Realcopy-Disk imager

http://www.realcopy.com/

Has anyone tried this program? It's free and has a nice GUI imo.
I trialed it briefly on my win 7 desktop and successfully created an image.My problem came when I tried to restore.(It's supposed to be able to boot the computer without having a boot/restore disk.)
Not sure if it's error on my part or not.

 

Looks a decent program for free.I shall wait for experienced feedback from others before making any judgement.

 

wanted to give it a test drive but got the following error message when trying to install

running windows 8 pro

 

It has a very impressive feature-set and would appear to be a highly useful utility.The hardware independent imaging is of particular interest to me.

Well worth having a look at to see how it stacks up against the others.

 

For a freeware,it's very good.But...an amount of 25 GB of data was backup in about 12 min.And the restore part...well,it took almost 35 minutes.Way too much if you ask me.They really must do something about that.

 

It's to be hoped that efficiency will improve as this matures.

 

Hi Folks

I was requested to share what my experience has been with RealCopy, the latest version from their website. A few quick points. I used both the windows version to image within windows, which went fine. I also per RealCopy instructions, copied over to USB flash drive the rc.exe and rclib.dll files, (although RealCopy states "rc.dll" the file should be "rclib.dll" along with rc.exe), that can be used to both backup and restore outside of windows using the Windows recovery environment Winre.wim which one can also simply use the installation DVD then open the rc.exe using the command prompt after booting from windows media. This also went well, but after taking an image and exiting the recovery environment, each time I backed up in this method which went fine, upon reboot, windows stated an "improper shutdown". of course I knew this was not the case, but it did appear RealCopy caused windows to think this. I just chose "Start windows normally". I found this strange behavior especially since the imaging was done outside the operating system, so my question is how is it causing this issue, or perhaps it is causing an issue with the windows recovery environment, just not sure yet. It could be that it improperly dismounts the windows partition in some way that causes windows to "think" it has had an improper shutdown. I am just thinking out loud here.

In the case of mounting an image outside of windows, this also seemed to be fine, but one needs to utilize a portable file manager in order to actually "see" the mounted image. This I found to be also a shortfall with using it in the recovery environment, AOMEI Data Backupper boot media also has the same lack of being able to "see" the image after mounting. One must use a portable file manager which several are available that run under WinRe recovery opening them via command prompt. A43 file manager is one such utility as well as Explorer++.exe that I have used and work well. One can simply copy them over to USB flash drive and execute them from there using command prompt from Windows recovery environment oir open the command prompt using RealCopy utilities tab, then execute the portable file manager to see the mounted image.

That is a few things I discovered. Second, one cannot backup an entire disk, only each partition separately which is not a bad thing, just a feature that could easily be implemented to choose an entire disk as a choice as well as individual partitions.

Otherwise, it works, as far as creating an image and it works quite fast. But at this time, I have NOT attempted to test a restore which is where the real test comes in. I shall try this but expect it to also work. some have stated restores seemed to take much longer than imaging, but I cannot confirm this until a test a restore function.

I have much more to test with RealCopy, but this is what I have discovered during the brief personal review. As I get opportunity, I will go through a restore and detail my experience further.

Jim

 

Hi Jim
Please do share with us your experience about restoring an image.Thank you.

 

About the "improper shutdown", I am sure that also happens if you use the built-in Windows backup, or Keriver (when using hot imaging, but not showing when using cold imaging). I've read that it's caused by the VSS (not really sure on this one but that is the reason as far as I remember).
EDIT: Disregard this, it only happens in Windows backup or keriver if you restore the image.
BTW, please share us your restore experience when you've done it.

 

Hi guys

I just finished a fairly thorough test regarding RealCopy free disk imaging and below are some quick results, not much help is offered other than their web site, but most is self explanatory once one gets familiar with the interface, but one should have some basic understanding of what they are doing as with any kind of image backup software:

From within the OS, in this case Windows 7 Pro SP1 x86 Dell Laptop, Inspiron E1705, 3GB RAM, 250GB HDD, 2GHZ Intel T2500 Dual Core CPU
---

Very sleek interface, to the point functionally, easy to navigate. Image creation within the OS "hot" imaging speed is comparable to Macrium. 7GB on my OS partition took approx. 4.5 minutes to create on external USB WD elements 1TB USB HDD. Before creating image, you must click to turn on compression, (there is no compression options, you can only turn it to ON as it is OFF by default, and the resulting image of 7GB of data was compressed to 4.22GB file), to create a .CHD image, without compression it creates a .VHD image file, along with mounting image capabilities for simple file restore, etc. from a complete image.
In addition you can either create a schedule or turn the scheduling off, and then the next step by default is 'incremental' so I clicked that and it opened a windows to choose either FULL, Incremental or differential, of course being the first initial backup, I chose FULL, then back to the backup screen you can name the backup whatever you would choose. I only tested the FULL backup, no incrementals or differentials. This software also offers its own facility to boot a VHD image, which I did NOT test.

Next test was to try what RealCopy calls 'synthetic restore', which is simply a quick restore of changed sectors/block level roll back. The location of the image in this case on the external USB drive was still hooked up to the system, which is a must if you are offered what they call "Fast Rollback", (or the image could be created on another partition on ones HDD, but best to have it of course on an external drive) which you can turn on from the interface. To get to this point, you click the little gear wheel to the right of the completed backup details. To test this, I purposely deleted a folder with a little over 13MB of data within it on my OS partition. Then opened RealCopy, clicked the 'Backup Dashboard' panel, clicked the little gear wheel that offers several options, I chose 'Recover data from backup' and this opened the recovery window where you can choose 'Fast Rollback', rather you can 'Turn on' this option. Then choose the source and destination which is presented already for you to place a check mark on. next step is to click 'Recover now' and you will be offered a window where you can choose to reboot and begin the 'fast rollback'. If you do not choose to reboot, the restore procedure will show 'Postponed' but will be scheduled to perform the fast rollback upon the next reboot.

The machine rebooted, it appeared to begin starting Windows, but the logo never appeared, then the fast rollback began, and only took approx. 20 - 30 seconds until it was finished with the 'fast rollback', only because I had so little data changed, the more changes to the data or sectors, the longer of course a fast rollback will take, then the system rebooted and upon entering the desktop, the deleted folder was back in place, and all appeared to work as advertised.

In addition to a 'fast rollback' of changed sectors only, you can begin a full image restore in the same manner, without any boot media by NOT choosing Fast Rollback when restoring, and it will then reboot and restore the entire image, only of course this is a much longer procedure. Restoration of a full image took just under 11 minutes and also appeared to work fine, although you can expect to see a few errors within the event viewer after any restore simply due to the 'Hot' imaging within Windows and it will complain about 'improper shutdown' but these errors are common for hot imaging as I have mentioned.

Both restores, without any boot media appeared to go well. it works very similar to Drive Snapshot 'restore after restart' feature if anyone is familiar with that.

According to their web site, you do not have to create any boot media, you just have to go to the installation folder of RealCopy and copy "rc.exe" and "rclib.dll" files to a USB flash drive, and use the windows install DVD windows recovery boot disc to boot into repair mode, or by booting a WinPe boot disc, then one simply opens up a command prompt and navigates to the drive letter of their flash drive, and then simply type rc.exe and RealCopy opens up. This offers "cold" imaging and restore features, but NOT 'fast rollback' as this is something only available "hot" within Windows OS, not within PE or recovery mode. I purposely formatted my OS partition before doing a cold restore to test the integrity of the restore, of course this is not needed at all, it was just what i did.

Being that I already had a full image created, I browsed for my image backup on the external USB drive, which by default the backup folder is named "My Backups" and this cannot be changed as far as I could tell, and then clicked the little gear wheel again to choose 'recover data', etc. and proceeded to restore the image to the location offered, in this case to my C drive.

Restoration in this environment also took the same amount of time, for 7GB of data, a little under 11 minutes, this time lags far behind some imagers, but the process went fine and afterwards, I ran a chkdsk c: /f from the command prompt and no problems. booted back into windows and all appeared to work as advertised.

This is just a quick review of the features, and I was glad to see the 'fast rollback' feature indeed works which is a very nice way to restore to a previous image without doing a full restore.

It does take some time and patience to get familiar with the program and the different features offered both from within Windows and outside of windows, but overall, the application did what it said it could do and appeared to do it well in my experience, but each user must decide how well it performs for them on their respective set ups.

For a free solution, it works and appears quite stable. Some may find this not to be the case, but it worked for me.

I hope the above review helps someone, and I apologize for taking so long to get back to this thread and actually give RealCopy a more focused workout as requested.

There is no help file, but one can consult their site for a list of features, etc., but they DO lack proper or complete help. Another thing I would like to mention is that I had emailed them a question the other week about a few things and never got a reply. I would say not to depend upon their support, but also, they may have never got the email, but i suspect they did and simply did not respond. this I did not like, and I do not support companies that lack proper support, but it is free, but they still could have a more complete help system and certainly, in my experience, timely support. If you have any questions or problems, their email is feedback@realcopy.com As mentioned, you may or may not get a reply, but that is the email they list within their interface for suggestions, questions, problems, etc.

Otherwise, it worked for what I tested it for, but I personally would not choose it as a primary solution, but it does work and appears stable. This is by no means an exhaustive review, just a quick test of what matters, backup and restoring ability and its features. I have no idea how stable it might be over an extended period of time, but I have no reason to think it would cause problems if used as directed on their site, which is a free disk imaging and rollback solution type software. Make sure before your own testing to have a complete backup just in case things do not work as expected.

Have a peaceful weekend.

Jim

 

Hi Jim,

Many thanks for such a comprehensive review and so through writeup. As usual you are a charm.

It seems like it has been abandoned, however keeping that aside, and keeping in mind, if the work continues, then:

How does it compares to AX64, especially as a rollback?

Have a great weekend too!

Best regards,

Mohamed

 

its meh imo. for me it backed up and restored okay, i can browse a image okay but it lacks real settings. it was painfully slow doing the backup and restore. i did not try the rollback feature yet. imo the gui looks cheap even cheaper then a "free" program normally lol.

 

If it's really free, I wonder why would it stop working after January 2014 ..
They probably gonna make it commercial..

 

I had a different (but no less frustrating) experience with the Realcopy support people several months ago.

I emailed them a request for assistance on inability to back up to network attached drives. They responded immediately that this was a bug - it was being fixed immediately, and that I would be notified when the updated build was available. However, I was never notified, I have never seen an updated build on their website, and Realcopy has not replied to my subsequent emails.

I concluded that this organization (or individual) is not serious about this project - and I walked away.

 

No doubt there are limitations with RealCopy. I just reviewed the basics and it worked, but things like 'fast rollback' is limited it appears to one rollback per backup as after the restore, the backup record used within the application of course is missing, and the only way I see to allow using fast rollback is to make another backup. otherwise, one could browse for a backup and do a full restore which also worked fine for me.

There are things I do NOT like about it and would not use it as a primary solution. Mainly its pace of development and company support along with being deficient in its help system. The overall app does work though for me and I like its features, but not as a primary solution.

@Mohamed Thank you my friend for your kind words The fast rollback as mentioned worked for me the few times I tried it, but is not near as flexible as something like AX64TM. Once a fast rollback is performed, as I mentioned above, after restoring, that is not offered again unless a new backup is created but I may be missing something, but it appears to me once a fast rollback is restored, you have to make a new backup as the original does not offer fast rollback as once restored, a new backup is needed to begin the chain again until a restore is needed, at least that is how it appears to work. this may be due to me not using a schedule, but it appears it is more to do with a feature limitation or I am missing something. It does sue a tracking file within the System Volume Information folder similar to AX64TM, this one is called 'realcopy.bitmap' and I suspect after a fast rollback, being this file is changed, may have something also to do with why the feature is not available until a new backup is created. One can always perform a full restore with the original backup once it is browsed to and chosen, just like most imaging apps, but to have fast rollback offered in my case, required a new backup, but this may be overcome by using the scheduler, I did not test that. AX64TM certainly has far more to offer as far as rollback features and speedy restores. Hope that helps Mohamed

@zfactor i agree, it certainly is a limited interface, but it did the job for me, my main concern is the support or lack thereof, and if it is still even being developed, but I can only speak for myself, that it worked, fast backup, much slower restore if one does the full restore and not a fast rollback.

Their help is lacking in my opinion, and the lack of timely support drives me away from it, but overall, I liked what it was capable of doing, I am just not so sure what their plans are for it.

@Stode I did not run into any mention of January 2014 or that the software would become disabled. If that were the case, it is a waste of time indeed. I thought it appeared it was once a paid for app, but then was made free, but I could be wrong. in any case, I did not see anything mentioned about Jan. 2014. I guess they would have to be asked but they may or may not reply which no matter how well it works, is a deal breaker for me personally, free or paid.

@Tadoussac This also is what I was thinking, that they may not keep up its development, but only they can answer that. In its current form, at least for me, it was able to backup and restore fine, but has limitations, but I did not test out all the features, just what mattered to me. thank you for your thoughts, I tend to agree they may not have plans to develop any further.

It has been stable for me for what little testing I did, although fast rollback is nice, it is not always an option that is available, but full restores also work fine, it just takes much longer of course, longer than most other imaging apps, but it worked fine in my case.

personally, I think it is a very capable app, limited of course in some ways, and other ways offering some pretty nice features compared to some apps, but for a free offering for now, it did the job. My main go to imager is IFL and it is the fastest I have experienced in both backup and restores. IFL images my 7GB OS part in less than 3 minutes and restores in just over 2 minutes time, and i have not found anything that comes close to that. others have not had the same experience with IFL, so again it is what works for each person. RealCopy took just under 11 minutes to restore compared to IFL just over 2 minutes, but creating the image from within windows was pretty fast, about 4.5 minutes as mentioned. I run a very basic setup, as my work does not need lots of software installed, etc., but as anything else, each machine is different and sometimes the best software does not work as expected. Macrium is solid, but they are having their problems too, but they have very good history of quickly fixing issues as well as does terabyte, but something like RealCopy to me is not supported properly and the future of it appears to be questionable, but I do not know this for sure other than my one question to their email was never replied to and this I do not like from any company.

otherwise, it worked for me, but would not be recommended as a primary solution...that spot would go to either terabyte apps or macrium. I have had problems with Paragon so i do not use that. Each of us uses what works for us, and what is flawless for some can be a problem for others.

Nothing is perfect it takes constant effort and time to keep up with problems and fix them. if something lacks timely support and bug fixing, it cannot be a good primary solution, and the reason why I would not choose RealCopy although I can only say it worked in my scope of testing. the version I used is 1.0446 which appears to have been released in April 2013.

No updates since then, but also remember this is not a popular app and there is not much of anything that has been written about it, so the reason why I wanted to at least give it a more thorough testing. I hope they decide to keep up with it, but only they know what their plans are.

I like the features for a free imager, I do not like the lack of support and the lack of a more in depth help system, and this alone would make it an unlikely candidate for any major development until it either becomes a more popular software or the developers decide to improve what they have started. if the demand is little to none, I do not see this ever being actively developed, but that is my opinion.

For me it worked, but compared to some others, certainly it could use some improvements and I hope they do decide to continue its development.

Thanks for the replies and feedback. if someone is interested in pursuing RealCopy, I would email them and find out what their future plans are and also make sure the current version is not time limited as Stode mentioned, but I did not see this mentioned in my experience.

Have a good day guys

Jim

 

for those trying this and wondering where all the "other" features are you must create a full backup first and then once that is done you click on the little cog or gear to the right of the backup listed in the box and there you can mount the image etc, but that is the only spot where you can do this, also you dont have to set it to "full" backup if its the first time using it even when set to incremental it will still do a full the first time regardless. still not my cup of tea though

 

Hi guys,

Thank you for your feedback. Soon we will release a new version very most of the issues are fixed.

Best Regards,
Iurie
Realcopy Software Developer
www.realcopy.com

 

Hi Iurie

Thank you for taking the time to register and join this thread. Welcome to Wilders!

I am very glad to see you get involved and that is a great sign of support. I had some very frutiful discussion via email with Mr. Nesic last week regarding Realcopy and he mentioned the soon plans to release a new version along with some other very useful features, in addition to the capabilities of Realcopy at present, plus the potential offering of a workstation version which was encouraging and shows you are all quite active at continuing development.

I have been testing this now for about 2 weeks, and so far it has been quite solid and reliable once one takes the time to get acquainted with its features. I had one fast rollback corrupt the drive but I considered that occurrence as my fault due to a cancelled backup and then a cancelled differential that may have corrupted the image, plus a few mistakes made on my part. Overall, it has been solid with fast rollback working reliable also and full restores outside of windows are flawless although slower than some imaging apps, restores are a breeze. In my experience, it has been one of the most well behaved imaging software in regards to imaging from within windows, and does not interfere with ones work and does not drain so many resources as it creates an image, this is impressive and reveals quality, and I have also not found the typical event viewer errors after creating an image that is common with some imaging apps regarding VSS complaints, etc. Also no errors being reported during or after the mounting of images as I have seen many times with many imaging apps over the years. I have yet to try the boot capability of the actual image as a virtual drive, but I will be looking at this feature at some point.

There are enough knowledgeable good folks here who I am sure will be helpful to you with suggestions and input regarding future developments. Keep it simple, functional and reliable just as the current release is and you should have a good product that has some unique features, that few others offer for a free version.

Please keep us posted, and do not hesitate to get involved as you have time. Thanks again for checking in with us

Jim

 

Dear Iurie,

You seem to have a GEM of a program. Please consider my above post #11, which I reproduce below for you:

Here is AX64, though a very long, long one:

https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=339999

Best regards,

Mohamed

 

Hi Mohamed

"How does it compares to AX64, especially as a rollback?"

So far, as I mentioned above, fast rollback has been great, and works as intended, restoring only the changed sectors, a block level rollback. It is called 'synthetic restore' and is pretty fast depending upon how long in between images until one chooses to turn on fast rollback. if I create an image, and I wait 3 or 4 days and then perform a fast rollback, on my laptop with 7Gb of data on OS partition, it takes about 5 minutes or less to do a fast rollback, from the initial full image. Only a minute or 2 if I restore a fast rollback within a few hours of image creation.

The limitation at present with Realcopy fast rollback is that it is a one time choice, meaning after the rollback, if based only on 1 image created, the image records are of course restored back to before the latest image or incremental. If one has a chain of incrementals, fast rollback is available when choosing them to restore as long as they were created before the selected backup that was used for fast rollback. I hope I explained that clearly. it is an area that can be improved upon as far as being able to re-select the same image for a fast rollback, but as long as one has several incrementals, it is always an option and it works well, otherwise one can choose the image and even perform a full restore without boot media, using same feature of restore on restart, only of course this takes much longer as expected. Full image restores on my laptop take about 11 minutes with 7GB of data whether I restore after restart, or cold, using winpe and the files rc.exe and rclib.dll placed on a flash drive and you can backup and restore. it is quite flexible indeed, although I will mention in my own personal preference, if I am going to need to restore a full realcopy image, i typically will restore the standard way, with boot media (which can be any winpe disc or even the windows installation disc used in repair mode, then just open command prompt, choose the drive letter of the flash drive, and run rc.exe) using the mentioned files placed on a flash drive and executed from that.

Compared to AX64TM, the fast rollback is not performed from within windows, but upon restart, similar to Drive snapshot and I find it to be very solid at this.

I hope that helps explain it a little better Mohamed. I apologize if I did not explain it as clear as I would have liked. It just takes some time to get acquainted with it, and become familiar with the features and their limitations as with most software. I also will add that the creation of incrementals is extremely fast, once you have created the initial full image, you can modify the schedule and change to incremental which is actually the default setting, even before creating a full image. As zfactor stated above, first image will always be full then the default schedule setting type is incremental.

Good to see you my friend, I hope you are doing well.

Jim

 

Thank you Jim1cor13 for your knowledgeable and comprehensive reviews
Looking anxious about the new version.

Have a nice weekend everyone.

 

For this user there are 3 aspects of backing up/restoring which are critical:
1 - Full system imaging.
2 - Snapshots separate from full image for the ability to roll-back if needed.
3 - Ability to restore to dissimilar h/w and successfully boot afterwards.

It seems as if Realcopy does #1 fine - makes it's own version of snapshots, but not really separately from the full image - and though it mentions the ability to 'bare metal restore', it does not specifiy whether this just means to a different HDD, or to totally different h/w...?

Just lately I was reminded how critically important having a TRUE bare metal restore is when my PC died - and I wanted to restore my OS & data to a spare box I have.

My backup/snapshot app has been Driveclone 5 (I use XP) and it does all the functions I require - so do some others - but this one's lack of clear info does not encourage confidence.

Combined with reports of emails for support going un-answered, it would seem to discourage anyone wanting something they can really depend upon.

Lastly, it is nice to be able to do their version of bare metal restore with their own new way of it, but I believe that having a bootable media option as well as a pre-OS restore option to be preferable.
(And yes=> right now I am wearing suspenders AND a belt !!!)

Best Wishes to All.

 

Oh, I see the 2014 limitation...

 

i saw this 2014 message on a computer also. but the other 3 i tested this on did not have this issue. not sure what that is about??

 

This particular computer is connected to a domain. It appears as if this is the enforcement of home use only, although nothing of the website alludes to this.