Introducing AX64 Time Machine - hybrid imaging/snapshot software

10x Isso , will give it a ride

 

MerleOne,

Sorry, it's a known problem and happens in some circumstances. The fix will be available in upcoming update. Meanwhile don't worry about your backups - all of them remain valid.

Isso

 

Hi Merleone

Both myself and Isso replied to your query about how to delete backups. Almost always you should defer to what the developer says, because he knows best his software.

I prefer the response that I gave you, in this case. Why? because if you right click on the backup and select delete it means that you have selected the correct backup.

Doing it from the ribbon, means you still have to select the backup to delete. This in my opinion is dangerous, unless ur mind is fully on the job.

Terry

ps Isso I dont mean to cut across your turf, just trying to ensure no angry punters.

 

I'm running a new laptop with Windows 8 and this UEFI/Legacy boot, which I don't really understand myself, but it's caused problems booting several discs so far .

Not sure, Brian K - as stated above, my laptop has the UEFI/Legacy boot which Isso thinks might be causing the problem.

 

mrfargoreed,

Can you try this? Temporarily disable Secure Boot in the BIOS and boot the UFD in Legacy Mode. Does that work?

 

Isso
Can you delete the actual file on the HDD where the backups are stored? Or will that lead to issues?

 

Thanks to you and Isso of course for these detailed explanations.

 

I don't believe that this has been asked before.

What happens if the drive your baseline and snaps are on is defragged?

I installed AX64 on a friends PC a few days ago and he had an issue with the PC this morning. When he went to revert to a snap that was created last night he got some sort of message that the drive had been defragged and the snap he selected was corrupt (or something like that, its hard to get the exact info long distance). He was able to restore using an earlier snap however.

I suggested that he disable auto defrag for his external drives and that he start with a new backup set which is what he has done. So is it possible that a defrag could mess up the backup set? This could have repercussions especially for folks who are using AX64 on a laptop with a partition dedicated for the backup set. I have never tried to defrag an image so this is new territory for me.

 

Strange as the only side effect you should see from doing a defrag is that your next run snapshot will be larger than normal (how much larger is dependent on the degree of defragmentation and how much data gets moved around on the hard disk). Normally, a defrag should no corrupt an image.

 

Terry,

Sure, I agree, in fact I use your method. I mentioned buttons because they are immediately visible upon opening the browser.

Isso

 

William,

All backups are incremental, it means they depend on each other. If you delete one, all subsequent ones will become invalid. So please only use Delete function of Backup Browser. It will correctly merge the backups.

Isso

 

bgoodman,

There are absolutely no problems in defragging the drives - neither the backup source drive nor the destination.

Strange, but there are no defrag-related messages that the program may output. Nor I remember anything "corruption"-related. Please ask your friend to collect the logs (here's how), and either send an email to info@ax64.com, or create a ticket by going to www.ax64.com and clicking on Feedback and Support on top left corner. I'll look at the logs and will return with exact explanation of what happened. Thank you


Isso


Kent, thank you for your help!

 

Add Backup shemes

Hi Isso,

i tested your software and there are many things i like about it: its lean, fast and everything from Recovery USB-Stick to Cd to recovering Images works smoothly without any problem on my machine (win7 64-bit).

There is just one thing why i still wouldn't consider it right now:

It doesn't allow more advanced imaging cycles like:

1. Create one full backup, then n incrementals (=one "Chain") then start over
2. Keep of this Chains the last for example: 5

This has a lot of advantages over an automatic merging. You can define how much space you want to sacrifice and how long in the past you want to be able to jump. This can be very usefull, if something corrupts your system and you don't reckognize it immediatley. And for Files this really adds protection and peace of mind if you know that you can so long in the past as you defined it.

I don't want to write to much about it here since i already made the suggestion here:

http://feedback.ax64.com/forums/206143-general/suggestions/3991427-add-backup-sheme

Since your program already uses imaging technology I think this one feature would really seal the deal for many people that use a "professional" imaging program like Acronis etc...

You wann have a little control over how much images are beeing kept and i don't like my pc to be slowed down because of merging.. Then i rather spend some more Megabyte on an external harddisk. That doesn't really matter with these prices of one MB today vs the added security of a potentially longer history (if one likes to).

But cool program! Really like it! Mayber i can one day really get rid off Acronis with your software - i really want to..

 

Re: Add Backup shemes

WYC999,

That's an excellent suggestion, thank you for submitting the idea! We'll definitely implement it in one of the upcoming updates.

Isso

 

Isso,

Correction to Post #1686...

I said the CD didn't boot but I didn't wait long enough. I tested today and again saw the flashing cursor. After 2 minutes of flashing cursor the recovery environment loaded. Same result on two computers.

 

I see, thanks for clarifying.

I thought #3 would use the least space due to your first answer? A week was only an example, I'd probably do it at the same rate as #2.

Thank you for your informative reply.

 

Re: Add Backup shemes

WYC999,

You can do this manually and keep multiple generations of images. Or did you mean you would like an auto option?

 

Re: Add Backup shemes

Since you are going to implement this I'll ask for some additions to related to the above.

A) check the free space and if less than x GB and/or less than x% of the partition's total space warn the user and/or merge the oldest unlocked (number) snapshots.
B) select a snapshot and create a full image of it in x folder/location.
C) restore baseline from a full image (truncated one, related to the request that follows bellow).
D) related to B, I would also like to set a max file size of the full image (truncate the full image in x Gb).

Panagiotis

 

I have done as you have suggested and await further developments.

Thank you

 

Tried, Brian K, but not working for me. I didn't realise but this was how my BIOS was already set up. I've also read your post a bit further down regarding that you waited a couple of miutes after the flashing cursor and then the recovery environment appeared, but this is not happening for me, unfortunately.

 

Re: Add Backup shemes

Yeah i meant an automatic option like in Acronis. In Acronis the logic is more you create a Imagejob (every Backup is always a job, even if it is just executed once).

In the settings of this Job you can define what happens with the old images of this job. You can than define if it should for every image take a full image or the cycle i described with either incr. or diff. So when a job runs it first creates the image, then checks in the destination folder which old images to clean out.

So it's basically set and forget. Problem in Acronis is just that this feature is buggy as hell (TIH 2011). And Acronis never really fixes bugs. But if implemented right this is a genious feature..

 

Hi Isso,

i like that you like the feature with the intelligent Imaging shemes

Do you have a very rough estimate (more like 2 months or 2 years) when this could be reality

And because i'm a greedy Bastard: Was this suggestion good enough to be ß Tester/get a discount on price?

 

You are already eligible for a 25% discount since you are a Wilders member.

 

Brian,

Hmm, that's really strange and now I'm a bit confused. If the MBR was the problem then the recovery environment would just refuse to load. But why is it loading with delay? Strange. I'll give it a thought.

Isso

 

J_L,

I might miss one point, sorry. My answer was assuming that #2 and #3 are for the same time period. In such case a fully merged image normally has less size than separate images. If you meant #2 for a longer time period, then #2 will take more space in time and eventually will become larger than #3. Hope this makes sense

Isso