Introducing AX64 Time Machine - hybrid imaging/snapshot software

Don't ditch them. They are still good, just set them aside and start a new one.

 

Okay, I've been testing the heck out of Build 548 and thought it time to publish results.

I initially put 548 on my new lenovo laptop and it looked good. I put in on my no 1 desktop and started with it but got cold feet and went back to the released version. But the hot restore intrigued me, so I put 548 back on the desktop and beat the heck out of it.

I had 3 points of testing:

1. Reliability
2. Interaction with and the effects of Raxco Instant Recovery
3. Raxco's Perfect Disk. This was crucial to me

Before going into details of some of the test. But first a summary of the results.

1. Hot restores. Did several a day for the last few weeks. 100% success.
2. Full Image restores, from the boot manager recovery environment. 100% Success
3. Full Image restores, from the Windows GUI advanced menu. 100% Failure
4. Bare metal restore. 1st attempt marginal , 2nd attempt success

Okay first for those who may not know IR, uses a secondary snapshot, and that increases the space on the c: drive by almost 50%
Secondly I call and incremental chain from baseline to end or something that may interrupt it, like in my test case I did a complete perfect disk defrag including the off line defrag
so in my test case a had a chain of incrementals that covered the off line defrag.

My initial tests where just Hot restores within an incremental chain. Then I did a full PD defrag. After seeeing the sucess I actually left IR installed, kept my archives but removed the secondary. Made all imaging faster. Back when I initally tried V2, I imaged the machine when I had full IR on, but it was a special setup and a separate TM chain. The system had two full Perfect Disk defrag since then. Using the boot menu recovery environment I did the full image restore. Worked perfectly. I was able to boot between snapshot just fine. Then I did another Boot menu full image restores back to current time. Worked perfectly.

Then I repeated the restore back to the special image, no problem. This time I booted back to my main chain, but this time, I restored to a point before the defrag in that chain. Success. Then I moved about the chain, with Hot Restores, again total success. Then I decided to try restoring to current time, crossing the defrag. I picked a full image restore from the advanced Windows GUI, but across the PD full defrag. It was a total failure. System wouldn't boot. Tried booting to the Recovery CD. Restored failed. It was Macrium to the rescue.

Then I wanted to know if the failure was because of Perfect Disk. So once I got the system, up and verified I could do a hot restore, I tried another Windows GUI full image restore. Failed. Thought this time I was able to restore from the boot menu recovery. Tried twice with same results.

Then for the Bare Metal restore test, I went to VM. I installed TM v2 548, then wiped the drive, and zero'd it out. Booted to RE CD and did a restore. It went all the way to the end and then gave me a restore failure. I literally just repeated the restore, and sucess. Next day I repeated the test, and success.

So far now all is good. Wonder why Froggie and I see such different results.

Again just remember this is beta. Have a fall back plan.

Pete

 

Thanks Chamlin.

 

My system isn't bullet proof, but the backup programs are, although I've had a few horror stories. Like when I was beta testing Shadowprotect, and during restore I always deleted the volume I was restoring, one bug in the RE, caused that beta to delete all the volumes it could see, including the one containing the images. Few sleepless nights on that one, and an amazing recovery due to the talent at storagecraft.

You can't take the warning about beta's too lightly. It's real.

Pete

 

I've done it. You basically have to assume much is broken, because usually it is. Also need a top draw backup plan.

Most vendors won't let you test an alpha unless they really know you.

 

Hi Chamlin

Couple of things.

1. Firefox

Go to this link. It will tell you how to find your profile folder. Save a copy of it off the c: drive. Then even with a clean FF install you can replace the current profile folder with the one you saved and you have firefox back.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/k..._finding-your-profile-without-opening-firefox

2. The pagefile behavior with AX64 was as expected.

In Macrium when you image even though it doesn't store the pagefile, it stores a place holder, so when you restore it seems as though the pagefile was put back on the disk where it was.
AX64 ignores the pagefile completely, so when you restore there isn't anything in the restore about the pagefile, so when you reboot Windows automatically creates one of course in the default locations.

What I would suggest, is restore the Macrium Image And see where the system stands. For the next I will probably have stones thown at me, but. I would move the pagefile back to the c: drive. The reasons for not having it there, are probably SSD related, and to me(ducking) if there is anything I can't do because I have an SSD, I shouldn't have one.

I would uninstall AX64, get the machine right, besure you have the latest EIS, and then reinstall TMv2 and start new backup chains.

Pete

 

Further test results.

First so far, on this desktop 548 beta continues to serve me well. Got curious this morning.

so I took an incremental, Did a regular PD defrag(no boot time), and then took another incremental. Then I did a hot restore back to the one prior to defrag. Now normally on a hot restore, I will get a slow count up to 8 %, and then it speeds up, slows at 50 and then races on to 100% and reboots.

On this restore back to the point before the defrag, it did a much slower count up to 10%, and I glanced away, and the system was rebooting. I thought bad, but I let the reboot continue.
System came up normally and seemed okay. I ran chkdsk just to be sure, and it was fine. So then I did another hot restore back to the current point in time. This was more what I expected. A slow count all the way to 100%. Might as well have been a full image restore. I then set the chain aside and started a new one

so conclusions.

1. After any defrag, it might be wise to boot to the RE, and do a full image.
2. Also might be wise to set the chain aside and start a new one. You can still access the old chain, by doing a full image restore.

Might seem a pain to do the full image restores, but that is infact what we'd have to do with any full imaging anyway.

Pete

 

In theory no. But I just like to keep things simple. I guessed that was the reason. It's one of the reason, I didn't get SSD's on my new systems. For what a 256Gb SSD would cost, I got two 1tb hdds. Boot might not be as fast, but that doesn't cause me any issue.

Pete

 

Only exception to that Froggie is a case like I had, where I needed to get full memory dumps. Then the page file has to be at least the size of the ram you have. Glad that episode is behind me. The uploads were a killer, even compressed.