AOMEI Backupper & AOMEI Partition Assistant

I've searched but can't find any trace of WinPE or AIK on the laptop ( Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit SP1 ) and I certainly
never removed it !
I guess this is why AOMEI keeps telling me to install it when I try to create a rescue disk ...

Don't know if anyone has posted this link before :-
https://www.raymond.cc/blog/10-comm...-features-and-backuprestore-speed-comparison/

Raymond reviews most of the best known backup software here ( including Windows own System Image )
On page 2 there are performance tests for each , well presented in tables .... well worth a look IMO.

 

The information Aomei needs to create a WinPE rescue disk in Windows 7 is in a hidden folder called "Recovery". Specifically a file called "WinRE.wim". This is the image Windows 7 uses to create a recovery CD. After seeing what Aomei did with PE Builder, I used the same file to create my own bootable WinPE partition to try and figure out how they got Windows Explorer working in a WinPE environment. That has been something of the holy grail for WinPE. I can get it booting to a command shell and launch alternatives like BSE and XY explorer but getting a full Windows Explorer desktop is difficult.

In terms of reliability, at this point I have at least 100 successful restore and cloning operations with Aomei, some a bit tricky. It has been my main imaging application since version 1.0 and I wouldn't use it if I found it unreliable in any sense. The number one requirement for any imaging application is reliability.

 

Any of you use AOMEI with AX64 Time Machine?

 

rdsu, that question is probably better asked in THIS THREAD (many more AX64 users there)...

 

Thanks for the tip!

 

Ok, logged onto Wilders with Opera in a WinPE enviornment created with Aomei PE builder. I customized the Aomei PE environment with Opera 12 and a screen snapshop applet. I put it on a 2gb partition in an 80gb drive, put it in a laptop and it booted and here I am. Enough of an OS to get to Wilders and post. Well, maybe it isn't ready for prime time but PEBuilder is a cool piece of software. It does warn that it might not be compatible with all systems as it creates the boot media but the results are really cool when it does work.

 

I also tried the PEBuilder and it seems to works very well on my computer...

 

When it works, it looks terrific (based on the screenshots provided by MisterB). You have to admit, though, that's it's less than useless for those of us who can't get the WinPE to boot properly, if it boots at all. Hopefully, AOMEI will find some way to make it work on a wider variety of machines/configurations.

 

I agree with you!

All these issues aren't good at all, and the confidence on AOMEI can not be the best when it doesn't work as it should...

 

Backupper wasn't so good in version 1. By 1.6 it was much better and by version 2 much much better. I hope the same for PE Builder. I wouldn't have been so impressed if I hadn't tried to get Windows Explorer working in WinPE myself and knew what a challenge it is.

 

With my plain vanilla Win7 32-bit installation on a 5 year old laptop (No UEFI, No GPT) the current version of the PE Builder works nicely, and the CD also works with two other WinXP machines.

The only things I would criticize:
1. The version of AOMEI Backupper which comes with PE Builder is not the current one (2.02 vs. 2.2)

2. After booting from the PE CD the WinPE accesses and modifies my main HDD without asking for my permission. I found some extra trash bin folders plus a temp folder for Irfanview.

No big deal...


Cheers
manolito

 

Sorry I'll have to be off topic a bit again - regarding the winPE with Windows Explorer built in, it's not such a big deal. Look at Win8PE SE or Win8.1SE at theoven.org. It's basically an amazing Windows PE environment with a lot of features on top of basic Win Explorer operations. One such benefit is you can install programs to run, just like in Windows itself. So basically a live Windows environment.
Check it out, much better than the basic AOMEI PE environment.

 

Your #2 above is a VERY BIG DEAL! Pre-Installation environments are supposed to run isolated in RAM disks, never to touch any installed disks at all unless directed to do so. Any "independent" programs contained in that PE are supposed to use a TEMP area on the SYSTEM volume (RAM disk in the case of the PE), not on some isolated volume that it just happens to find laying around. If the PE-based program is designed to ask the user for information on what disk to use (Partition tools, Explorers, etc.), then fine, the user is directing the tool accordingly. But to arbitrarily WRITE on a disk that it sees in its volume space is an absolute no-no.

Wait 'til you see what happens to a Rollback-protected system (or any system being imaged by an application using a TRACKING MECHANISM) when something like this is done outside of the tracking capability... eventually Ka-BOOM!

 

It's not that the Aomei PE environment with explorer is necessarily the only one or the best, it is a difficult thing to do a full Explorer desktop in WinPE and I'm impressed with it.

PE builder copies installed versions of the Aomei software to the boot media. I don't think any version of Backupper is included with PE builder, it just copies what it finds so a system with Backupper 2.2 should get 2.2 on the boot media. Except for the bundled freeware utilities, everything that PE builder puts on the boot media is copied from the system it is on. The basic WinPE boot software is from WinRE.wim. The additional Windows system files come from the system disk and the Aomei programs are copied from the installed programs.

I have been playing with WinPE for a while. One of the things I have been doing is creating live partitions so the the boot.wim image is not loaded and changes can be made to the WinPE system partition like in any normal OS.

 

That was certainly not my impression nor understanding. The download page for the PE Builder states as follows:

AOMEI PE Builder 1.4 FREE Create more convenient and complete WinPE-based bootable media

• Integrate Desktop, Windows Explorer, Start Menu, and Taskbar.
• Contain AOMEI hard disk partition manager.
• Contain AOMEI backup & restore software.
• FREE for both private and business use.

When I installed the Builder I had a folder, complete with executables, for Backupper and Partition Assistant.

 

This is definitely wrong. When I built my PE disk I did not have any version of AOMEI Backupper installed on my system.


@Froggie

Of course you are right, a live operating system should not touch the user's HDD unless the user permits it explicitly. But this would be in an ideal world...
In the real world many live CDs do touch the HDD, no matter if they are based on Linux, BartPE or WinPE. (Kaspersky rescue CD, several BartPE CDs and now AOMEI) So I've kind of gotten used to it.

And every backup software which relies on some kind of tracking file should detect this and act accordingly. AX64 does it, SysRestore does it, and RBRX 9.1 does it also (I haven't tested 10.2 yet).


Cheers
manolito

 

I have not seen a single WinPE boot disk that doesn't change a bit (litterally) to all windows disks, that's just part of the checks that windows either do at boot time or shutdown to verify the consistency of drives. It usually defeats tracking software and in AXTM case, a new long backup is performed again. Only some Linux Live disk don't modify anything, unless you mount the windows drives.

 

I upgraded Partition Assistant and I got the upgraded version on my boot Media. I haven't tried it with Backupper because I don't have the new version.

Anyway, it is even better that the two programs are included. It looks like PE Builder will put a newer version of them if it finds them on your disk.

 

So far I haven't experienced any issues building the AOMEI recovery disk or in using Backupper, but reading so many negative posts in this thread have given me 2nd thoughts about its reliability.

----
Go Seahawks!

 

One thing I have found Backupper to be is reliable. It gets better with each new version.

 

I gathered that reading your posts MisterB, but there are quite a few here who disagree. I've just been using it since Sept. 2014 so I don't have your long experience using it.

----
Go Seahawks!

 

I think a lot depends on how you are using it and on what sort of system. I've never found a perfect imaging program for every possible application. I do a lot of cloning which is fairly demanding of the basic imaging functionality but I do everything manually and don't use things like scheduling. I do use incremental and differential backups but they are not as important to me as to some of the other posters on this thread.

 

Hi, I recently had an issue with a Lenovo G505 running Win 8.1. I decided, foolishly, to restore an image instead of trying to repair the issue. I used Time Machine V2, but the process froze at 83% and the C: filesystem was rendered useless. I then used Casper V8 to restore C: but was greeted with a nice BSOD at boot. I also tried to restore the full drive that was imaged with Casper and I got the same BSOD. I just tried the last image.

Then I tried AOMEI Backupper Pro 2. First, a partition per partition restore made the issue even worse, the PC would instantly reset. Then I tried to restore the full drive, also imaged by AOMEI and this time I was able to boot. Everything seemed fine except Directory Opus V10 that would freeze at launch. Resinstalling it and reloading the last saved config solved the issue. Then I realized that the VSS mechanism was damaged and wouldn't start. I never managed to repair VSS on any PC so I just had to reload another image. I took the previous one done with AOMEI and ... it worked, no more VSS issue, DirOpus was still damaged but a simple reinstall solved that.

So, I am grateful to AOMEI that was the only one to be able to restore my PC to its previous condition, except for the small issue with Diropus, a bit disturbing because I don't see why everything else seems fine, just this app has an issue after restore.

I wrote to AOMEI support, no answer yet but that was just a few days ago. Anyway, I am glad I had this image made. Casper was very reliable until that day. I have also written to their support.

 

Aomei Backupper 2.2 freebee today.

https://topwaresale.com/product/aomei-backupper-professional-giveaway/

http://www.windowsdeal.com/w/aomei-backupper-professional-discount-coupon/

 

Yeah, that indicates a new version is about to be released.