Active@ Boot Disk 10

Discussion in 'backup, imaging & disk mgmt' started by treehouse786, May 2, 2015.

  1. treehouse786

    treehouse786 Registered Member

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    Major improvements:
    • WinPE upgraded to version 5.1 (Windows 8 SP1-based);
    • Switched from 32-bit (x86) to 64-bit (x64) architecture;
    • Added support for UEFI Secure Boot mode;
    • Boot Disk Creator can setup default application startup;
    • Virtual RAM Disk (X:) available size increased to 512MB;
    Included the latest software versions:
    • Active@ File Recovery 14.1;
    • Active@ Partition Recovery 12.1;
    • Active@ Disk Image 7;
    Included new utilities:
    • 7-Zip file manager (decompresses most archives);
    • SumatraPDF document viewer (PDF, CHM, eBooks,...);
    • HoneyView Image viewer (JPG, TIFF, Raw Images,...);
    • SysInfo - shows info about hardware, disks, drivers...;
    Professional version contains installed packages:
    • WinPE-NetFX - Microsoft .NET Framework 4.5;
    • WinPE-Dot3Svc - Support for IEEE 802.X;
    • WinPE-RNDIS - Remote NDIS over USB;
    • WinPE-PowerShell - Windows PowerShell;
    • WinPE-WMI & WinPE-StorageWMI;
    • WinPE-Scripting - multiple-language scripting;
    • WinPE-SecureStartup - BitLocker & TPM support;
    • WinPE-EnhancedStorage - TCG & IEEE 1667 support;
    Included new Professional tools:
    • Windows PowerShell;
    • DiskPart & DiskRAID;
    • BitLocker Support, Unlock & Repair;
    • iSCSI, SSH & SFTP clients
     
  2. treehouse786

    treehouse786 Registered Member

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    interesting they list Active@ Disk Image 7 as an update but cant find the desktop version anywhere yet. might be a sign a new active@ disk image is on the way real soon
     
  3. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    Tree,

    Would that be on another disk?

     
  4. treehouse786

    treehouse786 Registered Member

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    Active@ Data Studio is just the combining of active@ disk image and the desktop versions of their software. its basically a unified installer for all the different software's LSOFT produce including the boot disk. i have data studio, no sign of active@ disk v7

    i also tried the updated boot disk and the version number shows 7 for disk image but i cant see what the changes are. no gui changes yet
     
  5. HAN

    HAN Registered Member

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    Thanks for the news! Nice program!
     
  6. HAN

    HAN Registered Member

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    Bought version 10 of Boot Disk (I don't need the Suite.)

    A couple of observations...

    After my whining about it not being UEFI/Secure Boot ready for what seems like way too long, it is indeed UEFI/Secure Boot ready. My PC at home is Win 7 and too old but I tested it on a newer x64 Win 8.1 Acer laptop and it came right up. Finally! :thumb:

    I did test at home the new v 7.0 Active@ Disk Image for a full drive image. I am limited on speed comparisons against most anyone else as my target media are portable 5400 rpm drives that connect via USB 2.0. So fast imaging speeds are not something I have. Still, my own comparisons versus other apps like Clonezilla, Image for Linux and Reflect 6 boot disc are, IMO, valid because they are my other bootable apps I use.

    In round minutes, Active@ Disk Image 7.0 took 66 minutes. Image for Linux and Clonezilla each took 45 and Reflect took 56. So while I'm very comfortable with Active@ Disk Image's capabilities, it's slow. I may use it once in a while just because I am a person who likes to keep my eggs in many baskets. Multiple images in many physical places and from various sources is, IMO, a good thing.

    Finally, the rest of the Active@ Boot Disk is very nice. Nice built-in tools. If one needs a good reset/recovery environment, this is a good one.
     
  7. TheRollbackFrog

    TheRollbackFrog Imaging Specialist

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    Well... I gave this a spin this morning. Turns out, all my 32-bit "Carry Along" apps (User added) DO NOT WORK in this 64-bit WinPE environment... anyone know why? Those same apps run just fine in my 64-bit Desktop environment.

    Do I need to throw a switch or something... :confused:
     
  8. Peter2150

    Peter2150 Global Moderator

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    Not sure why, but I know you need to run the correct version of Drive Snapshot and IFW depending on whether the PE is 32 or 64 bit. May be a driver issue, not sure
     
  9. oliverjia

    oliverjia Registered Member

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    SysWOW64 folder is probably missing from the Active PE environment. That folder is needed if you would like to run 32-bit apps in a 64-bit PE.


     
  10. HAN

    HAN Registered Member

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    Last edited: May 7, 2015
  11. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    TRF,

    There is no subsystem to support 32-bit exes. A disadvantage of the latest Active@ Boot Disk is it will only boot on systems which have a processor that supports x64. You can't make a 32-bit boot disk. But if you have an x86 OS on a computer with an x64 processor, that's OK. You can make a boot disk and it will boot. But in a 64-bit environment.

    If you use a Win7 or Win8 boot disk as a WinPE, x86 disks can only run 32-bit exes and x64 disks can only run 64-bit exes.

    The same applies to TeraByte's TBWinRE/PE. If you want a 32-bit boot disk it has to be created in x86 Windows and it will only run 32-bit exes. If you want a 64-bit boot disk it has to be created in x64 Windows and it will only run 64-bit exes.

    We have a couple of 32-bit UEFI tablets. Active@ Boot Disk 10 won't boot because the processor doesn't support x64. Previous Active@ Boot Disks won't boot either as they don't support UEFI and the tablets don't boot in Legacy MBR mode.
     
    Last edited: May 7, 2015
  12. oliverjia

    oliverjia Registered Member

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    @Brian K

    You can manually compile a Win8PE_SE or Win8.1SE environment. With the tools provided at theoven.org, you can make an x64 PE that can run 32 bit apps, and also support UEFI secure boot. You can probably run all the active tools as portable exe.

    http://theoven.org/index.php?board=33.0
     
  13. Atari800xl

    Atari800xl Registered Member

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    I agree with Oliverjia, the projects at TheOven.org are great, I use them all the time.
    I'm looking forward to testing the new Active Disk Image 7 on it, haven't found it anywhere, though.
    With the previous version, only around 21mb worth of files were needed, and like OliverJia said, they could pretty much be used in "portable" mode.
     
  14. treehouse786

    treehouse786 Registered Member

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    thank you for this info
     
  15. andylau

    andylau Registered Member

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    Disk Image 7.0.2 May 12, 2015
    • Progress displayed on the TaskBar icon
    • Scheduled Running task Progress can be monitored
    • User interface & performance improvements
    • Active@ Boot Disk switched to WinPE 5.1 64-bit (x64) base which performs faster & optimizes RAM usage
    • Active@ Boot Disk now being able to boot the latest UEFI Secure Boot systems
     
  16. oliverjia

    oliverjia Registered Member

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    LOL, Finally! UEFI Secure boot support..

    I've already tested the new v7.02 from a boot USB, imaging an OS HDD Drive with data of about 29.2GB. With high compression, the process of full imaging took about 5 minute on my i5-2500K desktop (similar duration as IFL imaging). The final image is about 18.2 GB, on par with that produced by IFL with standard compression. The performance does appear to be greatly improved in this version! By comparison, ATI 2015 boot usb took about 4 minutes to complete the same task, with slightly smaller image file (17.8GB). Macrium Reflect v6 boot USB took about 7 minutes with a image file size of 19.2GB.

    Could you comment on the reliability of Active DI? I have not really used it before so could not comment.
     
  17. treehouse786

    treehouse786 Registered Member

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    as good as it gets in my opinion. i have done more restores than i can remember and active@ has never failed on me. the only time backup verification was failing was when a hdd was dying on me so in fact active@ warned about that. i do 99% of my backups in windows (live imaging)
     
  18. Atari800xl

    Atari800xl Registered Member

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    Thanks for confirming ADI's reliability, treehouse786! I quickly tested the new free version, and it looks like a winner! I booted with a Win8PESE USB (a project from TheOven.org) and used the portable program files (I just extracted the files from the ADI installer using InnoUnpack). So it's free, fast, easy to use and portable!

    What do you say Oliverjia, does it get your "UEFI Secureboot blessing" as well?
     
  19. Hadron

    Hadron Registered Member

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  20. Atari800xl

    Atari800xl Registered Member

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  21. oliverjia

    oliverjia Registered Member

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    @treehouse786

    Thanks for the confirmation of ADI's reliability.

    @Atari800xl

    LOL yes I approve this new version :thumb: :thumb:
    It's now officially one of my favorites in disk imaging (Acronis, IFL and ADI).
     
  22. HAN

    HAN Registered Member

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    I've used Active@ Disk Image via both the ADI program and the Boot Disk package. I've never had it fail to create or restore any image I tried with it.
     
  23. oliverjia

    oliverjia Registered Member

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    Thanks HAN for your comment. Looks like ADI v7 is a keeper.
     
  24. andylau

    andylau Registered Member

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    It is quite good for me. Sometimes I use it to do hot-image. I like it more than Image for Windows.
    Acronis is good if you only use it for doing cold image(I use it on WinPE), it's my main imaging app.
     
  25. HAN

    HAN Registered Member

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    Noticed Active@ Boot Disk is now at version 10.0.1. No idea what the difference is between the new version and the original 10.0.0...
     
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