Toolwiz Time Machine

It doesn't modify the MBR so that's a big plus. If I'm well informed most time machine type apps modify the MBR?

 

Okay, have just given this a little go and it's not bad at all. Installed a few programs, restored the system and not a trace of anything that I installed. Restore took a couple of minutes and a few extra seconds to boot after restore, but nothing I can't live without.

Every time I tried Comodo Time Machine, there were always folders left over in Program Files and I never felt that my system was clean, but this little thing did the job very nicely. Early days, but so far it does what it says, and does it well.

 

Did you test it with programs which require reboot?

 

Good to know. TTM Works smoothly in my XP system for 2 days.

As their support said, they want to make Toolwiz Time Machine simple and powerful. Hope we will see the final release soon next month. The Beta did a great job here.

 

Ah, good point. No, but I'm just about to do so .

 

I tried CTM a lot with malware testing too & no traces of anything was there after restore. I tried it on XP 32 SP3 which is kind of my test system

 

Just tried installing Outpost Pro and NIS2013. Outpost needed a reboot, but NIS didn't (didn't realise), but both perfectly clean restores - nothing . Very impressive for a beta - so far. It's quick and feels very solid.

Admittedly most folders were empty, but it was the fact that they were still there and it just felt that CTM hadn't restored properly, to me.

 

That's great to hear, thank you for testing.

 

So the big "?" nowadays, SSD and is trim functioning?

 

Snapshots don,t take any significant amount of space and you can also delete them any time.

 

Quick question:

How do we restore to a snapshot if the machine is unbootable? I could not find any options or am I missing something?

Thanks

 

From Toolwiz Support in their forum:

► "We want to make a "light" Time Machine which is same as the TTF. To keep them as simple as they are and We do not have the plan to make a restore CD or Image for boot failure rescue.

If we add a option to choose snapshot, we need to Hook the MBR and boot loader, this will make the product has less compatibility".

 

Thanks MajoMo. I have added this to my setup. Seems simple and stable so far.

 

@ lurker20, you are welcomed!

Same here.

 

3 days, more than 30 times restore, still solid.

 

Does it play nice with other imaging softwares like Macrium? They say on their page that they disable VSS.

 

So do I understand correctly that TTM does not use VSS? If so, that's good news for me because my VSS hasn't worked for at least 2-3 years now.

 

Reflect has a filter driver to perform a hot backup. This is not a problem for Reflect. But I'm wondering how does TTM deal with database without VSS support.

 

Reflect uses VSS. It doesn't use its own filter driver.

 

Actually, Reflect does include it's own proprietary driver (pssnap.sys), which takes over when and if VSS is not working.

 

Must be for an older version of Reflect. I have no such file on all 3 of my computers with Reflect 5.1. And the Macrium knowledge base has only one article about that file and it's rather old.

 

Very honestly, not sure if they're still using the same proprietary driver, but I can tell you that I'm currently using Reflect 5.1 Pro and it works flawlessly. And I haven't had a functional VSS for several years. I can't use any program that requires VSS.

 

Regardless, it still doesn't answer the question. I use Reflect with VSS. Is this going to cause a problem with this new software as they claim they disable VSS?

 

All Imaging Software use VSS beside Image For Windows (IFW), which uses PHYLock. Therefore, TTM is not compatible with all Imaging Programs besides IFW.

Best Regards,

 

Not correct, with Drive Snapshot you have a choice, also this new one AOMEI Data Backuper has an option "Don't use VSS", ... probably more imaging apps, can't test them all.