Introducing AX64 Time Machine - hybrid imaging/snapshot software

Hi Rainwalker

Concur with your view, i.e., that of BG & mxy (for short as I can never type the name correctly )

Too many people chuffing at present. Let us have a little faith. It is better for the stress levels, etc.

 

Indeed, no software program updating ever proceeds as fast as we would like, we human beings by nature are impatient. All software engineers, with perfectly good intentions, will state some deadline but even they, the real experts, are not aware of how many unforeseen problems can creep in; with many, many tens of thousands of computer coding lines these programs become extremely complicated, even the simplest of programs.

As I have stated many times at many forums including Wilders, and I throw a brick at my own glass house because I am also guilty of it, if you are too impatient to be using a computer then you shouldn't be using one (so why am I still using one?).

Acadia

 

Hi folks

I have been testing the official web site version 1.4124, and so far it has been flawless at least for me. This is testing on an older Dell Inspiron E1705 laptop, Windows 7 pro SP1x86, although the hardware does support x64, USB mouse, T5300 Intel CPU dual core 1.73GHZ. This laptop originally came with Vista installed.

Boot media, backups, cold restore, hot restore so far have been impressive. The local boot option installed to boot menu is very convenient and has also worked fine, but of course it is very prudent to create another method of the bootable media, such as UFD or cd/dvd.

For me this version has been very stable and one thing though that is very important to understand is the tracking system AX64 uses. As Froggie and others have stated many times, don't break the tracking record of volume changes. Manage backups from the AXTMbrowser, etc.

But even if the tracking gets mangled, as far as I can tell, AX64 will simply perform a new baseline image which is good.

I have personally learned so much from so many of you who have been working with this consistently. I remember testing the first alpha Isso told me about, and I thought then the same as I do now...the potential for this unique software is huge in my opinion, and I have little doubt as to whether the team will be able to at some point realize they have a true winner being developed and it will see current issues dealt with as fast as they are able. My hats off to their developers, it has to be a tough task no doubt.

As I proceed, I will have more details of the hoops I will try and put this through, and how AXTM handles it but from what I have seen by so many of you testing it such as Peter and Froggie and a host of you who have stuck with it, certainly impressive at this point. What I have done up to this point, it is solid for me, and although I prefer to perform "cold" imaging, outside of the OS using IFL, the "hot" imaging has been great, and also "hot" restore feature has very much improved, again, at least from my early experience with AXTM.

This shows improvements and the fact they are trying their best to get this to the level necessary to begin seeing their share of the imaging/snapshot market become reality. I do hope they can fix the problems many have stated with USB mice/keyboards, etc.

For me, as Acadia stated, just thinking of ALL the hurdles that must be addressed to get any software as stable and compatible as possible certainly is a real challenge and I am certain an often very frustrating process, but I truly think they will get the issues ironed out as time moves forward.

Thanks to everyone being patient, this is going to be a real gem, for me it already is. how it has proceeded from the early alpha stage from what I recall has been impressive, and we also must remember, they are doing their best with the resources they have available to them.

Have a good day

Jim

 

I have been using 1.4.1.36 , works fine for me ,hot restore or cold. Isso and his group are doing an excellent job as far as I'm concerned.

Max

 

Thought I would share this. I follow this thread with interest, although I don't have time for all the testing that many do and kindly post their results for the benefit of others.
Recently, when I was doing a manual backup with AXTM, it stalled at about 78%. I tried numerous times, removing some software that I thought might be in conflict (considering other posts here), tried different releases of AX64, but nothing worked; AX64 stopped at the same percentage each time. So I perused the past posts here, searching for a similar complaint, found one along with ISSO's response to run disk utility (i.e. chkdsk). The chap with the problem reported that ISSO's recommendation solved his issue.

Didn't work for me. However it made me suspicious of my hard drive; I have a good hard drive monitoring software that has reported for some time that there were two bad sectors, but these were never an issue previously. I found that it was newly reporting an additional 3 "weak" sectors. This software also has hard drive testing routines; when I ran even the short test it quickly reported test failed, "read fail". However the software still rated my hard drive at 93% healthy. I decide I wasn't going to wait for full failure and replaced the drive. All is well now.
Conclusion: AX64TM can also be a good indicator/warning of imminent hard drive failure!

NOTE: Had no problem performing a full backup with Aomei Backupper before changing the drive.

 

Does anyone know if AX64 recovery reads off an Intel® RST Raid0 setup and if so what is the maximum GB limit? Thanks!

dja2k

 

Did my first restore a couple of minutes ago and the only error I've seen is from Logitech shown below. Running build 1.4.1.48.

dja2k

 

I'm also using that Logitech software, and I can't recall ever saw that error after a restore. However, my OS is Windows 7, not 8.

Sometimes this kind of error can pop up in "random" & not necessarily caused by AX64 or its restore. For example, softwares which automatically run at startup might encounter the so called "race condition."
Please note that by saying this, I'm not implying that the Logitech error was caused by a race condition. It's just an example for the previous sentence.

If you have the time, and feel a little adventurous, you can try some things (note: this isn't an exhaustive to-do list):
- After that error message, can that software be run manually (assumming that it needs to be closed because of the error)?
- Do the restore again, to see if the same error persists.
- Disable that software's auto start, make another backup image, restore it, and then try to start that software manually. Does it run ok?

 

For what it's worth in terms of helping developers, the latest beta still won't do a hot restore nor will it do a "warm" restore booting into safe mode (which almost always works with .36 (but is not as fast as a hot one but a lot shorter than a cold restore).

I can live with a "warm" safe mode restore which seems to be my lot in life, but I hope future versions won't loose this ability. if so, it's only a slight improvement from Acronis in terms of speed.

 

Hi dja,

The current released version is working well with the Intel RST RAID configuration on my HP (Win7 x64) notebook, but note that (depending on your specific configuration) it may or may not pickup the Intel RST drivers when building its recovery (boot) disk. So before relying on AXTM I strongly suggest creating the boot media to see if it works for your specific Intel RST RAID configuration.

Cruise

 

Hi dagrev,

Am I to understand that you can perform a hot ('warm') restore from within Safe Mode with v1.4.1.36 but not with v1.4.1.48?

Cruise

 

Correct. The hot restore never got past 1% and the normally trusty "warm" safe mode didn't work at all. it never even showed any progress. It just closed a black command screen that opened (not sure why it came up in the first place) then closed going no where.

 

That's interesting; I never even thought of trying a restore from within Safe Mode, although that would indeed seem to be an important functionality! I will try it (later on) to see if the current released version supports a Safe Mode restore.

Cruise

 

I seem to have problems with hot restores that most don't seem to have for some reason. I was told other software running (esp security) might be the problem. So I tried safe mode and it didn't work. Tried it again and manually stopped the services for Windows Defender and it works 95% of the time. Just stopping all security apps in Windows won't do it for me, even Win Defender.

Why me I don't know. Yours might work fine. I seem to be the exception. There's nothing odd about my system and my backup location is my secondary internal HD on my laptop.

 

Yes it was a hot restore.

dja2k

 

Thanks and I will keep this in mind when I test it.

dja2k

 

Don't feel like the Lone Ranger dagrev, you're not the only one with this problem (not that it's any consolation to you). There's probably a lot of people like me who haven't been vocal in this thread. I've had the same problem with hot restores ever since I bought 3 licenses a year ago. Literally 8 of 10 hot restores consistently fail for me, both on XP that I had on my machines a year ago, and now on Win7 Home Premium 64 bit.

I've been following this thread since day 1. I've read every word (literally) many times over, tried every suggestion / idea that's been posted, experimented with my own crazy ideas, submitted support requests & logs to Isso many times over, etc, etc, all to no avail.

The worst part is, when I'm forced to do a cold restore, it takes an average of 6+ hours, so I effectively loose the use of my computer the better part of the working day. I've developed a love / hate relationship with AX64.

At this point in time, I'm trying convince myself to stop stressing & just wait patiently (??) for the bullet proof hot implementation. I'm done with betas, hoping against hope that finally a new beta will fix this core problem. And it is a CORE problem. Until hot restores are 100% dependable, all the other bells & whistles & wishlists are superfluous (IMHO).

 

Trapperman,

This is an old tutorial but the principles still apply. You should be able to restore (cold) your OS in two minutes. I can.

http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/notes.shtml#note13

Separate the data files from the OS files.

 

That may be a great suggestion, but the whole point of AX64 is having the ability to do a restore in a few minutes without having to do all that. Myself, I'm looking for simple and easy--as in the couple of clicks on a mouse. But this may be a great option for those who like to tinker more than I do.

 

Have you tried what I call the "warm" restore using safe mode? The cold restore takes an hour on average, the warm about 15 minutes. I can live with that restore time (but like RBrx speed--less than 4 minutes better, but the program can cause other issues). Like you I would prefer the hot restore issue to be resolved before other things that are less important to the average user. One would think the hot restore would be the main selling point of the program. Without that, it's not that much different that other imaging programs. I'm hopeful the good people at AXTM will get this resolved.

 

Thanks guys for the support. We haven't forgotten about our revamped quick restore that occurs outside of Windows. This is our highest priority. Updates soon.

Thanks to those who have been testing the cmd line version of AX64.


Cheers,

Waj

 

Great to hear.

 

Thanks for the suggestion Brian, but I don't think that's my problem. I actually have 12 internal drives to distribute all my data, so it's not like I've just dumped everything I own into one big pile on the boot drive.

http://imgur.com/gcdCG9w

AX64 used to restore from a cold boot in about 45 minutes for me about 6 months ago, but something has changed in either AX64 and/or Windows. Now its 6+ hours. The amount of data on my boot drive has not changed at all. When a hot restore is successful, it's relatively fast, taking about 3-4 minutes, so I have to assume the problem is associated with AX64.

BTW, the long restore times aren't related to defragmentation. I have auto defragging turned off (only using Raxco manually when needed).

 

Yep, I've tried that a couple times before. Safe mode restore failed on me also.