Introducing AX64 Time Machine - hybrid imaging/snapshot software

on win8.1, i observed that the local rescue media, once installed use the old Win7 "text line" BCD menu , how to keep the original Win8.1 BCD ?

 

What would happen if the "Other" drives were not plugged in during the creation of the baseline and then plugged in afterward. Perhaps AX64 would not monitor these "Other" drives going forward in this situation.

 

And a great many others, more I would suggest, who do not want it to default shut down. AX64 never defaulted to shut down so I fail to see why this is a problem now....or have I missed something?

 

Must you really have PerfectDisk?
Honestly, I really cannot see the user benefit.

The days of third party Defragmenters/Optimizers are gone, in my opinion.

 

waj just said

 

Windows 8.1 64bit HP Pavilion AMD, with AX64 v2.
Previous version 1.4.1.48 seemed to work perfectly.
This version created Recovery CD OK but very slow.
Backup seemed normal. (Possibly some drive letter confusion?)
Warm Restore did not work at all.
Recovery window gave message 'Creating Recovery Media'. This completed and system rebooted.
Reboot menu was too fast and was defaulted to Recovery, which it then booted to and told me the original partition could not be found. I was offered to use the 'blank' main disk, which would be wiped. I declined!
Next time, I caught the boot menu and selected Windows 8.1 and was rebooted to Windows as it was before recovery attempt.
I note that the dual boot menu was automatically set up, I did not choose it.
When I was quick enough to catch it, I selected Windows 8.1 and it then waited for 'Enter', which it did not do with the default of 'Recovery'.
I have the logs, where do I send them please?

ps Edit: Cold boot from the Recovery CD resulted in the same message Original Partition could not be found.
The warm boot (acting like a cd recovery could not be exited with the Exit button only the window X. Surely the warm recovery should have simply rebooted to the new recovered system, not acted like a CD recovery??

 

I just took a look at the info page for the new release and, for what its worth, the new UI leaves me cold.

I would suggest keeping the basic graphics and layout of the current UI and just add tabs at the top so the tools and detailed info provided as in the new UI are accessible. Also, in the current UI, I really like the moving bar that shows the progress of a back-up or merge, hopefully it will be returned in the official release.

PS: the time to next backup was also something I appreciated. Not a big deal of course but,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

 

Thumbs up, this is what I also miss in v2... You could look at the program's window even from a distance and still be in the picture "how much left"...

 

I second you, Peter, it always pays to have a backup solution, even for a backup... I also still have my Acronis TI installed even though I use it much less nowadays as AXTM has captured my trust and is my preferred backup solution. But I trashed Rollback Rx/Eazy Fix hopefully for good as they have both let me down in recent months very badly.

 

Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit, manual backup of OS partition daily and when required.

Well, version 2 did not work for me, cold restore worked ok but attemping warm/hot restore came up with a message, can not find original drive, just listed my other 2 drives.
Like others, I am not that keen on the new GUI, but I did like the new browser window, not that happy with close to tray and the removal of the time remaining bar.

 

Waj, the implementation under v1 was very acceptable... I don't know why it was changed. When AUTOMATIC backups were selected, the CLOSE on the main window just dropped it to the SystemTray. When AUTOMATIC backups were NOT SELECTED, the application would really close and exit... that's really what you want.

If the app (rather than a system service) is responsible for the AUTOMATIC backup management, then it must continue to run upon a CLOSE if AUTOMATIC is selected... if it's not, then really close it.

 

W7sp1x86
----------
Observation #5: From a 3-snap v2 INCREMENTAL chain, used WARM RESTORE to return to a 7-snap v1 INCREMENTAL chain, then used HOT RESTORE from the v1 environment to return to the last snap of the previous v2 INCREMENTAL chain... both were completely successful. Although both chains were based on the identical protected partition, both the v2 WARM and v1 HOT restores appeared to do complete image restores rather than partials (DIFFERENCE restore)... this was expected.

I'm STILL off to see the wizard...!

 

Hi, I'm fuzzy about hot and warm restores. Is a hot restore in V1 the same as a warm restore in V2, and is the term warm replacing hot in v2, or are they different restore options? Thanks in advance

 

TWL845, they restore the same data (DIFFERENCE rather than FULL) but do it in a slightly different way.

HOT RESTORE would do the DIFFERENCE restore under the LIVE protected Windows, which was problematic for some users causing incomplete HOT restores requiring a COLD restore to remedy.

The new WARM RESTORE under v2 also does a DIFFERENCE restore but does not do it under the LIVE protected Windows. It does it under an external WinRE environment, the same used by the RECOVERY MEDIA as well as the LOCAL BOOT media. The process takes a bit longer due to the need to BOOT into the RECOVERY environment but produces the same result.

 

W7xp1x86
----------
Observation #6: ...and this is not for the faint of heart.

The following appears as a bi-product of the new v2 WARM RESTORE...

When BOOTing under most any v2 RECOVERY environment (LOCAL, CD (haven't tested UFD yet), etc.), if the protected partition appears to be "in tact" (I know not what criteria is used to make this decision by TM), all restore requests seem to be executed as WARM RESTORES... as in DIFFERENCE restores rather than FULL (or COLD) restores. I tested this phenomena using both the LOCAL and the CD BOOT environments... I was quite surprised.

Since I don't know what criteria is used for TM to make the decision as to COLD or WARM restore, I decided to do the following (this was not done in an exhaustive or very scientific way). While in the external BOOT environment (TM RECOVERY MEDIA), I used the "Explorer ++" option to DELETE (2) files from the current protected partition... this, to me, would represent serious "external" partition modification, the kind that would normally be detected by TM and acted upon accordingly. This would also be done outside of any TM partition tracking that occurs only under the LIVE protected Windows.

I then ran a RESTORE operation to the last snap in the INCREMENTAL chain which actually executed a WARM RESTORE to that position. Upon reBOOTing the system, the (2) files deleted outside of the LIVE protected Windows environment reappeared. "Great!" you would say, TM restored those files. But I don't believe that would have been the case, and I will further test to determine. What really happened is that TM returned the file system to what it was prior to the external deletions, and lucky for it, the file content was still in that same place on the storage element... VOILA!... it reappears. BUT, if from the external environment, I had replaced that file content, IN PLACE, with different content (one page of text for another, for example), I believe what I would have seen upon restoration is the new page of text, not the original.

I have to surmise the above mainly 'cause I don't know how the new TM makes its decisions about what to restore. Since the changes were made OUTSIDE of the TM tracking mechanism, that change information is NOT available to TM, although since the changes were made though a normal Windows (WinRE) file acquisition mechanism, they could be seen by the TM recovery environment. With v1 this wasn't an issue. It detected volume access changes and acted accordingly... during an INCREMENTAL it would rescan the entire disk to insure the integrity of the volume tracking and image the real differences during the reSCAN. This is why INCREMENTALs following external volume modification would take so long. When a LOCAL/RECOVERY RESTORE operation was performed, a FULL RESTORE to that point was always done... no "warms" or partials of any kind. This insured the integrity of the restoration... a complete COLD restore.

With WARM restores being performed all the time, especially in external BOOT environments, the restore now appears to be at risk due to external modification... not so much the file allocation information ($MFT, FAT tables, etc.), but for sure, file content information. I will continue testing and will report accordingly.

 

...an addendum to my post above

This appears to be a product of the "Hot Restore" ADVANCED OPTION being forced upon users of the recovery environment (it cannot be changed in that environment). If that option can be forced as NOT SELECTED rather than SELECTED, and, indeed a COLD restore is accomplished accordingly, I don't believe the above problem would exist (it would be the same as v1).

BUT... it looks like TM is using the exact same environment to do its new WARM RESTORE ("Hot Restore" ADVANCED OPTION selected) and that's being carried over into the normal RECOVERY ENVIRONMENTs... which I think should be an absolute no-no.

I will continue to investigate...

 

Hi Froggie and all,

Firstly, THANKS ALOT for all your torture testing of V2.0. So far we're really digging the good news that it seems to work quite well for the majority of cases. As for the UI quirks, these things are far easier to tweak (albeit not that easy) than it is to modify the engine.

TM always minimizes to system tray
I agree with the suggestion to have TM close completely if no auto backup is set, but to have it minimize to the sys-tray when auto is set to on. These small little features were reset when we implemented the new GUI and we overlooked this old implementation. Thanks for picking up on this. Often when we get too deep into coding our brains over look these things.
Warm restore occurring all the time
The observation that warm restore is in fact occurring within the Rescue Media environment appears to hold true. We will be looking into resolving this issue asap.
Warm restore not working
For others that seem to only be able to do cold restores, no warm restores - this was occurring for another user during pre-beta testing. We are aware of this issue and it is a priority for us to get to the bottom of it. For those of you experiencing these issues, please e-mail info@ax64.com with your logs and as much detail as possible regarding your circumstances. Screen shots/photos of what is happening on your screen is even better.

UI stuff

Personally, I hear you guys on all fronts regarding UI and I agree on most fronts. I will sound your suggestions to the other members of the team. Personally, I think:

• Progress bar/merging bar needs to be more prominent when occurring. Something more akin to how it was presented in V1.
• Selecting/changing/adding new backup sources not intuitive enough.
• Menu items right after uninstalling local media need to be clearer.
• More power over controlling auto-backups on individual partitions (this requires a lot of work. We hear you on this and have attempted to implement it in the past - requires some changes to the engine, so you won't be seeing this in the first iteration of v2, but this is definitely something we have in development).
• Closing Time Machine dashboard should completely close the app when no automatic backups are set. Minimize to system tray if automatic backups are set to on.
• TM rescue media close button not working

If you haven't been responded to by me, please send us a mail directly at info@ax64.com. It's far easier to keep up with each technical issue that way. As often in this thread, a lot of support questions get lost in the maelstrom of discussion!

Thanks again guys for your comments and testing.

Cheers,

Waj

 

Greetings!

That is a problem with any multi-purpose email OR Forum. I would suggest that you guys create a BetaTest email addy at AX64.com and have anyone testing for you (us?) use that email as well as this forum for problem reporting. That way you won't have to sift non-testing "noise" out of the INFO email box and/or the forum for test specific problems.

I suggest a private BetaTest email AND forum submission... that way other testers can keep track as to what people are finding. Some of us who might be going through an informal test script (me) can eliminate duplicate testing of bug areas already discovered by others. It was Pete's forum report that had me look deeper into his anomaly about COLD restoring looking like WARM restoring... that's why the forum reporting is also important.

 

I have just hit a problem with warm restore.

I wanted to go back to remove another program and this was contained in a ver 1 backup.

It all appeared to work ok, but on checking TM had not been removed and also the other program still remained working on the C drive. In fact nothing had been changed in the restore.

This might be by design in that TM 2 cannot be removed that way, and if so a warning should be issued to chose a cold restore instead.

 

Warm restore always fails on Vista

Yes, I am one of those few who are still using Windows Vista, Vista Ultimate 32-bit in this case. Ever since I have been following AX64 I have been unable to get it to work on my laptop: hot restores always stopped sometime during the restore process. So with version 2 beta I tried again because, as I mentioned earlier in this thread, I really want it to work for me.

I tried v2 in a Windows 7 VM and everything seemed to work fine. So I took the plunge and installed it on my Vista physical machine. I tested the warm restore first and right there did it already fail. When rebooting into the recovery environment I briefly see two boot options: my Vista installation and Time Manager recovery. It then automatically tries to to boot into TM recovery. However, I then get this error:

"Windows Boot Manager. Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause. To fix the problem:
1. Insert your Windows Installation Disc and restart your computer.
2. Choose your language settings and then click next.
3. Click "Repair your computer".

...

File \Windows\System32\winload.exe
status: 0xc0000001
Info: The selected entry could not be loaded because the application is missing or corrupt.

Enter = continue"​

If I then click Enter I am presented with the above mentioned 2 boot options again. If I now click Vista, my computer starts correctly into the state that i originally started TM in (thus not the version i wanted to restore). But now when (re)booting my computer it always tries to start TM recovery and subsequently fails.

I then tried to see whether this issue also occurs in a fresh vista install with the latest Windows Updates installed and yes: here too I get the exact same error as described above.

I have not been able to test hot restore. I wanted to test warm restore first, because I had never had a good hot restore before on my computer. But warm restore crashed as described, so I never got around to testing a hot restore. Also, I did not test cold restore, because when I wanted to do so I got the warning that my entire hard disk would be erased because the original partition could not be found (I had used Acronis True Image to restore my fresh Vista installation to see whether the described issue also occurred in that install). Since I have a system and a data partition on my hard drive and did not want to run the risk of losing my data I then used Acronis again to restore an image of the system partition I made just before installing TM.


When using TM for a restore I am asked to provide an installation disc to prepare the recovery media. It does not matter whether I provide the Vista Home Premium, the Vista Ultimate Anytime Upgrade or the Windows 7 Ultimate upgrade DVD, the issue always occurs.

Another question in this respect: why do I have to provide my installation DVD when preparing a restore? In my Windows 7 VM TM was able to prepare the recovery straight away. Does it have to with Windows 7's hidden system partition?

Some further comments I have:
- TM forces me to put the backups in the folder "My Backups". As stated by others before I would like to be able to choose where the backups go, so that I can maintain a logical folder structure. Also, Acronis True Image also makes a folder My backups (although the b in backups is not capitalized), so I see a risk here with 2 programs using the same folder name. True Image lets me change the location however.
- After installing TM the first backup is started automatically. I prefer a question whether I want to do that, where Yes is the default setting. I had to find a good location first when I installed TM, but there was no way to refuse the first backup, so I let it start and then immediately canceled it.
- I think it is a good idea to ask to make a recovery medium directly after installing or upgrading TM. There currently is no such question, so one really has to think about it, go to the Backup Tools and then make the recovery iso/CD. I wonder how many people will not do this, because they forget or do not know.

I hope this was helpful and that I will be finally, finally able to use TM on my Vista machine soon

Pim Joosten

 

I have been a registered user of AX64 since its first release. I did put it aside for a while because of a couple of hot restore failures as mentioned many times by others in prior posts on this forum.

I have just installed the beta 2 to test, as I really do want this product to succeed.

One point i would like to bring up. In every version I have installed I get the option to pick an installation directory and I always choose a folder on my D drive (i have my main hard drive with two partitions, one for OS the other just for applications. All data resides on my E drive) however no matter what i select Time Machine goes ahead and installs itself in C:\program files. This same behaviour is valid for version 2.

 

I do believe you can chose where to put backups. It defaults to "My Backups" but you can designate whatever backup named folder you wish.

(Not on my prime computer now so I can't provide the exact location, but I believe it's on the same selection page as when you designate the destination drive)