Hard Drive Recovery Cards

Hard drive recovery cards were a common harddisk recovery method a few years ago at many networked computer environments. Harddrive recovery cards were physically attached to the public access computers and effected a simple reset back to an unalterable system state on every bootup. The impetus behind recovery cards was the automatic removal of inadvertent or intentional changes made by public users on multi-user PCs such as at libraries, hotels, classroom labs, internet cafes, et cetra. Recovery cards simplified public access computer management by returning the machines back to a consistent system configuration (called the "baseline") pre-defined by the network manager. The biggest problem with this hardware-driven approach to freeze the public machines was that there wasn't very much customization possible once the machines were set up. The recovery card firmware was hard-coded onto the actual card. This meant that the machines returned to a pre-programmed baseline setting, not to an up-to-date baseline including the latest Windows updates and new program updates.

But now there are software alternatives that can be used very much like those outdated hard drive recovery cards but which can be also be updated regularly to incorporate the latest anti-malware definitions, application updates, and Windows patches. There's a freeware solution that does essentially this from Horizon DataSys called Reboot Restore Rx. Reboot Restore Rx is a robust reboot-to-restore software that can do everything those obsolete recovery cards used to do without any of the associated problems. Like recovery cards, Reboot Restore Rx write-protects the harddrive. And since Reboot Restore Rx is a software-based hard drive restore, you can temporarily suspend the restore and update the restore point to incorporate the latest Windows and program updates. Reboot Restore Rx is a non-restrictive restore technology that lets administrators give their public users full admin privileges even while allowing them to recover from deleted system files, virus infections, system crashes, or worse.

If you need more functionality, another software-based recovery solution to consider is Drive Vaccine. Drive Vaccine is an instant restore PC software that can effect a much more robust, quicker, and more efficient restore capability than recovery cards and also even allows you to restore back to an earlier baseline. Drive Vaccine comes with a free central management utility for controlling your entire public networked machines from a single interface.