AOMEI Backupper & AOMEI Partition Assistant

Discussion in 'backup, imaging & disk mgmt' started by Masterblaster, Mar 18, 2014.

  1. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    Results with two Win10 systems and AOMEI Backupper. Disk images were restored to a new empty HD.

    MBR Win 10 system. Success.

    UEFI Win10 system. Failure. As with Win8 the restored OS failed to boot and the restored disk was a MBR disk rather than a GPT disk.
     
  2. andylau

    andylau Registered Member

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    How about "System Backup"?
     
  3. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    Andy,

    "System Backup" is a poorly worded choice in AOMEI. In Post #142 I wrote...

    So for a hard drive failure a "System Backup" hasn't backed up enough partitions. "System Backup" would be OK if you were restoring to the same HD in the event of an OS software issue. "System Backup" backs up the Windows and the EFI partitions.
     
  4. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    MisterB,

    I was intrigued so I did a sector by sector backup and sector by sector restore to a new empty HD. Win8 didn't boot and the target disk remained a MBR disk. (empty HDs are also reported as MBR disks even though there isn't a MBR) All 4 partitions were present on the target HD after the restore finished.

    AOMEI has no problem with restoring a disk image to a new empty HD if the OS is installed in MBR mode. But it fails if the OS is installed in UEFI mode.
     
    Last edited: Feb 19, 2015
  5. andylau

    andylau Registered Member

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    you can report to aomei if you want this problem to be fixed
     
  6. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    See Pete's reply #129.
     
  7. andylau

    andylau Registered Member

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    I saw it before, maybe still no one reports it:p
     
  8. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    Me either. One of the users should do this. I'm not interested in interacting with AOMEI Support as it could be time consuming.
     
  9. appster

    appster Registered Member

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    China is celebrating its Spring Festival holiday until the 25th of Feb. AOMEI is closed.
     
  10. Peter2150

    Peter2150 Global Moderator

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    Thanks for the info. Another reason I am glad I moved on
     
  11. MisterB

    MisterB Registered Member

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    I emailed Aomei a link to the posts about the problem. Backupper doesn't restore the mbr on mbr disks either. I copied a Windows 7 partition to a mbr disk that I had converted from GPT. No boot and I used Partition Assistants rebuild mbr function to get it to boot which tells me that no mbr boot code was created either by the convert to mbr disk function in Partition Assistant or by copying a partition with Backupper. For mbr disks, the rebuild mbr function will fix it. At the partition level Backupper works very well but there are obvious problems for imaging whole disks.
     
  12. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    MisterB,

    You got me interested (again). I installed AOMEI to a MBR Win8.1 system, created a Disk Image and restored the image to a new empty HD. No problems. Win8.1 booted normally.

    I'm only having trouble with a UEFI system.
     
  13. MisterB

    MisterB Registered Member

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    Did it have a mbr? The disk I had didn't. It really wasn't a big problem because Partition Assistant was able to make one. Oh, wait, I didn't do a whole disk image, just partition restore after a conversion from gpt to mbr. That computer went out the door yesterday but I have another hard disk coming in the mail and I will try a whole disk clone on that one.
     
  14. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    Yes, it did have a MBR. I agree, your partition restore caused the issue.
     
  15. MisterB

    MisterB Registered Member

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    A couple of things I've noticed after recently working a bit more with Aomei Backupper and PE Builder boot media:

    Differential backups are faster than incrementals. It took 4 minutes to do a differential backup of an 18gb Xp partition with 14gbs used.

    The PE Builder environment comes with bundled 3rd party utilities. One is BootICE which, I think, could make an image of the track that Backupper fails to include in its image. I played with it and a file recovery utility called Recuva which found all kinds of files on a disk I bought recently that was supposed to be completely wiped.
     
  16. tgell

    tgell Registered Member

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    Aoemi has a PEbuilder that includes Aoemi Partition Assistant and Backupper. I wonder if the disk is first initialized as GPT a UEFI disk backup would succeed?
     
  17. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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  18. Moogle Stiltzkin

    Moogle Stiltzkin Registered Member

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    Hi everyone,

    I helped forward some of the things mentioned in the thread, and AOMEI came back with a reply they wanted me to share on their behalf.


    PS: i'm just another beta tester :} not an AOMEI staff for the record.
     
  19. Moogle Stiltzkin

    Moogle Stiltzkin Registered Member

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    @Brian K

    Well you can post on imgur then link here, and i'll relay for you if you want :X

    Or you can directly send it to beta@aomeitech.com yourself and get credit for their beta gift due in march if you make it to top100 :}
     
  20. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    Moogle Stiltzkin,

    Thank you for the information. It is appreciated.

    13 other imaging apps can restore a UEFI Win8 image to a new, empty HD and I'm glad to see AOMEI is working on a new version. Can I ask AOMEI how a user should create a GPT disk with the free versions of Backupper and Partition Assistant? I've suggested it be done using Diskpart but is there an AOMEI tool?
     
  21. Moogle Stiltzkin

    Moogle Stiltzkin Registered Member

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    good question, i wondered about that as well.

    I found this on youtube

    convert hdd from gpt to mbr and vice versa
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUhH6FWxgD0

    From what i heard doing it this way you don't lose your data, but i'm not 100% on this so better double check.

    There probably other ways of doing this, but seems like that looked the easiest method :X
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Feb 28, 2015
  22. Moogle Stiltzkin

    Moogle Stiltzkin Registered Member

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  23. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    Both answers suggest a GPT disk can only be created with Partition Assistant Professional. So my question remains....

    "how a user should create a GPT disk with the free versions of Backupper and Partition Assistant?"
     
  24. oliverjia

    oliverjia Registered Member

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    @Brian K

    This may not be relevant, but AOMEI PM PRO goes on free give away from time to time, so if you pay attention you'll get it pretty easily.
     
  25. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    OK. I'm just playing the Devil's Advocate for someone who has used AOMEI Backupper and has experienced a failed restore of a UEFI image. The imaging app needs to be fixed. A user shouldn't have to create a GPT disk prior to restoring the image as the app should do this as part of the restore process to an empty HD.
     
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