Mastering Deep Freeze: How to Balance Frozen and Thawed Drives for Better Performance

Protecting computers — and everything on them — has become a top priority for organizations of all stripes. Whether you manage a multinational corporation or a local library, there are workstations, customer data and applications you must keep safe from cyberthreats and unauthorized changes. Deep Freeze by Faronics is an excellent tool for doing this, but to get the most out of it, you should know how to optimize its features.

Reboot To Restore Technology

Cybersecurity can feel like a never-ending arms race. There’s so much money in cybercrime — $16.6 billion in the U.S. alone in 2023, according to the FBI — that threat actors have an abundance of motivation to innovate new tools and hone new skills to advance their nefarious craft. Keeping up with them can feel exhausting, even for a large organization with its own dedicated IT team and cybersecurity experts. For smaller groups, the situation can seem totally out of their hands. Should they just cross their fingers and hope for the best?

If only there were some foolproof technology that allowed you to reset a computer back to a pristine state. Firewalls and encrypted data will always be important, but if a cyber attacker does breach your defenses, wouldn’t it be great to just reset your system to how it was before the attack occurred? 

Well, good news — you can! Deep Freeze provides Reboot To Restore technology. This means that if something untoward has happened during a session, whether it’s a cyberattack against a large corporation or just a child messing around on a school computer, the administrator can fix the problem by simply turning the computer off and back on again. 

By pre-setting a desired pristine state, you can ensure your workstations reset to the condition and configuration you want every time you turn them on. You don’t have to constantly worry about keeping up with treat actors; you have a fail-safe ace up your sleeve. But to get the most out of Faronics Deep Freeze and this technology, it’s important to understand how “Frozen” and “Thawed” states work.

Frozen vs. Thawed Drives

“But wait,” you may be thinking, “if the computer resets every time you turn it off, then how do I save anything?” Don’t worry, we thought of that.

You can still make changes that the workstation will save, so whatever word processor document, spreadsheet or Sim City progress you’ve made won’t disappear. What makes this possible is drive partition.

The Data Igloo 

Faronics Data Igloo allows Deep Freeze users to exempt specified data folders, entire user profiles and registry keys from being Frozen by redirecting them to a Thawed partition (or ThawSpace), while keeping the operating system partition completely protected.

The Frozen part of your drive is what resets every time you turn off your computer. That data cannot be changed permanently as long as it is set to Frozen. No malicious act or innocent mistake can affect these programs and information once you switch the workstation off and back on. However, the ThawSpace is on the other side of the partition.

The data and apps stored in ThawSpace act as they would on any computer. You can save progress, add or delete programs and files and retain any data you need here. However, you shouldn’t store sensitive information in ThawSpace if you want to keep it safe. 

“What Should I ‘Freeze’ and What Should I ‘Thaw’?”

The user profiles and data you store in ThawSpace are, theoretically, accessible to outsiders who gain access to your system. ThawSpace data and applications can still benefit from Deep Freeze’s other cybersecurity features, but no defense is impenetrable. Therefore, you have to be comfortable with a certain level of risk for anything you store in ThawSpace.

If you manage an elementary school library, deciding what’s stored on Thawed and Frozen Drives may not be that tough. Keep critical applications and sensitive information on the Frozen drive and let the kids monkey around with what’s on the Thawed drives. If an evil-doing, genius cybercriminal gains access to the system, they could delete little Tommy’s story about the time-traveling robot who gets into a fight with King John, but, in all fairness to Tommy’s writing skills, that’s probably not too damaging of a blow.

However, if this criminal mastermind managed to steal kids’ and parents’ sensitive information, that would be a hammer blow. That’s why it makes sense to keep that information safely tucked away on a Frozen drive.

You can also change what you keep on each side of the partition. Just remember that you have to “thaw” Deep Freeze to make any changes. When you’re done with your alterations, just freeze one partition again and you’re back to being protected.

Ready To Learn More? 

Please reach out to our experts today to learn more about how Frozen and Thawed drives work.