Hard Drive Recovery Cards

Back in the early 1990s harddrive recovery cards were the state-of-the-art reboot-to-restore technology were used at many public networks. What were hard drive recover cards? Harddrive recovery cards were physically attached to the public access computers and automated a simple reset back to a pre-defined system state on every bootup. The intent behind recovery cards was the automatic removal of any changes made by public users on multi-user PCs such as at libraries, hotels, classroom labs, internet cafes, etc. Recovery cards simplified public access computer management by returning the machines back to a clean system state (the so-called baseline) on every start-up or restart. But the biggest drawback with this hardware-based technology approach to freeze the public machines was that there wasn't any customization possible once the machines were hardwired with the cards. This meant that the machines returned to this pre-programmed baseline setting which may have been a few years old, not to an up-to-date baseline including the latest Windows updates and new program updates. IT admins needed a baseline that would keep up with rapid software changes.

But now there are software alternatives that can be used very much like those outdated hard drive recovery cards but which can be also be updated regularly to incorporate the latest anti-malware definitions, application updates, and Windows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. Recovery cards slowly became less used as software-based solutions allowed for a dynamic baseline. There's a freeware solution today 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 myriad 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 update the baseline to incorporate the latest Windows and program updates.  Reboot Restore Rx does restrict users from certain Windows functionality. It’s 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.

But if manage larger networks of public machines or kiosks and 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-to-baseline capability than recovery cards. Drive Vaccine even allows you to restore back to an earlier baseline, in case you discover a week later that that Windows update you installed last week has issues. Drive Vaccine even comes with a free central management utility for controlling your entire public networked machines from a single central console.