Hardware Restore Cards History
The hard drive recovery card was introduced over 20 years ago by recovery card manufacturers in Asia. The Recovery Card was designed to protect PC drives from inadvertent user changes as well as automating the maintenance of PC – consistent system configurations on every restart.
Initially, the primary difference between restore cards and recovery based software was, that on the recovery cards the software (firmware) is hard-coded onto the actual card. In fact Reboot Restore Rx Professional’s birth originated as a hardware-based recovery card. Many current hard drive recovery card manufacturers use the hardware card as a simple “dongle”, as software piracy is still quite rampant in many developing countries.
Recovery Cards: Moving Forward
In recent years corporate, educational, institutional and end-point users wanted the same type of robust hardware based protection without the deployment issues of installation, driver configurations, and upgrades. This requirement brought on a new breed of software based recovery/restore solutions.
Schools and public access computing environment were content with the simple reboot-and-restore technology. However, many IT professionals wanted more features such as the ability to accept Windows and antivirus updates and the ability to save data to a particular partition or persistent disk space (Reboot Restore Rx Professional).
Today many of the legacy hard drive recovery card manufactures are part of a dying breed. Advancements in software have made recovery cards completely obsolete. Products such as Reboot Restore Rx Professional have become successful replacements for legacy recovery cards.
Hard Drive Restore Cards – Basic Hard Disk Write Protection
Hardware based write protection was first introduced in the 90’s as a method to restore hard disks on every restart. Essentially The Hard Drive Recovery Card was designed to protect PC hard drives from inadvertent user changes as well as automating the maintenance of the PC.
Why Hardware Restore Cards Are Becoming Obsolete
Hardware Restore Cards are hard to deploy over large corporate environments.
Hardware Restore Cards are more expensive than software based reboot and restore solutions.
Hardware Restore Cards are used as a dongle to prevent piracy in third world countries. However, advancements in software licensing and authentication have made software based solutions more popular.
Hardware Restore Cards provide a “all-or-nothing” (reboot-restore) solution. Whereas software based recovery solutions have many features, making it useful for a larger IT audience.
Hardware Restore Cards require shipping, as opposed to electronic download of software based solutions.
Hardware Restore Cards have potential hardware conflicts with certain systems and OS drivers.
Advancements in low-level kernel drivers allows solutions like Reboot Restore Rx Professional to provide robust protection, without hardware recovery card installation and setup procedures.
Software based solutions can accept windows OS and antivirus updates without the need of protection status or unnecessary system reboots. More features with software based solutions.
Hardware Restore Cards can be seen a part of a Static Complete System Solution – when comparing it in our PC Evolution path.
Recovery Cards: How Do They Compare With Software Based Solutions?
Many users of legacy Hardware Restore Cards have switched to Reboot Restore Rx Professional, a more technologically advanced restoration utility for various reasons. In fact, a majority of large school districts across North America depend on the PC restore on reboot functionality of Reboot Restore Rx Home and Reboot Restore Rx Professional.
How does Reboot Restore Rx Professional Compare to Hardware Restore Cards/Recovery Cards
Reboot Restore Rx Professional integrates reboot and restore, a simple technology designed to keep computers fully functional and optimally configured. However, Reboot Restore Rx Professional uses sector mapping technology to achieve its restore on reboot functionality. This results in a more robust, faster, and more efficient computing experience. In addition to restoring on reboot, Reboot Restore Rx Professional can restore on user logoff and can also maintain a safe, consistent space for file and data storage. RecoveryGenius uses a buffering technique that requires protection to be disabled whenever system updates are needed. With Reboot Restore Rx Professional, systems can be updated without complicated scripting. The protection is always on and users can easily backout of failed software/OS updates.
Simple to Use: Just Reboot or Logoff and Restore
Since the protection is invisible users feel as though they have absolute control of the system. Regardless of what they may attempt to do, including erasing files, installing software or even modifying registry settings, the computers will restore to their configured baseline settings every time they are restarted or when a user logs off. Making the workstations perfectly configured and available for the next user.
Hardware Based Restore Cards VS Software Based Solutions
Reboot Restore Rx Professional drastically reduces computer maintenance and is widely used to protect public access computers (i.e. kiosks, public library computers, school PC Labs, internet cafes, etc) or shared computing environments where a workstation could be misused or damaged either intentionally by a malicious user or accidentally by a learning student.