You can go back, oh yes you can. The recovery system that ships standard on the Professional S3 let’s you do just that. If lightning strikes and something goes hopelessly wrong with your system, there is hope and a way to minimize the impact or the loss.

The Professional S3’s recovery system is an always-available and tamperproof recovery tool built into the core of the computer. This ideal recovery solution stores user data, applications, and the operating system in the secured host protected area [Hidden Zone] of the hard drive. Users can easily recover systems to their original factory conditions or to a more recent state without factory-supplied restore DVDs [although we do supply one] or having to call tech support. This recovery can be done without Windows XP and will work even on a system drive that has been re-formatted.

Hidden Zone and Windows Zone

The Professional S3 comes with a C drive that is divided into two distinct zone. The first is a Hidden Zone that contains the S3's factory image. This is the original state of the computer and is an image that you can invoke if your main drive gets hopelessly corrupted or is disfunctional. The Hidden Zone also has space for user created backups of images. These images can either be static backup which are a 1-to-1 snap shot of the state of the computer or incremental backups which store changes in the contents of the computer. We cannot stress how important it is to make a backup into the Hidden Zone after you spent hours installing all your software. If you are not the type to take care of such a thing, you can set the recovery system to make incremental backups automatically at prescribed intervals.

The second area is the Windows Zone where Windows XP rules and normal computer operations occur. This area is suceptible to erasure, viruses, accidents, etc. because of this unique structure it is possible to completely format the Windows Zone and still recover the factory image and other backups from the Hidden Zone. This is not just a selling feature of the Professional S3, it is a necessity of any busy music production work space. This feature can be the difference between abject catastrophe and peace of mind.

Flexible Recovery Manager

Managing this recovery system can be done from either zone. There is no longer the need to invoke a special re-boot routine or re-boot to DOS. To make a backup is a simple as launching the Recovery Manager from within Windwos XP as the Recovery Manager includes an extremely easy to use Windows, XP-like wizard interface. The ease of use of this Recovery Manager makes the Professional S3 the easiest MusicXPC ever to restore and back up. This is even more reason and more incentive to make backups to protect your work. It is as easy as 1 2 3. You can make backups outside the Hidden Zone too. It is now possible to store backups on external hard drives, across a network and onto external DVD media. Once again, there has never been such a robust music computer on the face of the planet.

Bootable Evergency DVD

The Professional S3 comes with a bootable emergency DVD with the original factory image for the system recovery in the event of a physical hard drive crash. This DVD means that you can restore your system even if the hard drive doesn't spin up. Of course, in this case you would lose and data, but the upside is that you can get the S3 back to factory state without the need for boxing it up and dragging it back to your dealer.

Access the Image

One of the most amazing features of the new Professional S3 recovery system is the ability to access an image, mount it and copy a file from it, without restoring the image fully to the hard drive. This means that you can grab a 2MB folder from a backup image that is 2GB in size. This saves a ton of time and allows the images to be treated as frozen hard drives.

Supports any size hard disks

A great new feature is the ability to compress and store only the necessary disk sector contents on any of the 4 drives on the Professional S3. The advent of backups to external media, the ability to access the image means that any content can be archived either at the drive level, partition level, folder level or file level. We are talking about serious flexibility here. But when you own a MusicXPC, you demand these types of professional features.

By making it so easy to reset the S3 to factory setting, each user will enjoy not only a true sense of comfort but the cost of ownership is reduced by reducing costly shipments back to the dealer or MusicXPC. The productivity increases are also real since the user can easily set multiple restore point of his/her choosing. This allows users to restore the Professional S3 to yesterday’s state or last week's. The dynamic, continuous data protection offered by the S3 allows you to tell the computer to automatically set the restore points for you.

In the example below the MusicXPC owner has 4 options for recovery:

• Factory Setting: This is the way the MusicXPC came out of the box. All tweaks to WindowsXP and a finely tuned PC ready for media production. This is a permanent restore point that cannot be erased and is always there as a last resort.
• Software Setup: This is the first restore point invoked by the user. This was created after the time consuming and painstaking work of installing your applications, plug-ins, virtual instruments, sound libraries etc. You know how long it takes to do this, to get all the CDs together, all the authorization codes, etc. Now we've created a place in time to which we can return if things go wrong.
• Last Monday: The user has established an automatic and recurring restore point which incrementally backs up the state on the computer at 12:01AM every Monday. This means that while you sleep the MusicXPC is making sure that your rest is a peaceful one.
• Last Boot Up. The user has decided to have another incremental restore point automatically created each time the MusicXPC boots up.

Never has there been such a powerful, secure and innocuous way to alter history. Never has this degree of peace of mind been available to media producers. MusicXPC again sets new standards of reliability and security.

Some may call this a feature, we call this a necessity.