SteadyState vs Deep Freeze

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  After spending some time playing around with both in virtual machines, as well as reading their documentation, I've reached several conclusions.

   

  1. There is no centralized management, so any changes must be done manually at each client. On the other hand, Deep Freeze has a powerful server-side console, which allows itself to be pushed onto computers on your domain with your desired configuration.

   

  2. Although Deep Freeze hasn't disclosed exactly how their software works, I am fairly certain that it is much more efficient then SteadyState's method of creating a cache, which only records changes, that is 50% of your free hard disk space. I believe this system does not protect against system performance degradations from sources such as power loss, which will induce errors and corruption on the non-cached part of the file system.

  
  

  3. SteadyState hasn't been updated since 2008. Deep Freeze released its latest update in February. Just like the Shared Computer Toolkit, SteadyState has the risk of becoming abandon-ware, which will create additional headaches for migration. Also the only support you get with SteadyState is Microsoft's "plentiful" online documentation.

   

  4. Deep Freeze runs at the kernel level, making it virtually immune to even the most malicious users. SteadyState runs at a high level, opening vulnerabilities to end users who are a little savvy.

   

  5. Deep Freeze has many more features that will be useful in the near future, the most prominent of which are Windows 7 support and Wake-On-LAN management. It also integrates seamlessly with our domain. SteadyState might have problems with the 30 day password expiration setting.

   

  Ultimately we chose Deep Freeze for these reasons. Hope I saved someone the trouble of doing the research themselves.
  

  • Proposed as answer by Leo Huang Thursday, August 19, 2010 7:54 AM
  • Marked as answer by Leo Huang Tuesday, August 24, 2010 7:05 AM

  Thursday, August 19, 2010 7:01 AM
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  I would also like to add to the above info.  Microsoft at this time has no stated plans to further develop Steady State for Windows 7 and forward.  For this reason, it is probably good not to move to it if you are looking at a long term solution to your situation.

  On the other hand, if you just need something for 65 computers and want to get it done cheap (ie free) and are able to do a little scripting to customize your environment, steady state works great.  We currently manage 1300 lab computers using SteadyState, some scripting, and sccm for the package deployment.  Most computers have not been reimaged in over 2 years but are patched and have software installed/uninstalled regularily, and there isn't any noticeable performance degredation.  It does everything deepfreeze can do for us in our setup, although that doesn't necessarily mean it would work the same for your situation.

  We have not had any issues with computer passwords expiring in our use of SteadyState.

  Hope this helps. 

  Thursday, December 2, 2010 3:07 PM
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  Interesting read, We use to use deep freeze in our computer labs until we ran into issues with windows updates and the endless loop on startup after the windows updates. After doing some research we found out that it indeed was deep freeze causing this issue so we started looking at other alternatives and we ran into a program called drive vaccine and we have been using it for about a year and half now and we are happy with drive vaccine over deep freeze because it does not have issues with windows updates and i personally find it easier to use then deep freeze.

  Tuesday, August 27, 2013 2:23 AM
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  Hi Davit2,

  I'm going to have to second the suggestion by Jake, I think you're asking the wrong question. The real comparison is with Drive Vaccine. I've used it for a few months now on our network of about 30 machines to have them auto-reset back to a baseline configuration when the users are done. It has a few advantages over Deep Freeze:

  1.) Deep Freeze only restores on reboot. Drive Vaccine restores-to-baseline on reboot, logoff, every hour, every day, every week, or if the machine goes idle for any set period of time.

  2.) Deep Freeze requires you to turn off the protection in order to do updates, that is, go into "unthawed" mode. This means that if you make some change in this naked state (have a botched update or driver conflict, for example) then you're just going to have to troubleshoot this issue or you'll just have to reimage or reinstall Windows from scratch. Now, how painful is that!?! Drive Vaccine doesn't have an ON/OFF switch to do updates. It doesn't require you to turn the protection off. You can update the baseline and if you're not happy with it, you just go back to an earlier baseline.

  3.) The Deep Freeze people require you to purchase their enterprise version for their utility to manage multiple machines. If you don't have the enterprise edition of Deep Freeze then this involves using messy command-line scripts or batch files to do updates. Drive Vaccine comes with a free enterprise utility. That way you don't have to walk around to each individual machine to make changes and can instead centrally manage them.

  4.) DeepFreeze works at the OS level whereas Drive Vaccine works below Windows. So even if Windows crashes, crashes so bad that you can't even get into the OS, there’s a sub-console outside windows which allows you to access Drive Vaccine and simply go back to a point in time when your system was working symptom-free. You're out of luck here with Deep Freeze.

  I'm sure there's a few other things I've discovered over the last little while but they're not coming to mind right now. Anyway, you owe it to yourself to check out Drive Vaccine and please feel free to rebuke any and all of my points if I'm wrong.

  Tuesday, September 10, 2013 10:15 PM
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  Harold Robbins, 

  thanks for elaborating on drive vaccine much appreciated.   I totally forgot to mention the same company that makes drive vaccine also have a restore on reboot software called reboot restore rx which is a freeware , thats right freeware.  Ive tested it out on few machines works pretty good however its pretty limited to enable or disabling the protection.

  Wednesday, September 11, 2013 2:08 AM
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  Harold Robbins,

  Based on the reply that you've posted above, it either looks like you hate Deep Freeze, or you work for the company that makes Drive Vaccine (gotcha ;P).

  As far as the technicalities are concerned, I completely disagree with you on all the points that you've mentioned.

  1) Deep Freeze can restore at logoff, every hour, every day, every week, or if the machine goes idle for any set period of time. Check out the Workstation Tasks feature within Deep Freeze, they let you do much more than what you've described what Drive Vaccine does.

  2) Check out the Caching of Windows Updates feature within Deep Freeze. It awesomely designed and lets you download Windows Updates even when Deep Freeze is protecting the system.

  3) The Enterprise Console is free of cost. There is no charge on the Console for managing your workstations. You don't have to pay for the Console and can setup number of Console as required - they don't consume your license.

  4) Deep Freeze works on Hard Disk level which is the base level of the changes being made. Therefore, guarantees 100% protection for any changes made to a protected computer.

  For people who are looking out for Reboot to Restore functionality and miss the old Windows SteadyState product; I would strongly recommend to try Deep Freeze as it's used across 80% of education sector across North America.

  Wednesday, September 25, 2013 3:19 PM
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  Hate is a strong word here, dont you think?? and no I do not work for Drive Vaccine. I have used both Deep Freeze and Drive Vaccine and that was my insight into both products. 

  However, now that you have mentioned (accused) me about working for the organization that develops Drive Vaccine, I decided to put my Sherlock Holmes hat on and used one powerful tool known to mankind - Google and typed in: "Melissa Megan Faronics" and boy the results that showed up clearly pointed out that you are indeed working for Faronics, which I have nothing against with. But please be forthcoming. District School, you say??- which one would that be? [Gotcha back at you? :) ]

  I would ask the moderators of this forum to kindly look into it. Thank you.

   

  Friday, December 20, 2013 10:48 PM