD Guard Pro being initialized. The menu should appear shortly after. If you get a message on the screen that says “Run Syschk /NR,” don’t panic. Hit <Enter> or <Esc> and go into Windows. Then run WinClear.exe from the CD or your download. Reboot and you should see the menu. If not, or if your system starts beeping, power it off, unplug it, and make sure the HD Guard Pro is seated properly. Also try it in a different PCI slot, and refer to the manual’s trouble-shooting tips, particular the ones to follow if you have an AMI BIOS.

Using the HD Guard Pro

The HD Guard Pro’s menu appears before you boot into Windows. When it loads for the first time, it runs in Installation Mode. If you press <Enter> three times, you will automatically set up the HD Guard Pro to its default settings. It will immediately create a virtual image of all the partitions on every hard drive installed on your PC before loading Windows. Depending on the overall speed of your system—particularly the hard drives—and the size and number of disk partitions, this could take anywhere from 15 seconds to a full minute. HD Guard Pro is also set to the following defaults:

To test it, change something noticeable on your machine after it reboots with the HD Guard Pro for the first time. Change your desktop wallpaper or copy several folders or shortcuts to the desktop. Create a temporary folder and move all of your files from My Documents to the temporary folder. Then reboot your PC. After your PC has rebooted, if you done the things outlined above you’ll immediately notice the following:

Your entire system—programs, registry, settings, data—everything—restored to the restored to the way it was by simply rebooting your PC. Pretty cool, right? Let’s take a closer look at how you can tweak the settings on the HD Guard Pro to meet your specific needs. We'll start by navigating the card's Main Menu. When the menu first appears, you will notice a counter in the lower right hand corner counting down from nine to zero, which are the number of seconds remaining before you boot into Windows with whatever parameters are set for HD Guard Pro. You can stop the countdown at any time before it finishes, by pressing any key.