Introducing AX64 Time Machine - hybrid imaging/snapshot software

Still working after another day of snaps and restores. One thing I've noticed is the restore seems to take longer than before (about 10 minutes to restored boot). It's slower than I hoped but I can live with 10 minutes. of course this time will increase as more images and changes are there to look through. Something to keep an eye on.

 

I'm glad Shadow Defender works fine with Macrium Reflect Incrementals...
Btw, for anyone interested.. It is today for FREE on giveawayoftheday.com !

@Peter:
how about that tracking file, where does it reside?

 

Hello Peter,
Currently about 206 total Gb on the C partition. I was thinking I was backing up the whole disk with a couple other factory partitions ("recovery" for one), but it seems just the C partition. Your question got me to thinking about what all was in the image and apparently the others are hidden in the backup or not included.

 

Any added news on how AX64 Time Machine does with SSD's these days?

TIA,

TH

 

Good point.

 

Hi Peter,
I seem to always be something of an anomaly with backup programs. Though my laptop is very quick in every other respect. AX64 used to be a little faster I believe and Macrium 6 generally does a restore in about 6 minutes.)

My main HDD is a SS hybrid and I have always wondered if that doesn't throw backup programs off a little, given that things may be stored in different sections of it. I'm not knowledgeable enough to know about that wild guess.

 

The SSD portion of the hard drive is just for the cache, it shouldn't affect anyhow in backing up,as far as I know.
Atleast mine SSHD seems to be as "slow" as a normal HD with managing the backups.
Personally, I think SSHD's are not any big advantage, my Win10 takes like 1 minute to boot up, whereas with SSD it would be 20-30 secs.
I'll be switching my Crucial 256gb SSD soonish into this laptop and putting the SSHD as an external usb drive.

There's allkinda factors which affect on how long the backup+restore is going to take, eg. is the source usb 2.0/usb 3.0 drive,is the target SSD drive or normal HD, etc.

 

Thanks Stode for the information. I boot to the main HDD it takes about 1.30 minutes, if I boot to the second internal HDD in the laptop (a 5400 RPM), it takes about 4-5 minutes and opening programs are noticeably slower. The hybrid SS drive is a great thing for me, but we digress I guess!

 

Well just had a failure that I've had before. I uninstalled some things and had a not smooth reboot. After it started and I opened FB, it asked which drive I wanted to protect as if there were no existing snaps. I've had this since using Win 10. Logs and info sent. I was really hoping we were on to something....

 

Any chance that this has something to do with you booting to the 2nd internal drive that you mentioned 2 posts back? Have you. in other words, booted to the 2nd internal drive and then done a restore subsequently that worked? I ask because if you have only been trying the new beta for a day or 2 its possible that you have not done this,,,,,and if so the problem may be related to the booting to the 2nd drive.

 

No I haven't booted to the 2nd drive for months. I wish that was the problem. In the past when I do boot to the 2nd drive it "breaks" the tracking file and a full image needs to be done but this isn't what happened here. It's like it starts over as in a new install setup. This has been a problem with Win 10 in all betas since the last release of ver2.

 

@wajamus:
where is the tracking file,which ax64 uses, located at?
how about making it possible to back it up in ax64, so it could be restored incase it "breaks" ?

 

I have a license for both version 2 and version 1. I've been following this thread closely for a year or more. I am still using version 1 (I think it's 1.1.1.4. While I have a license for version 2, I've never used it or installed it. And, at this point, I don't see a reason to. I am not one that does a lot of software testing, so I don't do many restores at all. In fact, I only do manual backups. I've not had a restore fail in over a year. Again, I just don't see a reason yet to switch to FB or version 2.

 

Perhaps this is a new variant on the old problem (it is a new beta after all). It should at least raise some suspicion that you had the problem after booting to the 2nd drive. Could be coincidence of course but may give the devs something to look into. At a min some testing of this possibility seems in order.

 

For clarification I did not have this problem after booting to the 2nd drive now or earlier. All that did in the past was break the tracking file and caused a long next snap which is normal--not the complete start over I'm experiencing asking which drive I want to protect. This has happened in all betas (3-4) seeking to be usable with Win 10. But yes testing is needed, yet I fear I'm the only one experiencing this problem.

 

I understand that but as I said this is a new version of the program so the problem of the breaking tracking file may have been replaced with a problem regarding FBs ability to find the backup set(s). It is suspicious to me that you only experience either problem after booting to the 2nd drive. The question of course is what is causing the problem. Have you tried booting to a different (2nd) drive? I suppose its possible the SSD hybrid setup may have something to do with it and since you are the only one with the issue then its likely only you will be able to sort it out through various tests to eliminate various possible culprits. Thats why I suggested the reboot to the 2nd drive as a possible culprit. It should be fairly easy to test this to prove it one way or another.

FYI I have time issues with MR6 paid that very few others seem to have, I have not been able to sort out the source of the problem so have just to live with it. My work around is the combination of AX64 V1 and MR6 and to have my images/snaps taken with MR6 made at 5:30 am so the time to completion is not disrupting my work flow (the long backup times do cause my PC to become very sluggish). Hopefully either you, or the devs sort this out otherwise you will have to decide what to do on your system (obviously). Possibly the 2 program approach is one you could use. ......... It would be interesting to see if after one of your failures if a restore with MR6 allowed FB to find the backup set.

 

I appreciate your thoughts. I see what you are saying about the new version (not just this beta), having this issue. It certainly didn't show up until the last betas designed to work with Win 10. I can't boot to my external. Well I guess I could if I did some work, I don't think that has anything to do with it since I have not booted to my 2nd since trying any of the last betas. Thus it's something other than booting the 2nd drive that's causing the problem. I can't help wondering about the hybrid drive since that's an odd setup, but it worked fine in previous versions. Unfortunately it may never get resolved, and I really like this program too

I too have time issues with MR6. Ocasionally I have a long incremental for no apparent reason--about every 5 or 6 it seems. (Restores seem to be fast.) Even Macrium support eventually gave up and apologized for not resolving the problem.

 

Hello, am trying to obtain a test copy of that ver. 701, but have not so far gotten response from the developer, which is ok am sure they are very busy. If any of you good folks could send a link or a private e-mail or anything, would be grateful. There used to be a way you could send a private msg to a poster here, but can't find it any more, only thing I found is something called "conversations"?

 

Well I contacted AX64 http://ax64.com/various/new-names-new-build/ and they sent me the link for the newest build of Flashback .701 and Isso says it's fully compatible with Windows 10 x64 and SSD's so who's willing to try?

TH

 

Well for me it's very comparable when it works.... Had another issue and sent info to Devs.