Introducing AX64 Time Machine - hybrid imaging/snapshot software

I seem to recall there is a known bug in Microsoft Defrag API that may corrupt a partition being defrayed while VSS is running on the same partition. At least for XP, don't know if it's still present in Win7

 

Isso

Rebooted because after hitting CANCEL AX64 seemed like it was lost. The mouse cursor just kept revolving when held over the AX64 window. I even tried closing the window by clicking "X" on top right of AX64 window. The rest of Windows 7 seemed okay.

 

The AX64 snap shot files are not corrupted. I can open any file from snaps made during the defrag without issue and I can restore to them. The only thing I can find out of the ordinary are the 2 things I mentioned above.

BY the way, snapshots continue to be created as per normal and if I recover to one of the snaps created after the defrag completed, and after I reset my errant settings, everything appears to be fine.

I thought I would mention it since it was said earlier in this thread that defraging the snaps would have no effect. This appears to be not quite the case.

 

bgoodman,

Defragmenting the snapshots definitely cannot affect them. The problem is something else, and I need to make sure that it's not a AX64 bug. First please run checkdisk to see if the volume is ok. Also please restore to the same snapshot using Recovery Media when you have time, and let me know if the result differs. Thank you

Isso

 

Thank you William, I'll try to reproduce this and fix.

Isso

 

Corruption would occur on the system volume, not on the one where you store AX64 snapshots, if defragmentation was running while creating a snapshot. Even so, this known bug rarely occurs. If it had, the results would be much more catastrophic I guess.

 

Which volume do you want me to run checkdisk on, the storage drive or the dive being protected? I expect its the storage drive but before I do I would like to be sure. Once done I will do the restore to a snap that gave me the problem as you had requested.

 

Understood, I guess I was lucky this time. For sure will not do the storage drive defrag with auto snapshot running in the future if I bother to defrag the storage drive at all.

Thanks.

 

To be honest BG, I recommend (and do myself) that defragging takes place with as little as possible running. I disconnect from the Internet, closed down my IS/AV apps and any maintenance/backup apps I might run or might have services running (as was the case with ATI), before I defrag. I have found that doing this makes the defrag event much quicker.

 

The drive being protected please. I'm sure the storage drive is ok, and you can defragment it with no potential issues. The problem that MerleOne referred was apparently also related to the protected drive, not the storage.

Isso

 

Hello Isso/Everyone!

First post at Wilder's to say that I installed the trial 2 days ago and everything works to perfection. No problem with creating Recovery Media whatsoever. Multiple system restores without any issue (from RM). Using Win8x64 on a GPT Disk. Truly impressed by this no-nonsense application. Many thanks to the developers. With all this activity here ax64 might as well develop into the best thing since...

Jale

 

Awesome software.
I uninstalled Rollback RX+Acronis True Image and am never going back to them.
One little request, when restoring an image, you should make the text "Restoring snapshot to F:/" (or something like that) to point to say the actual drive which is being restored, in my case the main C:/ drive with the OS..

Got shocked when I thought it was overwriting the drive itself with the snapshots..

I also just tested Windows 8.1 Preview, and this seems to work fine with it..
I had some minor issues, eg. AX64 saying it's driver is not installed, but then I ran the installation again by chosing "Run as administrator" from the explorer shell, and then it worked fine.

Keep up the good work.

 

I finally removed Macrium from my machine. Been using Macrium for a very long time before getting AX64 so I ran both together as a transition phase. I've had so much success recovering with AX64 that I have no more need for Macrium. I'd rather have a software that takes hourly backups and automatically manages its snapshots.

Today, something went wrong while updating my ATI video drivers (the installer crashed for some reasons) and left things in limbo. No worries. Go back to the last hour and try again. It installed fine. Can't express enough my love for AXTM64.

 

Welcome to the club. There are many who have done exactly what you have.

Re. your suggestion, just pop over to:

http://feedback.ax64.com/forums/206143-general

see if it has been suggested before and if not then suggest away. Isso & the Dev Team will review and decide if this has merit, etc.

 

I have been looking for good back up software for my Windows 7 installation on a Mac Mini using Bootcamp. I found my way here and read some comments a while back about using this software with Bootcamp. Since there seemed to be no tested confirmation that this would work, I decided to test it. I needed to do a fresh install of Windows anyway so this would be a good time to test things out.

I downloaded the trial and installed it on Windows 7 bootcamped on the Mac.

The initial back up of about 60GB was completed in 20 minutes then the incremental back up was run in about 45 secs. This was is what I am used with Mac Time Machine.

I did the first restore with Windows running, it took seconds. I rebooted and Windows was running fine. This feature of full system restoring while the OS is running is something that Mac Time Machine cannot do.

Next, I made a recovery disk and rebooted with it. I went in to the Browser, picked a back up and restored. As expected it took longer just about 50 minutes. The system rebooted and all was fine. Windows was still working and Mac OS was still working.

I decided to delete the Bootcamp partition and recreate it to simulate a "new disk". Using the recovery disk I booted back to the Browser but when I clicked to restore it said the "partition cannot be found" and offered to restore to a blank disk which would of course would erase the disk. This would have deleted the Mac OS.

In reading the posts here, this seems to be the way the software works now. If the original partition is gone it can only recover to a new disk. I read that there are plans to have it work so the back up can be restored to a new partition and be bootable. Is this correct? If not, my plan "B" would be to recover the backup to an external drive and then use WinClone on the Mac side to package it into a new bootcamp partition.

This is the best backup for Windows I have seen. It is fast and easy to use.
If it can restore to new secondary/extended partitions it would be perfect for Macs running a Mac OS on the primary partition.

Sorry for the long post but I though some Mac users might like the details.

 

I am about ready to "click the button" and purchase this software after reading over this thread over the past week or so. One question that I hope isn't out of line--is there any antivirus or internet security product that should not be used with AX64 or is not compatible with this software?

The reason I ask is that one of the many reasons for wanting to use this software is to test out or try out a couple antivirus products, such as: Qihoo 360, Avast free, F-secure, and possibly WSA. Are all of these compatible with AX64? I guess I should look to see if there is a list of incompatible programs at the AX64 website....

P.S. Oops...I thought of one more question. Should I uninstall Shadow Defender before installing AX64?

 

Hi Alex

Here are a few posts that should assist you with your questions.

In the following post, Isso responds to one of your SD questions:

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=2258225&postcount=3306

This next post is a response from Isso regarding an SD driver issue that bgoodman was having:

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showpost.php?p=2258220&postcount=3303

There are more posts regarding Shadow Defender and AX64TM, and what you can do is Search this thread for Shadow Defender, it will give all the results when that is mentioned.

In regards to security softwares, any of them could cause problems, or none of them. I do not think the ones you mentioned you would like to trial would cause any issues, but you will have to find out on your machine. Also, yes, I encourage you to research AX64TM web site and review known issues with other softwares.

I hope this helps in some way. Glad to hear you are about ready to jump on board with AX64TM. I do not think you will be disappointed.

Have a good night

Jim

 

Only light virtualization and other rollback programs had any incompatibility with AX64 Time Machine. Experiment away, especially if you have the recovery media.

 

Jale, Stode, Marc,

Thank you very much for your positive reviews, it really helps to go forward

Stode, we'll fix the drive letter issue, indeed it's confusing.

Isso

 

dwhutch,

Thank you so much for testing the program with Bootcamp! Very interesting reading. By the way when the program offers to restore to a disk it doesn't mean that the disk will be erased. Only those partitions that overlap with the one that is restored will be erased (and the program will prompt to confirm all erased partitions).

In your situation the program is supposed to restore the Bootcamp partition to the same place that it was before - without touching anything else. I'll try to find some time, test on Mac and confirm this. Thank you!

Isso

 

Alex,

The trial version is fully functional, so feel free to test the program for 30 days and see if it fits all your needs. No need to purchase it now.

For antivirus compatibility - I received some reports when AV software blocked AX64, especially when doing online restore. So it's best to add AX64 program folder to the white list.

For Shadow Defender - I think you can keep it. Just avoid using the shadow mode.

Isso

 

Baldrick, Jim, J_L,

Thank you for your help!

Isso

 

I apologize for my ignorance...What is "online restore"? And, I assume you mean add the AX64 folder to the AV's whitelist?

 

Had an Ax64 nightmare. Works great on a live system but when I had to restore using the recovery media it wouldn't work and it gave some error number like -99966. I also got a black blank screen again on reboot.

The crux of it is that if I can't get the most important part of Ax64 to work then it's not something I'll be using. However it is something I would be interested in buying if I can arrive at a solution because I've found it a very elegant and useful program overall.