AOMEI Backupper & AOMEI Partition Assistant

I don't find this mediocre at all. If anything, I give it 5 stars as the best WinPe boot environment I've ever used. I've created my own with AIK that I can compare it too. I went as far as imaging the boot.wim file from the bootable media onto a live partition so I could tweak it, add my own software and try to figure out how they did it. There are obviously driver issues with some systems but that doesn't make it less than an excellent product. Aomei does have a track record of improving things so I would expect that PE builder will improve and deal with some of the driver problems others are experiencing.

What PE builder does is take both the Aomei programs and WinPE system files from the system it uses to create the boot media. My bootable media is says Windows 7 Ultimate and has bitlocker support. If the system you are using to create WinPE boot media is lacking in something, it won't get onto the boot media. They have to use what's on the end users computer to create the WinPE media legally. Otherwise Aomei would have to pay Microsoft licensing fees and wouldn't be able to do this as a free product.

 

I also tried to build the WinPE in Windows 8.1 and UEFI. Installed Backupper, selected UEFI mode. First I tried to create an ISO file. The process finished with no errors. I used Rufus to create a boot UFD, selected the option for UEFI. At the end of the process, Rufus reported an error: "Unable to patch/setup files for boot" [I had never seen this error before].

Then I tried again, this time creating the UFD directly. The process finished without errors, but at the end a Windows message appeared: "Format the disk on X: unit to be able to use it" (translated, X: corresponded to the USB).

I ignored the message and tried to boot from the USB in normal UEFI mode. The USB appeared in the boot menu, but when I selected it, Windows ignored the USB and booted normally.

 

Based on what I'm reading about this product, you seem to be the only one using the word EXCELLENT and 5 STARS... I surely cannot.

The documentation states it uses your resident WinRE.wim to create this environment, and any unusual drivers needed for this system are on this system. With those building blocks (which are both on this system), I would expect a successful BOOT environment build, not a BLACK SCREEN with nothing operational. This is on the simplest of systems (LEGACY, MBR-based). The BOOT environment isn't having a problem with mice or keyboards, it just won't run, period.

I tried this WinPE (same system) when it came out as v1.0 and it actually BOOTed but wouldn't work on W811... it would operate on W7. I waited a while and went back at v1.4 and now it doesn't even BOOT correctly. I cannot use the word EXCELLENT when discussing AOMEI's PE Builder... it is mediocre at best, running on some systems but not very many from reading here and in their forum.

 

" I second that emotion " .... I'd probably "third" it as well , if I knew what that actually meant ! ...

I've spent way too much time over the past few days trying to get this thing to work properly.

If I had to sum it up ? ..... I'd have to say that it is system dependent to a ridiculous degree !

 

Well, there is one strong point to AOMEI Backupper : it seems to uninstall cleanly. So one can always try it and if it doesn't work, just uninstall it and pick another product. I find it nice that a reboot is not required to perform an image (unless VSS is disabled, it seems a reboot is necessary). The Check Image is also nice, it doesn't just check the last incremental (if an incremental was chosen) but the whole chain. Once it returned an error, I re-did the image and the second one was fine.

 

I stick to my 5 star rating, both for Backupper and PE builder. My post about cloning a system partition to a smaller partition and having it boot the first time is a glowing recommendation for Backupper. That is the sort of thing that challenges an imaging program. After reading a few posts about PE builder not working, I tried it myself and was impressed enough to start a little reverse engineering and see how they got such a rocking WinPE environment. I've been using Backupper since version 1 for some mission critical imaging and I've had no major failings and it has turned into my main imaging application.

 

My biggest gripe with it is the dialog box that keeps saying that I need to download and install AIK .
This really should not be necessary in W7 !
On the plus side , the Linux version of the rescue disk seems to work nicely.

 

Being an imaging app, the basic requirement is one word "reliable". Nothing else is more important than that.
My impression of AOMEI is that it's really tricky, to say the least.
I'll pick tons of other proven imagers over AOMEI anytime. Again it's just my opinion.

 

I guess it's because the wim file (cannot find its exact name) is not where it is supposed to be. I tried recently with 3 Win7 PC, Starter, Home editions, and each time I had no AIK download to perform.

 

My recommandation is to use more than one imager. There is always one or more which fails when trying a restore. This one is free with the Std version, so it's worth trying, IMHO.

 

Great advice, but installing more than one imaging product has the potential to cause issues. It would, however, be nice to have just your primary imaging s/w installed, use that for hot and cold imaging, and then use a different product (that is not installed) for cold imaging. I would have liked to have been able to use AOMEI for the latter purpose, but the PE Builder generates a borked WinPE (at least on my machines).

 

That's right, too many imagers may cause issues in some cases I guess but so far I have managed to have several of them on a single PC. And one, Drive Snapshot, doesn't require any installation, so you can always use this one and another one. This being said, I think it's less and less the case with recent windows versions. I used to have such issues with XP, but with 7 and 8, I have yet to encounter a real compatibility issue.

 

I'm inclined to agree on that point .
So now I have images from EaseUS and images from AOMEI and I still have both of them installed so I guess
that if I ever needed to replace the laptop HD I could choose from 4 possible combinations of restore software
and source images.

So why do I still feel uneasy about having a reliable backup method on hand ?
And would I feel more confident if I wasn't relying on freeware ?

 

Well, you can only experience reliability after a number of successful restore. Among the paid solution, there is one I find very reliable and also very fast for incremental/diff backups, Casper 8. Their support is also excellent. The price tag is high but if you manage to get it on a cybermonday or with any other special offer, it is quite competitive. And very very reliable. One drawback though : you cannot encrypt images.

Another paid solution I find very reliable and flexible : R-Drive Image. They offert Linux recovery media only but quite powerful. And again their support is excellent.

 

There's nothing whatsoever wrong with Drive Snapshot except it's a paid solution. I was looking for a free, standalone, solution (as an alternate) that would allow me to boot into 8.1 without having to disable secure-boot. AOMEI would have fit that bill nicely if the WinPE disk I created had functioned properly on my 8.1 machines. Otherwise, it's not really that big of a deal in my case. Hopefully, AOMEI will resolve the issues with their Builder.

 

Do you already contacted their support?

 

Interesting discussion. I've mostly depended on Drive Snapshot when it comes to backing-up as it is so simple to use. But lately I've given some thought to using a 2nd backup program (just in case) so I installed AOMEI Backupper Free which does create backups of my Win7 system without any issues. However, based on the concerns expressed re AOMEI's recovery disk, I think I'll just dust-off my paid copy of Terabyte IFW, which has been 'gathering lots of dust' because of its many settings and options (but it does have a stellar reputation for being reliable)!

 

I remember having issues when creating a boot media but chosing UEFI boot solved the issue AFAIR. Did you also try creating a bootable CD-Rom, sometimes it gives different results than a USB Flashkey.

 

Well, you just have to create the recovery disk, boot from it and try to verify and and explore an image from there. If it works, I bet you can also restore the image.

 

BTW, I have the Pro version, a BitsDuJour or SharewareOnSale offer a while back, with lifetime license including upgrades, for $14 I think.

 

Actually, I did not. First of all, I had an issue with software they were offering free of charge and, frankly, have a problem asking them to fix something I'm not paying for. Further, they must be aware of the issues some people are having with booting because there are posts on their support forum which address that.

 

Actually, I never bothered trying to create a bootable USB flash. I burned a couple of CDs and got the same result with each one.

 

They offer the free version because they want...

The free version also helps them to get more users, and improve their software...

You don't lose anything for try...

 

Okay, I tried. We'll see what, if anything, happens.