OhMy! AOMEI!

I agree with Brian. These disk imaging operations are on disk sector level, so as long as whatever version/number of Windows are installed with NTFS/FAT32/FAT, any decent disk imager should be able to handle it, whether single system or multi-system setup. In fact, many good disk imagers such as IFW/IFL, DS, Paragon, R-Drive, and some others can handle a mix of Windows/Linux multi-boot system without any issue.

 

I've used it for multiboot recovery from day one. All my systems multiboot to a greater or lesser extent. Multibooting is just not officially supported and I would avoid the "System Backup" option. Use partition backup and recovery and you should be fine. Or disk backup for a whole disk with multiple bootable partitions. Multibooting does require some understanding of the boot process to set up and maintain successfully and an imaging program by itself is usually not enough to do it. You will need a partitioning program and some sort of BCD editor as wall.

 

Still confused about this.

In AOMEI Backupper (Pro), I currently take a whole drive image on my laptops to restore, just as I do in Macrium Reflect, rather than 'system' images or individual partitions, assuming this to be the safest approach in event of any failures.

So AB Pro works differently? I recall there has been some discussion about this before, with @Brian K?

 

Not 3. Just two. Windows 7 and 10. On 7 I have few programs where a licence is for just one OS, one of them being Acronis Home 11 from which I've recovered windows 10 and system_drv several times.

 

I think MBR is special. Grub2 lives there together with Windows10 loader, BCD, etc. So I worry about AOMEI perhaps rewriting it, and I'll have to do live Mint, redo grub, possibly BCD edit, a nuisance. I don't see a way to select to also recover MBR and disk signature from the image as I do in ATI.
That said, my disaster recovery will be ATI images. But I'd prefer to know ahead of time what to expect.
Thanks for your encouragement

 

Is AOMEI in a category of "decent" imagers?
I gather from googling that some people don't use grub in a System_drv(reserved?) partition as I do. So various answers aren't too clear to me.
Thanks for pitching in, just builds up my confidence a bit.

 

Perhaps 'not supported' means they won't hold my hand if I mess up, rather than 'it won't work' ?
I did select partiton (see my screenies in post#23), at which point AOMEI asked if I'd rather do SYSTEM backup and I declined.
If it gets messed up, as I wrote to BrianK, I should be able to redo Grub2 and if I have to, do BCD restore, but I'd rather not fall into that rat-hole.
Boot process: as I understand it, Grub2 parked its loader into MBR, and said loader chains through Windows 10 which chains to 7, all from the same System_Drv partition. That's about all I know. I have a listing of Mint bootprocess which I don't understand all off, but I think I got what's where correctly. So, please comment if you can since you've done multiboot.

 

act8192,

That's interesting. I haven't tried that. Using grub2 without Linux being present. What does it do in your system?

I know you are using a MBR disk so grub2 is in the MBR. With a GPT disk, grub is not in the MBR. It's in the EFI system partition.

 

Brian, see my post#23 - Linux Mint is there in the three rightmost partitions. I just don't image it.
When the laptop boots, I have a Grub menu with several Mint entries followed by two windows. If I select Win10, it prompts for 10 or 7. If I select 7, it goes there directly.

 

Thanks. Got it now.

I'm a multi-booter. Love all those OS. My MBR computer has a few dozen boot items and my UEFI computer has 14.

 

I guess it's a matter of personal opinion. For me, AOMEI is not a decent imager based on my past experience, but it's just my personal opinion

 

In what respects is AOMEI indecent? (This is a real question, not a challenge. If AOMEI contains some nasty surprises, I want to know about them beforehand.)

 

^^Frankly speaking it is subjective as there are a lot of factors involved incl the current knowledge of user about imaging & restoring.e.g.aoemi worked perfectly fine for me on 1 system but not on another(probably because it was using mbr & i selected some incorrect default option during backup/restore).Macrium on the other hand worked flawlessly for me on that system.Now I could have easily figured out what exactly went wrong with aomei but chose not to because in my opinion if an imaging software works fine on your system with default options & other doesn't then it is better to stick with working software as its chances of failure during restore should also be less compared to other software.

 

Restoring System_Drv and Windows10 partitions (see picture in post 23) over the existing partitions worked fine. Twice.
Aomei is useful to me since I can explore images (I use Acronis for imaging but hate their GUI, so it's not installed, ergo can't explore).
One serious limitation, IMO, is that there's no way to EXCLUDE files, such as tmp, pagefile, or recently large windows.old which the new 1803 windows version built. Acronis does allow me to do that.

 

Not at all familiar or even ever tried AOMEI Backupper but am not in the least surprised for what it can do based on the experiences some of you have had results with plus @Peter2150's exacting discovery what to backup and best way to restore for success.

I only make mention and support you guys findings because AOMEI Partition Assistant Free has pulled off some decent results in the fixes I put myself in, like expanding partitions safely and especially converting in a matter of seconds!! from Legacy Disk to GPT-UEFI without any loss of data or issue. Quite interesting. Thanks for this thread which I want to keep watch on AOMEI's progress going forward on both these fronts. Seems they are pretty good.

 

AOMEI Backupper v4.5.1 available (from v4.1): https://www.backup-utility.com/changelog.html