Introducing AX64 Time Machine - hybrid imaging/snapshot software

So from an AX64 angle (or Macrium if sideways relevant), if my system is working great on Monday, fast boot up time, etc. I backup with both AX64 and Macrium. Then my system reverts to its slow boot up persona, how is it possible that when I restore back to Monday, that the system doesn't work right again?

 

Pete,

Boot time is just one of the things that are faster with SSD. Programs start and run faster and image/restore is faster. A good example is PhotoShop as it loads in 2 seconds from the SSD and 14 seconds from the HD (same computer). An SSD is the best computer upgrade I've made. I'd never put a main OS on a HD again. I know we run our OS/data differently but a 60 GB SSD would be more than enough for my usage. My Win8.1 partition is 40 GB and it is just over half full.

 

HHD = Hybrid Hard Drive ? Thanks.

 

I don't think I've seen that designation, although I guess it's accurate.

The most often used designation is SSHD (Solid State Hybrid Drive). The original 2.5" device of this type was offered by Seagate (Momentus XT for laptops) and was superior to the ones being offered by Seagate today. The originals were 7200rpm drives, the current ones (to lower costs) are 5900rpm... significanty slower than the originals... depending on usage type, of course. The current ones have bigger NAND caches so if the operating area is kept tight, it should perform pretty well. The original Momentus XT performed very well as an OS drive but fell back to earth if the drive was used for both OS and large data hosting. The cache advantage is lost when large files are being manipulated.

 

Thanks. I know that Asus is proposing that kind of solution for some mid-range laptops, and AFAIK, there is a real improvement over traditionnal HDD.

 

Well, we could try to get this new acronym standardized...

 

Pete's SSHHDDs (he has more than 1)... AND his fingers are HUGE!

 

Just had a weird experience as I was updating my backup (it's on manual only). A red message appeared telling me that my destination drive was running out of space and that I needed to create some, and AX64 would pause until I had done that.
The thing is, I have over 210 GB free on my destination D: drive (on a 2 TB HD). The base backup of my C: drive is approx 24 GB and I had only two additional updates respectively of 750 MB and 850 MB.
After maybe 30 seconds AX64 unpaused itself and proceeded with the update, which at the end turned out to be of 1,75 GB

 

Did it started with "Fast incremental backup..."

 

As I recall the beginning message of backups is "Preparing fast incremental backup ..."

 

The only similar behavior I have observed is the following, with most V2 builds : in some situation, when the tracking of modified sectors is lost, TM, says it starts a full backup, indicates during the backup a big increase of saved data, then at the end, when tracking is restored, it's a much smaller image that has been built, not a full one but an incremental one, a slow one. V1 was better done, it was displaying an explicit message saying it was an incremental backup but longer due to the modified sector tracking to be rebuilt.

Which build do you use ? My recommendation would be to submit a bug report throught the dedicated system included in the application and on their Website.

 

If I'm not mistaken, the snaps should still be incrementals even when tracking has been lost, it however takes as long as a baseline image because it has to rebuild the tracking file but once it's rebuilt then it only needs to actually backup the changes since the last snapshot and the rebuilt tracking file. Although I don't know the ins and outs of this program, I must however say that the labeling of fast/slow backup seems to be random at best, for example I went into another live bootable USB and did some stuffs and then went back into windows and made a snapshot and it said it was a fast incremental however it took as long as a baseline...

Unrelated to the above: Any news on a new build? Beta or not..

 

The last post by wajamus was from Nov 23 where wajamus said that they could not reproduce Froggie's findings about the new beta. Froggie had made it clear that he found those issues on a very basic system. Looks to me like lacking resources, man power, expertise (up to you if you put an AND or OR operator between these conditions). I am almost ready to give up on AX64 V2...


Cheers
manolito

 

No, I did not test the latest Beta 548 mainly because Froggie's findings scared me off...

And also I generally have no use for V2 since they removed Bare Metal Restore from the software. The original promise for AX64 was that it could combine the best of both worlds, being a reliable image based backup software plus providing a fast snapshot-like hot restore.

The reliable image based software promise did not materialize so far, which means that I have to use a different imager anyways. And as a pure snapshot software it is not fast enough, RBRX fulfills my needs much better.



Cheers
manolito

 

Heard on "the street"... due to personnel issues (sick people), the next BETA appears to be delayed until end of January. It should include bare metal, hot restore fix and "backup" to larger and smaller disks all supported (I think that's restoration, not backup... don't hold me to it).

Relax... have a 'Rita

 

Just had an interesting experience with backup(s)/restore(s) in general. In a moment of boredom (wife working this weekend and below 0°) and stupidity this morning, I downloaded and tried Driver Booster 2, knowing full well "If it ain't broke don't fix it!" I snapped shot with AX even before the download and still would have had the scheduled Macrium incremental and the manual AX snapshot I take after the Macrium one, so I wasn't completely stupid.
I selected download and then install "all" of the drivers. The downloading the drivers went fast, however, well over five minutes went by and it still just showed 1% complete so I stopped it and exited the program. It had warned me System Restore was shot off (I keep it off with good backup anyway). Well it nuked something because I lost my internet connection and worse yet, and truly stressful, both AX and Macrium images were gone when I tried to restore. I also could not reboot and eventually forced shutdown.
Now I'm thinking a complete reformat of W7 but I tried booting into Safe Mode. That went well so I opened my start menu then AX and low and behold it was quite normal. I selected Hot Restore since that always works for me, although I knew it would take six minutes because of the forced shutdown.
Anyway, all is as good as things were during the last snapshot. So I learned something today. That being, even if your backup applications seem broken try them in Safe Mode!

 

Yes, the images were on two different partitions of my backup drive. I have not a clue what happened and was freaked out when neither program listed any backups. Although I was reasonably sure that they had to be on the backup drive and that there probably would have been a means to restore from them. Just for future reference, would I have been able to run the W7 installation disk and/or repair, download trial and/or free versions of AX or MR before doing anything else, and then restore from the backups? At the time all I could think of was all of the applications (including security), customizations, login credentials, files, etc. that I'd have to try to assemble again! Can you say nightmare?