Introducing AX64 Time Machine - hybrid imaging/snapshot software

This message is intended for Isso, but if anyone reading this has encountered a similar problem and can provide some insight/advice, feel free...

Today I used AX64's restore facility to restore to two previous snapshots taken several days ago in an attempt to fix a problem I was having with Microsoft Outlook. To play it safe, I took a snapshot of my current c: drive immediately before doing these restores. The two restores went fine, but when I went to restore the 'current' snapshot, the process never proceeded past '1%' on the progress bar. When it didn't move past 1% after about 3 hours, it was obvious the program was hung up and I had no choice but to reboot. Not surprisingly, this did a number on my c: drive (unable to boot), so I used my AX64 recovery CD in an attempt to do a full restore. To my surprise each and every attempt to restore failed (from any snapshot I had previously stored). Each time the program would return a '99967' error message immediately after I initiated the process. Fortunately, I was able to restore the c: drive from a clone drive I keep for just such emergencies.

For the record, I keep my AX64 snapshots on a USB-based external hard drive.

Couple of questions:
First, any advice/thoughts on why I encountered these problems, and what I could/should have done differently?

Second, is there any way to test the integrity of the snapshots without actually initiating a restore event? I'm a little concerned that this might happen again, but I really don't want to risk going through another failure and the subsequent time consuming recovery I'd have to perform from a clone drive.

Any advice would be appreciated.

 

Hi Steve

I suspect that the first question is best answered by Isso. Personally I would collect logs (click AXTM logo in top left corner of the main GUI, select 'About AX64 Time Machine' and then click the 'Collect Logs' button) and then submit a ticket via support on the website.

With regard to your 2nd question, this is a feature that has been suggested over in the Feedback section of www.AX64.com. You should visit the site, review the suggestions, add your own, comment & vote for existing suggestions and see what the progress is re. them being included in the product, etc.

I heartily recommend a visit if you have not already done so.

Regards


Balders

 

Hi all.

I have been faced with a big problem to night. Something happened causing me to restore my latest snapshot in windows and the system hung at 4%. So i rebooted windows which was corrupted.

I booted the live cd and restored my latest snapshot . Result.
However in windows numerous programs are now corrupted. So I formatted my drive and reinstalled my first baseline image.

I only have 5 snapshots in total and this is a clean xp install. I re test my snapshots and my programs are corrupted again.

Please can any one shed any light. I only have a few programs installed.

Also the option to create new baseline images is needed, rather than just delete the ax folder.

Update:

re installed first baseline image and reinstalled all my programs, which is now working.

Ideally i would like to create a new baseline image as well as a snapshot.

 

Rename the old AXTM folder to something else, and create a new backup and it will create a new baseline.

 

Thanks. I took your advice and submitted a trouble ticket on the AX64 website and forwarded them the logs.

 

AX64 works fine on my ancient Dell Latitude D510 laptop, circa 2005 or 2006. AND, it also runs Windows 8 (had my doubts it would)



Ray

 

Same thing happened to me when i tried to do a restore within Windows...it froze at exactly 4%.

I had to do a restore using the recovery CD. That has worked the 2 times i've used it.

Fortunately, i did not suffer any corruption of Windows nor any programs (at least that i know of )

Hopefully, the latest release will cure the no-can-restore-from-within-Windows blues!



Ray

 

I've got the latest version and I just did a restore-from-within-windows and it worked fine for me. This was 2 days ago. Like I said in an earlier post, it appeared to freeze for a couple minutes, but I waited it out. In the end, it probably took a total of 10 minutes to do the restore.

 

My experience was more than a couple of minutes - i'd left the room for about 15 minutes or so, came back to find Windows totally frozen, couldn't do anything but a hard reboot and restored my system via the recovery CD.

I'll check the new version on Tuesday and see how it goes

Here's hopin'

 

I cannot speak to the within Win restores but can def comment on the recovery media ones. The more snaps you have,,,,,the older the baseline basically,,,,,especially if autosnap is active,,,,,the longer the restores will take. This is because, since AX64 records the changes from snap to snap, the more snaps there are the more analysis and reading/writing must be done. If you have 2 snaps, the analysis will take relatively little time, if you have 20 then it will take much more time.

I went from an average restore time of about 30 min when there was a week or 2 of snaps to about 1.5 hours after the baseline was 2 months old. Now that I have started a new backup set restore times via recover disk are back below 30 min.

 

I think you have it correctly understood. I suggest that you take note of the size of the snaps involved and the time difference between restoring a larger set size (be it 1 large snap or a few smaller snaps - add the sizes together for an overall size) and I suspect you will find that the ones that are taking longer involve larger snap sizes. It stands to reason that a 10 mg snap restore will take less time to carry out than one that is 3 gigs in size.

Of course Isso will be the best one to comment on this but this is how I understand/envision this.

 

There may be a simple ans and solution to your problem. I have encountered something similar and the problem turned out to be the USB port. For some reason, some/many? imaging programs, do not like to restore via the USB 3 port. Switch to a USB 2 port and they are much happier.

Hopefully this is the source of your problem, if not I expect you will need to get Isso involved

 

Do you (or did you) have a defrag program running when snaps were being created (if you have an auto defrag app you may not even be aware if its running when snaps are being created)?

The only time I encountered corrupted programs (and ultimately a corrupted OS) was when my storage drive was defraged while snaps were being created. The first few restores from within Win worked but some programs and icons were affected and eventually the entire OS crashed and I was not even able to restore using the AX64 recovery disk. The PC had to be recovered from an image created by a program other than AX64.

Isso has indicated that AX64 should be able to be used when defragging the protected drive AND that he believes its OK to defrag the storage drive. But he has also indicated that he will be testing this in terms of snapshots being created while the storage drive is being defragged in more depth.

Personnaly I would suggest you not defrag the storage drive and def do not have autosnap running if you do. Defragging the protected drive should be OK as AX64 uses VSS so there should not be a problem, but........

 

Hi bgoodman4,

I have no defrag programs installed, only these programs

Eset 4 anti-virus,
Kryptel Standard,
Live Drive,
USB flash backup,
Zemana Anti Logger
Tracks Eraserpro,
Mobile go, Android.

This is a clean install of XP , with only the programs above installed and any defaults.

regards

Legacy

 

I had a similar problem a while back and after a lot of discussion with Isso we discovered that the HD was faulty. Annoying since it was only a few months old. So maybe it is an area worth checking.

 

I am still a bit confused when reading this never-ending thread. I looked at the software as offering me the best of both worlds. Having a safe image but also a quick way to do a rollback from within Windows.
However, if restores take 1.5 hours or longer, would it not make more sense to just revert back to an older image type of restore? What I mean is I can see that I use the rollback function just after having installed a new software, determined I don't like it and reverting back. But for going back a few weeks or months, it seems using a normal image is faster than the time frame mentioned.

 

That is the restore for rescue media, which is no different from standard imaging programs. Imagine restoring the baseline and 2 months worth of hourly incrementals.

If you restore with Windows running, then it'll usually take 5-10 minutes at most to replace only changed data.

 

I thought that with offline restores, AX64 always does a full restore. So it doesn't need to do any analysis, other than figuring out which incrementals it needs to restore in addition to the baseline, and since I only have about a dozen that can't take long. I also don't see why more reading or writing needs to be done the more snapshots you have - if I'm restoring 30gb of data it shouldn't matter whether it's from snapshot 2 or shapshot 12. I hope that your restore times aren't typical, otherwise it would appear that the software loses its main feature over time..

 

But there won't be 2 months worth of hourly incrementals will there as they will have been merged into just a few incrementals?

 

You might be right. I don't have the relevant snapshots available any more, however I would guess my 2-3 minute restores were typically only going back 200mb of data or so, and the 10 minute one could have been nearer a gigabyte. Maybe I effectively have a 100mb per minute transfer rate...

 

@djg05

My Hard drive testing program reports:

"The Drive found 65535 bad sectors during its self test".

"1091 errors occured during data transfer"


Maybe this could be the problem.

Regards

Legacy

 

A drive like above, Macrium Reflect will refuse to do the image. Maybe, Isso can implement something like that in AX64.

Best regards,

Mohamed

 

Looks like it might be. Mine gradually got worse over a couple of weeks. I downloaded the makers test program and it would not even complete the quick test. Sent it back under guarantee and got a replacement in a couple of days.

Hope yours is still under guarantee.

 

Agreed BG, which is why I create new baselines weekly, keeping the old AXTM folders (but renamed) in case I want to go back further than at some point in the current week.

Balders

 

Hi Legacy

Have you made sure that the three core components of AXTM (to be found in the AXTM folder in Program Files) have been Whitelisted/excluded from all your security-related apps. I have found that whilst this should not need to be the case it is best to do so...assuming that you trust AXTM (which I do...).

Regards, Balders