Protecting Your Computer Using Deep Freeze
Jun 3 by Marcus Hochstadt | Posted in Reviews
It’s now almost three weeks ago when I installed Deep Freeze on my machine. Time for a review.
I stumbled upon Deep Freeze via James’ retired blog when he talked about computer security and how it affects our Internet business and can become a pain. He recommended a small tool which is being used by Internet cafés and libraries, for example. With that neat little tool, there is…
- No need to run and install the latest version of anti-virus software
- No need to run and install the latest version of anti-spyware software
- No need to run and install the latest version of Windows Update (some of which destroy your Windows installation; isn’t that funny?)
- No need to run and install the latest version of firewall software
- No need to make a new, clean OS install every 1-2 years because the computer became too slow
- No need to worry about data loss due to hackers, trojaners, viruses, system crashes, etc etc
- No need to worry about whether or not Windows’ System Restore works (it never worked in my case)
Sounds too good to be true? Read on…
It came in handy because one of my three Operating Systems (”OS”), Windows XP German, did not run properly anymore. And shortly after this, the second one (XP English) as well not anymore. It seemed as if I had a virus, although I ran updated anti-virus and anti-spyware… (Sounds familiar?)
So, I found it to be a good time to give Deep Freeze a shot.
Preparation For Deep Freeze
Now, the tricky part was to prepare for The Day and set my system up properly. What I mean is this…
As the name implies, Deep Freeze puts your machine into a deeply frozen state. Once you reboot your system, all is back to normal. It is as if you’re bringing your computer back into the freshest or newest state possible.
Here is how one would normally install Deep Freeze…
- Format the system disk/partition
- Install the OS and all of the software you need on a daily basis
- Install Deep Freeze and tell it to freeze your system.
- Now, whenever you boot your system, all is back to the point where you installed Deep Freeze.
As mentioned, the tricky part for my particular case was the set up process. First thing I did was formatting my main hard drive.
There are four hard disks in my computer. The first one with 180 GB is for the operating systems. I split that disk into 3 partitions: #1 for Windows XP, #2 for Windows Vista, and #3 for “other stuff” such as testing a new operating system, or if the other two do not boot I still have one partition remaining to install an OS on and boot my computer to see what’s wrong with the other two partitions.
Then the next disk (180GB) is one I use to save all kinds of data (for several years already), more or less timeless stuff.
Then comes the third disk (500GB) which I use primarily for my SiteSell video productions, my Web sites’ files, product creation files, some more “stuff”, as well as for “My Documents” and the MS Outlook data file (which I do not use anymore though since I “outsourced” e-mail to GMail).
Finally, there is disk #4 (150GB) which I used to use as a backup disk for my most critical data (video production files, Outlook data file, Web sites files, etc), but because of Deep Freeze I can safely skip this step and use disk #4 for saving the day-to-day software programs there. (For performance reasons, it is a good idea to install software on a separate disk so that you have one disk for your OS and one for installed software.)
I still do use a hard drive for backup purposes, which is an external one and requires USB only, and it is excellent for when I’m traveling. (Seagate FreeAgent Go 160GB – I love it! :-)
Now, before I set up Deep Freeze, I was under the impression it would create images (i.e., clones) of all the disks that I want to freeze. To my surprise, though, it is a neat little program running in the background, which I notice by its taskbar icon only (and perhaps a 3-second message during restart).
Compare that with some of the anti-virus or anti-spyware programs out there and you know what I mean. Once you installed them, they immediately slow down your system in order to “do a good job”.
Deep Freeze, however, keeps your machine in good, fresh shape.
How Deep Freeze Works
The only thing that may annoy people and got me to change my habits: Deep Freeze resets everything.
Saved a URL in your browser’s favorites? That is lost once you reboot the OS. Saved a file on your desktop? Yup, that is lost, too. Changed settings in a software application? That’s also reversed to the previous setting. So, how do you save your day-to-day work or change preferences?
Two options for saving your day-to-day stuff…
- You let one disk (or one partition) in an unfrozen state. You can define that during installation of Deep Freeze. You specify which drive letters you want Deep Freeze to protect. In my case, I have disk #3 in unfrozen state, the one where I save and work with important day-to-day data. The crucial parts (disk #1, #2 & #4) are in frozen state though and therefore perfectly protected.
- You use a thumb drive, memory stick, or simply an external hard drive.
As for changing settings, preferences, or saving favorites, you simply tell Deep Freeze to restart your computer in an unfrozen state (by pressing the Shift key on your keyboard while double-clicking on the Deep Freeze symbol in the taskbar, then modify accordingly).
Once you reboot, you can change whatever you wish, save passwords, bookmark, etc. Once you reboot your computer again (so it’s in the frozen state again), all your changes are saved, and you can continue to work more conveniently and fully protected—without anti-virus nor anti-spyware nor any other of that crap.
Additionally, once I notice some weird happening, I simply reboot the whole system and that “weird happening” magically disappeared as if it was never there. (Just happened in a coaching session yesterday… black screen while still on the Skype phone. A quick reboot and it was solved.)
There is a downside though… Although it is supposed to restore everything, including your browse history, it does happen on my machine that visited URLs disappear from the browse history. (Though, I figured that to be a very minor downside.)
Also, in case you delete something, it restores it. Even when you hold down the Shift key while pressing Delete, it restores it. This may be a downside for some. But when you look at it from the other side, Deep Freeze is supposed to completely protect whatever you have installed and saved.
Just imagine you let one of your friends (or kids?) on your computer and s/he “accidentally” deletes crucial data. No worries with Deep Freeze… it’s all still there after reboot. :-) (That means, when you do want to delete something from protected partitions, unfreeze your computer, delete the file(s), and refreeze it again.)
Bottom Line
The Bottom Line is that I now save a whole bunch of valuable time—at least a couple hours per month—fixing idiosyncrasies on an ongoing basis. And I can sleep a bit better now. ;-)
—Marcus Hochstadt
Tags: computer security, deep freeze
24 Responses for "Protecting Your Computer Using Deep Freeze"
chodirin (4 comments)
June 3rd, 2008 at 7:09 am
1as i know deep freezee ca make our computer crash
Marcus Hochstadt (157 comments)
June 3rd, 2008 at 8:22 am
2Hehe funny, never heard of that one, and never experienced myself. It works like a charm. Can you be more specific? Or is that just an assumption?
Stephan Miller (9 comments)
June 3rd, 2008 at 11:20 am
3I don’t have DeepFreeze, but I did use something called System Commander at one time that did about the same thing. I created 6 drives on one computer and ran Linux, XP, and 98 on three partitions. The other three were split up into executables, documents, and file sharing. It worked out pretty well.
noelevz (1 comments)
June 3rd, 2008 at 12:13 pm
4great review! Seems a very handy software to me! I always seem to get a virus here and there even if I update my anti-virus regularly.
timbury (1 comments)
June 3rd, 2008 at 2:11 pm
5Running only Linux, and sometimes BSD or Solaris, I don’t have the need for any of this. But for those who love the Dark Master Windoze, this seems like a good tool. There have been partition and disk imaging packages for many years, of course, like Ghost. But if it is easier to use, it is a valuable alternative. Thanks for the well-written review.
Rich (1 comments)
June 3rd, 2008 at 2:21 pm
6I have been using a very similar setup for over 6 months. It works great. You do have to always remember to move new data to the secondary storage drive, but that becomes reflex in time.
One nice side benefit is that you can run (or try) new software on your frozen machine and if you don’t like it, no need to uninstall or worry about extra stuff left behind to slow down your computer. Just reboot.
Here are some additional suggestions:
On my primary (frozen) drive, I have also installed “Total Uninstall” (www.martau.com). This is a GREAT program. Whenever you install a program permanently (in unfrozen mode), this program will track every single change made and log the change. Then, you can easily remove every trace of a program. This is in case you make a mistake or regret having a program on your otherwise clean Deepfreeze system. I would say this program is easily the best uninstaller available (most similar programs just look for fragments after the fact, whereas this one actually observes the data as it is being placed, and records it, so as not to miss anything).
For secondary storage drives, I no longer use external standalone drives. Instead, I bought one of these:
http://geekstuff4u.com/product_info.php?manufacturers_id=&products_id=847
It allows you to use any sata INTERNAL drive just like a cartridge. Why is this great? Because internal drives are very compact, and are much cheaper than complete external drives. Where I live you can sometimes get a 1 terrabyte internal drive for about $170 on sale, and the price will get better. I have five 1 TB internal drives all stacked up in less space than a single bulky external drive with without lots of extra cables and power supplies.
There are a few stores in the states that sell a single drive version of the above (USB only), but I ordered the one above because it supports 2 drives (great for copying from one to another) and also esata, which is MUCH faster. (You may need to add a simple esata port card to your computer if you want to use the esata feature, but you can get that locally for only about $20). Or you can use it as a USB drive. Your choice.
As Marcus suggested, it is best to implement Deep Freeze on your computer in a clean state, with your core applications. And I recommend first installing the Total Uninstall program FIRST, then use it to install all the subsequent applications.
Pat King (8 comments)
June 3rd, 2008 at 11:12 pm
7Wow, looks great. I think I will have to check this out. Thanks Marcus!
eBay (3 comments)
June 4th, 2008 at 6:51 am
8I recommend using recovery card hardware for security of our PC. In my place the brand are PC Armour. It can destroy all attacks including virus, spyware, trojan and all of them, with just pressing “reset” button. Just need to reboot, the threats will dissapear.
But the best is using deep freeze with recovery card.
jeflin (4 comments)
June 4th, 2008 at 10:20 am
9I think this is a great software to install because we never know if the site we visit these days contain viruses or spyware but saving all data now becomes very important.
But if your computer hang, what happens to your your documents? Are they auto-saved?
Stefen (1 comments)
June 4th, 2008 at 10:55 am
10Deep freeze is pretty good for a software, but we have to make sure there are no virus, spyware or etc before freeze our disk.
I don’t use deep freeze because I found some virus infected in my pc, I’m too lazy to format it since its still can run quite good.
Marcus Hochstadt (157 comments)
June 4th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
11Interesting tips here. And a couple observations…
@ Timbury: I do not love Windows, I need it. There’s too many Windows software that I need but either don’t have as a Mac (or Linux) version, or that is not available for them.
@ Rich: Great tips, thank you! I took a look and the external solution looks promising. Will take a kook at it again once I have a need for more than one external hard drive. (I just love that cute little Seagate baby too much. ;-)
@ Jeflin: Re-read the above article. The how-to is explained.
@ Stefen: Of course, the best option is to run Deep Freeze on a fresh installation. That’s what I did. But since you say you would be too lazy to do that, you’ll live with the viruses that you currently have and will get (knowingly and unknowingly). ;-)
Take care!
~Marcus
chodirin (4 comments)
June 5th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
12formerly, i always using deep freeze for all computers in my office. but since get crash and i can’t recover it, i never using deep freeze. not only 1, but some computer. i read on error messege it caused deep freeze. sorry, i can’t explain because my English is bad. but if you can translate my language i will tell you hehehe.
Noel (1 comments)
June 6th, 2008 at 1:27 am
13How do u ensure that downloaded files, pdfs etc. are virus-free since you do not now have antivirus software (right?)?
Marcus Hochstadt (157 comments)
June 6th, 2008 at 9:44 am
14@ Chodirin: Thanks for the explanation. Again, I’ve never heard of that before.
@ Noel: You could check those using online virus scanners.
Marty (8 comments)
June 6th, 2008 at 11:00 am
15I’ve been using a similar product from Microsoft called SteadyState. It’s similar to Deep Freeze except it is free to download and use and is only designed to work with Windows XP. I’ve had a good experience with it so far as it locks down your system just like Deep Freeze. It also allows you to create multiple user accounts and set-up each one to either retain all changes or delete all changes every time you restart your system.
Josh (4 comments)
June 6th, 2008 at 11:47 pm
16Now that is a program worth checking out. I could see that rebooting into the different modes would become annoying but if the problems could wait a bit, a good list of things to change would come in handy. After a while I imagine things would smooth out.
Business & Controversy of Technology by Arnab Tagore
June 7th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
17Weekly Blog Post Round Up!…
Thanks for the submissions everyone. I received 34 submissions just in one week. There is simply no way I can approve all of them. Many of them were really good but I accepted only 7 most relevant posts. I am going to post another message where I will …
Pradeep (1 comments)
June 7th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
18srsly they work..I also tried few of them and get good results now I’ll try the others too…
thnks
BlogMeTheMoney (5 comments)
June 8th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
19Thank you for you submission to the Weekend Quick Picks
S-Proprietor.com
June 9th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
20Carnival of the Entrepreneur - June 9, 2008…
Welcome to the June 9, 2008 edition of the Carnival of the Entrepreneur. At the Carnival of the Entrepreneur you will find articles submitted by authors from all over the internet relating to anything associated with being an entrepreneur. Topics range…
Silverspring (2 comments)
June 11th, 2008 at 9:32 am
21Clean Slate does the same thing as Deep Freeze but with different technology. Everything is cached. Nothing is actually written to the Hard Drive or Registry so passwords and such are safe. Any virus you get before you log off and log back in (that’s all it takes for a reset) will simply be cached along with everything else that will be discarded. As for a trojan horse or the like, configuring Windows advanced firewall should catch any unauthorized outbound transmissions.
Steve (3 comments)
June 25th, 2008 at 7:49 am
22I also use Clean Slate to protect my computers. It works just as well as Deep Freeze but without the annoying reboots. I can also configure my software to perform exactly as I want. And if I want to save a favorite, I simply go to Commit files in Clean Slate and tell it to permanently save. Takes 2 seconds. Oh, and did I mention that Clean Slate is cheaper? Check it out at http://WWW.FortresGrand.com
WORDSBlog » Blog Archive » Everyone’s Blog 7
June 27th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
23[...] that you need in this article to find out how to get your hands on this gem. To do so go here Hochstadt.com. Great Job! Niharika what a Blessing! My daughter has a MP3 player and we have had problems finding [...]
Jason Y. (1 comments)
July 15th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
24Hey:
Does ‘Deep Freeze’ harm the hard disk in anyway? What is its mechanism?
I saw in one property of the hard disk ‘class upper filters’ = DeepFrz
and I also noticed it device driver of hard disk has a deepfrz.sys file
Does “deep freeze’ harm ? Anybody has any idea?
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