Hi @ Wilders I am looking for a replacement for Aomei Backupper because it is causing shutdown problems. I have looked and tried several replacements, but one of the problems I am coming across, is having the ability to annotate what the backup is for. The first full backup is not usually problematic, with a Title and Comments. However it gets trickier using Incremental and Differential, because many do not permit a commentary. So the question is how do those of you who do a Full Backup followed by several Incrementals or Differentials, know what each contains in order to restore to the right version. Aomei Backupper and Macrium Reflect allow commentaries to be made. Easeus Todo Backup Free and others don't Thanks Terry
as you pointed out, you can add comments to your backups. you can also browse your backup within mac-ref.
Hi IMDb Yes you can if you use MacRef and Aomei, but what about those applications that don't permit comments like TodoBackup and others. As I pointed out I am looking for a replacement for Aomei. Perhaps I did not phrase my post very well and I should have said excluding Aomei and Macrium Reflect, what apps. are available that are freeware and permit Comments for each type of backup Thanks for your help Terry
you're welcome, terry. i don't know any free alternative other than mac-ref as i don't use free imaging sw and only do full backups.
I highly recommend Drive Snapshot. I know some here will jump all over me to the effect that DS is not freeware, but I believe (in essence) that it is! True, the developer does not offer it as freeware, but he does offer a fully functional 30-day evaluation and always makes a new version available for download every month (if not more often)! Very seldom do these new versions contain any functional changes, so I can only conclude that they are being made available as an 'unadvertised perpetual trial'. Some basic info. I've been using DS just about every day since 2004 and it has been a worry-free experience. It is not necessary to install it (in fact, I see no advantage for doing so). All you need is their portable executable, snapshot.exe (32bit) or snapshot64.exe (64bit). Either executable is tiny in size and will download in seconds even with a slow internet connection. Addressing your expressed desire, DS allows for extensive remarks with every backup, be it a full image or a differential image (incremental images are not supported). DS is very easy to use and the imaging process is fast. If this is of interest to you and should you have further questions, I'll try to answer them...
I don't know if it is faster, but it sure is lighter. Much lighter. In fact, the lightest backup application that I have used. It is a single executable of only 449 KB for snapshot64.exe. Speed is not my priority. Reliability is.
Brian, of course they would prefer people buy it, but if I'm wrong about their rationale in releasing new versions at the extremely unusual frequency of every month or less (seldom with any functional changes), I'd sure like to know why they continue doing that over the years?
I completely agree with @Hadron's reply. Furthermore, while MR has a solid reputation, being an installed app it is system invasive, whereas the DS executable is a self-contained portable app (for all versions of Windows). Therefore, DS is non-invasive so If you don't like it just delete the executable and there won't be any other DS entries left on your system!
You're most welcome, I think you'll like DS. If you get stuck I'll try to help insofar as its Windows GUI operations, whereas @Brian K is very adept at creating DS scripts to automate various backup and recovery situations.
Keep in mind that Drive Snapshot creates separate image files for every partition that you image. That was a deal breaker for me because I wanted a single file to contain all the partitions needed to boot my system.
Brian shared with me a great retention and purge script that allows you to decide how many backups you wish to keep before the oldest one is purged (deleted). Each backup has its own sub-folder. I have then created a schedule in Task Scheduler. It is fully automated. If you wish, you can then place a shortcut of that schedule on the Desktop to run whenever you like.
I have read only good things about Drive Snapshot, but not offering incremental images would probably affect the speed of making one. Speed for me is important as I do an incremental everyday first thing in the morning on two different external drives. It takes between 50 to 90 seconds and a full restore about 2 minutes. I have more than 400 GB constantly free on my SSD, is Macrium's 300 MB going to be invasive? I don't think so. But then again, one has to choose according to their own requirements...
...and as I said, "MR has a solid reputation", so no disparity was intended as to its reliability (or otherwise) vs that of DS and apparently, you misunderstood the reason for my comment about MR being invasive. I meant that should one give MR's free version (or trial) a go and then decide it's not to their liking, then simply uninstalling it won't completely remove all of its system entries. Whereas if one tries DS (by using it's self-contained executable) and finds it not to their liking, then a simple deletion will completely remove DS with no residues left on the system! In any case, the OP asked about backup image freeware and the last I looked at MR's freeware version it did not support incremental images. You are using and referring to a paid version, which does not meet the OP's requirements.
Well I don't know anymore what we are talking about, but Drive Snapshot does not have a free version, and the only one available, a paid one , has no incremental capabilities...
Osaban, Just for general interest, if a DS full backup takes 2 minutes a differential backup will probably take 15 seconds. It probably takes longer than 15 seconds to run through the GUI steps so running DS from a script can save time. But GUI or script, it's a fast app.
After many difficulties with Macrium Reflect paid version, I yesterday, decided to uninstall it. I think I will give Drive Snapshot a try. Luckily, I seem to manage keeping my laptop going with the continual updates Microsoft enforce on the user, irregardless.
Then DS is faster than MR. Out of curiosity what kind of original volume in GB would that be to take 2 minutes for a full backup? MR takes 3 minutes to create a full backup of my system which is 45 GB, and on a daily basis an incremental is about 50-90 seconds (each incremental varies from 500 MB to 1GB).
Maybe not. I just tested a Win10 OS. Partition size 70 GB. Used data 25 GB. Full backup. NVMe SSD to HD 2:44 NVMe SSD to NVMe SSD 0:27 Edit... The Win10 partition doesn't contain a Hibernation file or Reserved storage otherwise the Used data would be about 65 GB.
