Deep Freeze is the best software that I have seen so far. Its technology just amazes me. I have started using Deep Freeze in the year 2004. Internet cafes were so popular in our city during that time. I found Deep Freeze protecting many cafes using their unique technology.
“Deep Freeze, by Faronics, is an application available for the Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and SUSE Linux operating systems which allows system administrators to protect the core operating system and configuration files on a workstation or server by restoring a computer back to its original configuration each time the computer restarts”
Deep Freeze is a kernel-level driver that protects hard drive integrity by redirecting information being written to the hard drive or partition, leaving the original data intact. This redirected information is no longer referenced once the computer is restarted, thus restoring the system to its original state at the disk sector level. This allows users to make ‘virtual’ changes to the system, giving them the appearance that they can modify core files or even delete them, and even make the system unusable to themselves, but upon reboot the originally configured ‘frozen’ state of the operating system is restored.
This reboot-to-restore feature made Deep Freeze the best friend of internet cafe owners. The cafe owners have to install operating system and basic stuffs needed to browse and work such as FireFox, Download Manager, Adobe reader etc. Then they install Deep Freeze and make the computer frozen. The user who use those computers for few hours won’t notice anything unusual and they will be able to place files anywhere on that computer, modify files, upload files, download files, install additional software or even delete the boot files! To restore the computer to the original state, the admin has just to reboot the computer! Boom ! All the files will be restored in no time. Even just a space in a text file will be restored immediately after the reboot!
Deep Freeze can be operated in two modes:
Boot Frozen: When selected, Deep Freeze will nullify all the changes made to your computer on restart.
Boot Thawed: When selected, Deep Freeze will not nullify any changes on restart.
If you need to install any software, you will be able to do this by selecting the Boot Thawed state. The control panel is password protected and this will block any unauthorized access.
Deep Freeze is a paid application, however, it you want to try then they offer free trial version.
For more information about Deep Freeze and download your trial copy, visit their website