Introduction

Radix (http://www.radixprotector.com/) manufactures a series of boards target to data recovery. With one Radix board installed on your PC, if something wrong happens – like a virus attack – you can recover your hard disk to the point it was before the problem happened. It is similar to the System Restore utility that comes with Windows XP, but since it is a hardware component, even if Windows get corrupted and doesn't load, you still can recover your hard drive, what is not possible with the Windows XP utility.

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Figure 1: Radix boards we've got for evaluation.

There are several models available: MLP, MLP laptop, SLP, SLP remote and LPE. The MLP models allow the creation of several restore points, while SLP models allow the creation of just one restore point. A restore point is a hard drive image that is made for the data recovery process. When you face a problem, the board restores your hard drive to one of the restore points you created.

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Figure 2: LPE model.

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Figure 3: SLP model.

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Figure 4: SLP model, back view.

The laptop model is USB (the others are PCI) and offers na extra security because if it is not installed on one of your laptop's USB ports after its installation, the user cannot access the data inside the laptop (it is not possible to load the operating system). The remote model allows the PC to me remotelly managed through network.

Radix LPE Evaluation

We've got these boards for evaluation and we found the LPE model really awesome for schools, colleges, LAN cafes and alike. With this model installed you simply have to reboot the PC to get its hard drive exactally the same as it was before the board was installed. Thus, the user can install softwares and change all Windows configurations as he/she wish, then you simply reboot the PC after the user is gone and you get the computer exactly how it was before.

The board installation is really simple. First you need to enter your motherboard setup and disable virus protection if it is enabled in order to allow the board to have full access to your hard drive. Then when your boot your PC a menu will show up on the screen asking if you want to install LPE protection now or later. Just select "Install Now" and its configuration screen will show up (Figure 5).

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Figure 5: LPE model configuration screen.

On this configuration screen you will find the following options:

• Protect: Select the partitions you want to protect from changes.
• Recovery Mode: Your hard disk will be recovered after x days, where the number of days is configured on "Recover Data After" option. Keep this option set at "00" to make the board to recover the hard drive after each reboot.
• Open Mode: This option must be selected when you wish to make permanent changes to the hard drive – installing a new software, for example. If you don't use this option, the installed software will be removed during the next boot.
• Uninstall: Uninstalls the board from your system. This option should be used if you don't want to use the product anymore, before phisically removing the board from the system. Just removing the board from the system is not enough, since the hard drive will be configured to be protected by the board.

On Advanced tab there is a very interesting option to recover the CMOS memory contents (this memory holds the motherboard configuration). If the PC is attacked by a virus that erases CMOS memory, the board will be able to recover the CMOS memory contents automatically on the next reboot. But you need to enable the "Automatically Recover" option at "CMOS Setup" field.

You must also go Others tab and configure an administrator password. If you don't do this any user can enter on the board's configuration menu and mess with the hard drive.

On Others tab there is also na option called Display Self-Made Picture that allows you to create a boot up screen. This a very neat option to make the computer display the school, college or LAN cafe logo.