Copyright: © Copyright 2000 Adaptec, Inc.


Welcome
GoBack: Protecting the Power to Move Ahead™.

This tutorial will show you how to run right into a brick wall, and not care. But first, some background.

These days our lives are often tied to our computers, or at least to some degree of dependence on them. Wonderful things, these computers—that is when they work. When they don't, it can feel a lot like running into a brick wall.

There are times when we pause in distress, when some terrible event has happened. Perhaps it was an inappropriate mouse click. Files are gone; the computer won't start. Something awful has happened, and our immediate desire is to turn back the clock and return to a better time—the time right before the accident.

This yearning to step back in time and fix things inspired our engineers. They began an incredible project: to design a computer that would give us another chance, where decisions would not be so final. Where you could back out of a disaster, out of losing hours of hard work, out of having to figure about why your wonderful computer no longer works. After years of hard work, our engineers succeeded and produced GoBack, an entirely new type of software.

With GoBack on your computer you have the peace of mind of knowing that you are being protected. You are being protected against your own mistakes, against virus damage, against the unknown. When problems strike, you have the immediate option of stepping back to a time when your computer worked.

GoBack does have limits, so don't forget to make regular backups. GoBack isn't going to help if smoke is pouring out of your computer (i.e., the hardware has failed). It isn't meant to take you back to something you saved last year. It is, however, designed to take you back to virtually any moment in the recent past.

GoBack is incredibly easy to use. It can do three simple feats. First, it can revert your hard disk to the way it was a few minutes, hours, even days ago—a truly simple yet great way to fix many problems. Second, GoBack can create a backup after you realize you need it. Have you ever wished you had made a backup five minutes ago? Now you can! And third, GoBack lets you get back that accidentally overwritten or deleted file. Wouldn't you like to be protected against clicking "Save" instead of "Save As" or deleting the wrong file?

The magic of GoBack is that it does what it does automatically. You do not have to remember to do anything.

Now let us focus on mastering the magic of GoBack and how to scale a brick wall as if it wasn't there.

What to do when you can't do anything.

If you cannot get your computer to run properly, then use GoBack to step back in time. First restart your computer. (Turn the power off and then on, or press the reset button.) Now get ready to press the spacebar. Early in the start up process you will see the GoBack Boot Screen (shown below). Press the spacebar when prompted. You will have about five seconds to press the spacebar. If you miss it, simply restart your computer and try again.

Next, you will be given the option of returning your computer to exactly the way it was at an earlier time. We call this process "reverting" your computer back in time. Select the Revert Drive option. It is the button located at the top of the GoBack Boot Menu. Move your mouse over the appropriate button and click. If you don't have a mouse, you can also hold down the ALT key and press the underlined letter that is associated with any button.

If you click the Revert Drive button, GoBack shows times to which you can restore your computer. Simply click to select a time at which you believe your computer was operational, then click Revert. If you want to view other possible times, click More Times.

If your computer fails to start properly then just repeat the entire process. Restart your computer, press the spacebar, select the Revert Drive option again, and choose another time.

GoBack attempts to restore your computer to the most recent time that it appeared to be working. Since computers can fail in many subtle and different ways, it is possible that it will take more than one try to get back up and running.

But what happens to the document you were working on this morning if you choose to revert your hard disk to the way it was yesterday?  Because GoBack can actually step back and forth through time, you can easily retrieve your recent work even after a disk revert. To see how, let's look at the file recovery process.

What to do when you have lost a file and want it back.

Unfortunately, there are numerous ways to lose a file. In most cases, however, you can retrieve them quickly using GoBack's File Recovery feature. Here's how. Launch GoBack by clicking on the yellow arrows located in the lower right hand corner of your screen. Alternatively, you can double-click the GoBack icon on your desktop.

After launching GoBack you are presented with the GoBack main menu. Click the Recover file button.

A window will appear showing a list of previous versions of your files. You can restore these files or just view them. At the top of the screen are the files that you most recently modified (or deleted). As you scroll down, you view older files. Remember that you can click any of the column headers to sort the list. For example, click the "Name" heading to sort the files by name, or click the "Location" heading to sort the files by folder.

Sometimes there are so many different files that it is useful to let GoBack help find a particular file. If you know any portion of the file's name, simply enter it into the box at the top of the screen labeled Locate Files Matching. Next, click the Locate Now button, or press Enter. The list will be reduced to only those files that match the indicated text. To view the entire file list again, click the Locate All button.

To view or restore a specific file, select the file by clicking on it. Next, click either the Open or Recover to button located at the bottom of the screen. If you click Open, then you will find yourself viewing the file. If you wish to keep the file, you can select the Save As option and save it to your hard disk. Or, from within the File Recovery window, you can select the file and click the Recover to button to have GoBack retrieve the file and save it under the original name or a new name.

There is yet another way to retrieve or view old versions of a file. Simply start Windows Explorer, locate the file in question, and right-click it. You will see that GoBack has added a Show Revisions option in the drop-down menu (look for the yellow arrows).

Select this option and GoBack will present a list of previous versions. Generally, GoBack can find previous versions of files that span the last several days. To view or restore any one of the versions, simply click it and select the Open or Recover to button.

How to restore your PC to virtually any moment in the recent past.

Let's say your computer is working, but it isn't quite the way you want it to be and you'd like to revert back in time. Simply double-click the yellow GoBack arrows located either on the desktop or in the lower right hand corner of your screen. This will launch the GoBack main menu. Next, click the middle option, which allows you to revert your hard drive or view it as it was at a previous time.

The GoBack Drive window is relatively simple. In the upper left corner is a calendar. The days in bold face are the days you can step back to. These are the days for which GoBack can remember exactly what was going on, and thus can re-create the disk exactly as it was at that point in time.

In order to revert your computer to the way it was at the beginning of a prior day, simply click the desired day. If the day falls in the previous or following month, click the appropriate arrows at the top of the calendar to change months. After selecting a day, click the Revert Drive button at the bottom of the window. Your computer will then re-start as it was on this day.

If you wish to return to a specific time during a given day, then enter the time into the field below the clock. Or, scroll through the activity log on the right side of the screen. Here you will see a list of your general activity—a complete history of what you have been up to. If you modify a file, a note is added to the log. If you delete or rename file, a note is added. You will even find notes that indicate when you launched an application.

In this log, you will find entries called "safe points." A safe point is a moment at which your computer was at rest, at least in terms of saving information to the disk. As it would not be very useful to step back to a moment in the middle of saving a document—who knows what you would get—GoBack automatically marks these "quiet" safe points. These are the points in time that you can access.

Therefore, if you are looking at the log and find an event of interest, you can click the safe point just before or just after the event to reference that moment. Next, click the Revert Drive button and your computer is sent back to this time. (Note that this requires your computer to re-start.)

How to make a backup after you need it.

Have you ever regretted not making a backup? Have you ever looked at a floppy and wished you had taken the time to copy all those important files?

In an ideal world, we would. However, in real life we generally don't make backups every few minutes. So when we need one, we don't always have one. But with GoBack you can actually create a backup after you realize you need it!

The previous example showed you how to launch the GoBack Drive window and select a point in time to which you can revert your entire disk. However, you don't always want to revert your entire hard disk. Instead, you can opt to create a virtual GoBack drive and use it to access your old data, just as if you had made a complete backup of your hard disk.

The first step to creating a virtual drive is to select the date and time that you'd wished you had made your backup. Click on the day, and set the time, either by entering it (e.g., 12:35 PM), or clicking on an entry in the activity log. Next, click the Create GoBack Drive button, and presto! GoBack effectively creates a backup of your entire hard disk as it was at that time.

You can access this "backup" drive through Windows Explorer. It will appear as an additional drive on your system, e.g. drive "F". You can then view the contents of this drive and copy any files or directories to your current hard drive, e.g. drive "C".

You can also use this virtual drive in other applications. It appears in the list of available drives like any other drive.

Note that GoBack spends some extra effort in creating and maintaining this virtual drive, so you should discard it when you no longer need it. You can do this by clicking the Discard GoBack Drive button from within the GoBack Drive window. If you forget, the drive is automatically discarded when you turn your computer off.

What are GoBack's limits?

How far back in time can you go to recover data? The answer depends on how intensely you are using your computer and how much actual hard disk space has been set aside for historic tracking. For most users working under normal circumstances, there is more than enough history to back out of common mishaps. Having said this, you should remember that GoBack cannot help you if your hard drive actually stops operating. In other words, if your computer's hardware is truly broken then GoBack will not fix the problem. Therefore, you should continue to make regular backups to an external media such as a tape or floppy drive.

GoBack generally addresses problems caused by software, which are likely to be the problems you encounter most often.

What it means to be protected by GoBack.

In summary, once GoBack is installed it is quietly working in the background. This insures that you can quickly and easily:

•	Get your computer to start again, even if Windows won't boot.

•	Get back a "lost" version of a file.

•	Restore your computer to the way it was—to virtually any moment in the recent past.

•	Make a backup after you realize you need it.

Very simply, GoBack provides added peace of mind. Should you need to, you have the ability to step back in recent time and recover from a wide range of problems. Best of all, once GoBack is installed, you don't need to take any further action. That is, until you need it.

GoBack is all about Protecting the Power to Move Ahead™.

By the way, if you are using a preview version of GoBack, make sure to try out all the features. But remember, once the preview times out, you are no longer protected. Recovering from one mistake or disaster will justify its place on your computer!

Visit www.adaptec.com for more information. GoBack is available through most major computer software retailers and catalogs.

Other useful information.

If you need to boot from a floppy disk, you can still do so with GoBack. However, you need to follow a slightly different procedure. First, before inserting the floppy into the drive, you should allow your computer to boot normally from the hard disk but press the spacebar when GoBack is asking if you are having any problems. At that point, insert the floppy disk into the drive and click the "Boot from floppy" option. This process allows GoBack to continue to insert itself into your computer's activities, even though you are booting from a floppy disk. Therefore GoBack can protect you in this floppy boot situation.

If you have created a sensitive document (e.g., a love letter) that you really want to permanently remove from your computer, you should clear the GoBack history. Click the Options button in the GoBack main menu to bring you to this option.

You may notice additional disk activity being performed in the background by your computer. Part of the task of GoBack is to safely manage and optimize your disk. It generally does this work in the background while the disk is not being used for other purposes. GoBack automatically sets aside this work when you begin a new activity or need to shut down your computer. Although GoBack may need to perform considerable background optimization after you have done substantial changes to the disk, be assured that this extra disk activity will cease when the work is complete. If you are about to turn off your computer and you notice that there is continued disk activity, if it is convenient for you, leave your computer turned on for some additional time to allow the background optimization process to complete. Otherwise, GoBack will simply continue the task when the computer is turned back on.