AOMEI Backupper & AOMEI Partition Assistant

Discussion in 'backup, imaging & disk mgmt' started by Masterblaster, Mar 18, 2014.

  1. MisterB

    MisterB Registered Member

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    Installed it and made a PE Builder disk and, voila, the PE Builder disk has Backupper 2.2 instead of 2.01 that it had before.

    I'm also getting close to getting OpenVPN GUI to work in the Aomei PE environment. Got the TAP adapter working and the command line interface and just had to get a portable OpenVPN GUI to test for the next round. This doesn't have much relevance for the basic imaging functions of Backupper but it does for the stuff I often post about in the privacy technology section.
     
  2. MikeMT

    MikeMT Registered Member

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    Correct currently 2.5 Standard Beta is available to download with a few added features with a release date of around early March

    What’s new in AOMEI Backupper 2.5?

    Added Universal Restore: allow you to restore a system backup image created on one computer to another with different hardware.
    Optimized PXE Network Booting: add HTTP method to speed up the downloading of image file.
     
  3. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    Continuing the discussion from...

    https://www.wilderssecurity.com/thre...rid-imaging-snapshot-software.339999/page-400

    Scott,

    I tried the UEFI restore again to a new, empty HD. Same error.

    I converted the empty HD to a GPT disk using BIBM. Now the drive contained a MSR and unallocated free space. The image was restored to the unallocated free space. Success. Win8.1 boots and all 4 partitions are present but not in the order they were before the image was taken. It works but I've never had to create a GPT disk prior to a restore with other imaging apps.
     
    Last edited: Feb 16, 2015
  4. Peter2150

    Peter2150 Global Moderator

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    Hi Scott

    If AOMEI is a quality company, you should be able to report the problem and point them to our posts. That should make them want to investigate

    Pete
     
  5. oliverjia

    oliverjia Registered Member

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    It's reasons like this that finally I give up on AOMEI. From a practical point of view, AOMEI missed a lot on UEFI Secure boot. When they claimed they supported UEFI and secure boot, I tried a restore on the same HDD. Upon restore and first boot up, Windows 8 had to go through an automatic boot fix before being able to boot into desktop. When restored to a different HDD on the same computer, the resulted OS was never able to boot correctly before.
    I just feel the programming work at AOMEI is of lousy quality. So I won't test their software for them. Why should I? there are much better choices out there.
     
  6. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    Scott,

    Using Diskpart...

    clean
    convert gpt

    ... a GPT disk was created without a MSR.

    The image was restored to unallocated space on this disk. Win8.1 booted OK but there is no MSR on the disk. It's not ideal.
     
  7. MisterB

    MisterB Registered Member

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    I use Aomei with MBR disks so I can't comment on UEFI problems. I simply have no interest whatsoever in Windows 8, UEFI or GPT disks right now.

    In what I've been doing with it, I have pushed it. I've been doing a lot of cloning from smaller to bigger disks, rearranging partition order, setting up multiboot systems and cloning a bigger system partition to a smaller one and other tasks much more demanding than simply restoring a partition to the same disk. It has performed very well in all of this. I am doing things where I expect some failure and am prepared to try an operation more than once in order to succeed. What has surprised me is how few times I've had to do a cloning operation over. Most have either succeeded in creating a bootable system the first time or have required simple and minor adjustments in order to boot. As I've said before, I've never found an imaging application that was perfect for every system or circumstance and I've learned to work around the shortcomings of those I've used. "Lousy programing quality" is a very subjective judgment based on a bad experience with an area where this program has some issues. In others it performs extremely well.
     
  8. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    MisterB,

    That's fine. In my brief testing AOMEI did the difficult task of restoring a MBR mode image to a new empty HD. It was only on UEFI systems I saw issues.
     
  9. MerleOne

    MerleOne Registered Member

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    Hi, I had the following issue : I had an image of the full HDD of my UEFI system (Lenovo G505 running W8.1), I had some issues with another imaging tools (Time Machine) and I tried to restore partition per partition one by one. It failed. However when I restored the full drive in one pass, it did repair the system quite well (the last incremental was not OK but the previous one was).
     
  10. oliverjia

    oliverjia Registered Member

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    All my computers are UEFI secure boot enabled, so AOMEI is not for me. I remember before when I tried AOMEI Backupper, at at least one instance, the disk layout was modified after restore (orders of the 4 GPT partitions changed). That's a big no no for me. So maybe it will get better dealing with UEFI systems.
     
  11. Scott W

    Scott W Registered Member

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    Although our PCs are MBR systems, some of these reports are still unnerving even for myself who never had a bad restore with AOMEI. So based on Pete's recommendation (in conversation) I am now also using MR (Free Edition) as a fail-safe backup, at least until all of this is resolved.
     
  12. MisterB

    MisterB Registered Member

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    One thing to keep in mind is that anything other than pure sector by sector imaging and restore is going to alter the data in the image in some way. I have a nice portable imaging app called HDDRawCopy that only does blind sector by sector imaging, just as a Linux DD command does. For some things it is very useful, dealing with small images from embedded systems is one. Adding compression, incremental and differential backups, restoration to different hardware and other options make for more easily usable software but the program has to analyze the data it is imaging and make decisions about how the data on the disk is going to be put in the image and how it is going to be restored from the image. That is where it is going to stumble and fail. When a program uses the file table for fast incrementals, for example, the image can fail due to file system errors or the programmer not getting something right. Restoration to different hardware means the imaging program has to strip drivers out of an image on restoration which is risky prospect because there are so many different drivers, OSes and variations in how an OS is installed.

    Once an imaging app starts "thinking" it can start causing problems. I used Power Quest Drive Image from version 3.0 to the 2002 version and, in the later versions, I always had to check the boot.ini file after any restoration because the software would always rewrite it and I had complicated multiboot setups that always confused it. With newer imaging software, I've found similar issues and the more processing the software does of the image file, the more likely it is going to create errors.
     
  13. Robin A.

    Robin A. Registered Member

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    I agree. But people want fancy options, doing everything with one click.
     
  14. andylau

    andylau Registered Member

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    Nice to see that one more that supports Universal Restore:D
     
  15. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    I tried a Disk Backup/Restore instead of a System backup/restore to a new empty HD. It failed to produce a bootable OS too. On looking at the disk (after the restore) with BIBM, it is a MBR disk and not a GPT disk. All 4 partitions were present. That's a BAD result.
     
  16. MisterB

    MisterB Registered Member

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    Did you try it in sector by sector mode?

    I've had some things, like Xp boot sectors, require sector by sector backup. I've gotten mixed results. Sometimes things work in sector by sector mode that don't work in intelligent sector mode and I've had the opposite where an intelligent sector operation works after a sector by sector one failed.
     
  17. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    I'm only trying a standard entire drive image of UEFI Win8 and a restore to a new empty HD. It's the scenario of a Hard Drive failure. I've tested...

    IFW
    IFD
    IFL
    Acronis TI
    Macrium Reflect
    EaseUS Todo
    AOMEI Backupper

    AOMEI Backupper is the only one that fails.

    I know why it fails. The First Track isn't copied to the new HD.

    Edit... There is more to the story. If you do a Disk Backup/Restore all 4 partitions are restored but the First Track isn't.
    If you do a System Backup/Restore only 2 out of the 4 partitions are restored and the First Track isn't.

    I'm using AOMEI Pro (Trial)
     
    Last edited: Feb 18, 2015
  18. MisterB

    MisterB Registered Member

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    Disk backup/restore in sector by by sector mode? Aomei intelligent sector mode doesn't copy the MBR in a disk backup in a mbr disk. It doesn't copy the boot sector of an Xp/Win2k partition in intelligent sector mode either. It does in sector by sector mode.

    I've used Backupper in conjuction with Partition Assistant which has a nice feature called "rebuild mbr" and I've used it to fix disks that haven't been bootable after cloning. I tried a complete disk clone to smaller disk and let Aomei resize partitions proportionally. It had an Xp system partition and it wouldn't boot. I did an mbr rebuild, manually resized the data partition so I could do a sector by sector copy of the system partition and that worked. If I had a GPT UEFI system to play with, I would try a sector by sector image/restore and if it didn't work, I would see what the "rebuild mbr" function did on a GPT disk. I just checked and it is available on a GPT disk.
     
  19. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    I understand you don't have a UEFI system to test. What you are saying sounds reasonable but I'm only testing what the average user would do. My concern is the average user would create standard backups of the UEFI system and when there was a Win8 issue the image would be restored successfully so everything would look OK. But when the HD fails the image won't restore successfully to a new HD. That's bad.

    Sure, if the user had a sector by sector image things might be different. But the average user doesn't create them and I don't either. I've never needed one with my software.
     
  20. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    MisterB, I tried "Rebuild MBR". No luck I'm afraid. But the disk was MBR, not GPT. And you can't convert to GPT with the free app.

    Before creating the image I used TeraByte's MBRWork to backup the First Track. After the restore failed I used TeraByte's MBRWork to restore the First Track. Win8 now boots on the new HD.

    Drive Snapshot suffers a similar issue with a UEFI Win8 system. A restored image to a new empty HD fails to boot. Restoring the First Track with TeraByte's MBRWork allows Win8 to boot.

    The target HD after a AOMEI restore is a MBR disk.

    The target HD after a DS restore is a GPT disk. (but Win8 doesn't boot)
     
  21. MerleOne

    MerleOne Registered Member

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    Hi; Did you try to restore the full drive and not individual partitions ? I mean with AOMEI.
     
  22. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    Full drive.

    I tried a Drive Backup/Restore and a System Backup/Restore.

    With DS you have to restore the partition images individually after restoring the partition structure.
     
  23. MerleOne

    MerleOne Registered Member

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    The Drive Restore solved a similar issue for me, restoring "just" the system backup was not enough. I am sure my PC uses UEFI, but not sure about "secure" UEFI. Did you try this with the latest stable version, V2.2 ?
     
  24. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    Did you restore to the same HD?

    I downloaded AOMEI Pro (Trial) yesterday. (Ver 2.2)
     
    Last edited: Feb 18, 2015
  25. oliverjia

    oliverjia Registered Member

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    Yes I have the same experience.
    IMO, if an imaging app could not successfully produce a bootable OS after restoring to a new empty HDD/SSD, then the true value of that app is very limited. Because when disaster strikes (original HDD gone), you thought you have a good OS image and only needed to change a new HDD, but then you are left with an unbootable OS. That's just sad.

    So far I use Acronis TI, ILF and StorageCraft Shadow Protect Live USB to make 3 copies of image of a freshly installed and updated OS, store them on two external HDDs. I believe this setup could cover all scenarios when a restore is needed.

    If you are using UEFI with secure boot on a WIN8/8.1 system, forget about AOMEI.
     
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