Introducing AX64 Time Machine - hybrid imaging/snapshot software

well i can just tell you how i use AX64 and Paragon B&R 2013 free "together"...

I make paragon images and AX64 snapshot of my main hd in an external HD.

If i restore paragon images or AX64 snapshots, both are there and able to read previous images and/or snapshot.

Hope this helps!

 

Fad,

Sorry, I missed your post. Thank you for sharing your data! I'm happy to see that this is pretty much the same that I get on my SSD system. The only difference is the restore time, which is for me about 5 sec to do the actual restore, plus 15 sec to reboot to desktop - total 20 sec (vs yours 45 sec). Perhaps you have lot of programs on startup, or your SSD is slower? I'm using two OCZ Vertex 4 SSDs, they are pretty fast.

Isso

 

bgoodman,

I think you meant the backup drive storage capacity right? Because recovery media is a USB stick or a CD used to boot in case your OS is unbootable or disk has failed.

At this moment we don't have automatic deletion of old media if the backup drive is full, we have plans to add such feature though. If you run out of space you can manually delete some of the snapshots. However if you have an average 100 GB partition, and you don't do heavy file operations (like video editing etc), then 500 GB drive should be enough to keep all snapshots for a really long time (years).

Isso

 

Musashi,

Thank you very much! I'm really happy to hear the program working properly for you, and gets along with Paragon.
First production release will be out in the middle of April, or maybe a bit sooner.

Happy Easter!

Isso

 

Thank you very much noons, great to hear it!

Regards,
Isso

 

Yes, AX64 should not interfere with Windows system backup or Paragon (as Musashi confirmed above).
Yes, if you use another imaging tool and create an image with installed AX64, then later restore it - that shouldn't affect AX64 operation. This assumes that the imaging software restores the partition correctly - keeping all the data intact. Make sure to test it, because not all imaging software may do that.

Isso

 

I don`t have very much on startup - basically just LnS and a static Ramdisk that loads up (at the moment anyway on this fresh install), on an Agility 3

but I was referring to the amount of time it`s back to the desktop and everything has settled down - not just the appearance of the screen itself, but when the CPU settles to zero usage.

So it`s fast and easy which is definitely a bonus, and major selling point in my opinion....even if it took a little longer, it wouldn`t bother me at all.

 

And you won't be sorry, either... I know I can handle this.

Ladies and gentlemen, may I please call your attention to the...

AX64 Time Machine

​

Some of its major features are (and it's only in BETA!)...

o The capability to DOUBLE the amount of COREs in your current CPU. Following your first SNAPSHOT, AXTM will also quadruple the amount of THREADs associated with each of those cores.

o After your first successful full image RESTORE, AXTM will increase the amount of RAM in your system by approximately 800%. We do this using an exclusively patented expansion technique known as "RAMerect." This technique has been so successful that we had to scale it back a bit since our first attempt at using it caused our 64-bit processing system to exceed its theoretical memory capacity.

o While AXTM is idle and not actively requiring any backup or snapshot management, it will increase the capacity of your HDD/SSD-based system to 16-terabytes, just more than enough to hold appx. 63-1/2 years of backup images.

o AXTM, utilizing another patented data compression technology known as "Setting Quadruple UnderBITs Into Storage Hierarchy" or SQUISH as it's affectionately known by our developers, is able to compress and save a complete 250gB partition onto a 1.44mB Floppy DISC. It's very easy to see the great advantages of THIS technology when it comes to off-site backup.

Our recent BETA timing tests have shown the following...

Full 250gB partition backup = .7-sec.
Typical 200-300mB snapshot = 31-nanoseconds.

While these processes fully utilize the added COREs and THREADs provided by the application itself, their impact on your system is undetectable using the System RESOURCE MONITOR.

Now for the finer points of this application.

Let's take a look at impact at the nano level of your system. We've discovered...

Uhhh, what's that, Isso? You want me to make a few subtle changes? But I've just finished the brochure and sent it to the Publications department. OK, okay...

Ladies and gentlemen, may I please call your attention to the...

AX64 Time Machine​

Try it, you'll really like it!

 

Hey Peter, you forget that you are talking about chief company officer. The revenue has increased 55 times since his publication BTW.
Great job mister Froggie! By the way you are a bit underestimating the program, especially the backup times seem too high to me. Maybe you were running on a slow machine though...

Isso

 

Thank you for the reply Isso,,,,the problem is I do a lot of graphic and 3D work so there is heavy usage on a regular basis with lots of new files being created and existing ones being modified. BTW, the 100 gigs is for the storage of images, the balance of the drive will be for the OS, programs, and files, not the other way around.

It seems to me that it was stated earlier that there would not be any consolidation of snapshots if some were manually deleted. How will this affect my backup set? I would think it would cause problems.

 

Ohhhhh... crap! You're absolutely right. That benchmark was run on a 486DX2... I forgot to tell the engineer to use the P60 platform for the final test. Sorry, Isso, for making the product look a bit worse than it really is.

OK, I'll give back one of the two vacation days the company gives me each year... it's the least I can do for such a grevious mistake.

 

Wow!! Lemme see now... 55 times 13, carry 2, add 4... Holy Cow! Isso, we've already made $3.73 and the damn thing isn't even out of BETA yet!

I told you my idea would work out... but I don't think we should tell them the part about the AXTM nanites turning their computer into a MacBook, that might really cause a serious problem. Not to worry... I'll leave that out of the next version of our company's publication.

 

I did try it. Only negative issue is the restore didn't fully restore in that the USB cordless mouse wasn't functioning and the monitor had a weird "fog" color, for a better description. I forced shutdown (as there was no other way to do it), rebooted and everything was, fine including the "test file I used."
bgoodman4's consolidation question is the key for me if I understand his question correctly. I'd want to image to my mounted 60gb (only) SSD. The AX64 base was 22gbs as Paragon's are too. I'd still want to use that drive for one Paragon image. I use a USB3 500gb exdr for the W7 images. I ascertain that snapshots are merely the difference between the base on lets say 4/1 and a snapshot on 4/2 and that these snapshots are mere mgs. Now if there are snapshots on the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th, can I delete snapshots the 4/2, 4/3 and 4/4 without affecting shots on the 5th and 6th? Or, can I just make a new snapshot on 4/7 that would be 100% accurate and recover the PC as it is at that time, even though several snapshots in between are missing? That is all I would want and need! Responders, thank you for your time!

 

YAHOO ! Looking forward to the release.

 

Ratchet, Isso explains pretty well what happens in Post #31.

As long as the snapshots are deleted under AXTM's Browser umbrella (not manually in the snapshot folder on the backup device), everything is taken care of very well by AXTM... you lose absolutely nothing. Its MERGING process takes care of everything for you.

 

Excellent to hear and good to know. I expect I would have probably deleted the snaps from within Explorer as thats what I would normally have done in the past. Now the question is,,,,will I remember this 5 min from now I assume the same holds true for differentials as for incrementals. Incrementals were specified in post 31.

Thanks for the link Froggie, it was the discussion around the linked to post that I remembered and was not sure what the upshot of the discussion was. Much appreciated.

 

ratchet, bgoodman

Froggie already pointed the answer (thanks much!). And I'll just summarize: please don't go to the backup folder and delete any files there. Because all of them are incrementals, and deleting any will break all the subsequent backups. (this is the downside of incrementals, but the ultimate advantage is the minimum amount of storage required, and very fast backups).
To delete any of the snapshots use the corresponding button in the Backup Browser - this will keep all the backups valid. You can do whatever you want from the programs user interface - you won't break anything.

ratchet,
Regarding the restore experience that you've described - i guess it was an offline restore right? (I mean with recovery media). What about normal online restore? Does it work properly for you?

Isso

 

Stop spreading confidential company financial information!

 

I just used AX64's GUI. Like I said, after the second boot everything was normal. Oddly, I removed AX64 but then decided I'd also restore to a Paragon image prior to the AX64 install. Although there wasn't a monitor issue the mouse was again frozen and I did a hard shutdown. I'm not at all implying that had anything to do with the install or removal of AX64. Again oddly, the boot didn't give me a safe mode option (as it was a normal boot) where as the reboot after the AX64 restore was the "PC shutdown yada, yada, yada," although I did just choose boot normally.
Also, does AX64 have to be enabled at all times to keep track of the changes? I assume that at least for snapshot speed it wood need to be.
I don't have it installed at the moment but will install it again tonight or tomorrow. Thank you!

 

ratchet,

Please try again the newest version and let me know if you still have this issue. But please note that during restore we purposefully disable mouse and keyboard, and the computer will shutdown automatically after the restore is complete.
You don't need to run the program to track the changes - just close it whenever you don't need it.
Isso

 

I have had very bad experiences with incremental backups and would prefer not to use them. Differentials would be fine since if one is corrupted it will not mean the loss of the entire backup set. Currently I only do full images and in my mind going to even differentials is a step in a direction I am not especially comfortable with,,,,,,,,or am I being paranoid?

 

Take a look at that from a different perspective. Sure, AXTM can be easily modified to take full or differential backups, but in such case your backup drive will get full in a couple days, or even several hours (if automatic hourly backup is on). Besides, each backup and restore operation will take magnitudes of order more time (up to hours). Will anyone use such a "snapshot" program? I doubt it.

Of course, the problem with incremental backups is the that there is no redundancy of data, so if any backup file gets corrupted by any reason - it will break all subsequent backups. That's why we've spent enormous amount of time making the program bullet-proof, so it works fine when power failure or crash happens, or media gets disconnected during backup etc. I think at the moment the implementation is sufficient for this program to be actually used as a backup. (By the way if you want to have redundant backups, you can just make a copy of AXTM folder).

So, the bottom line is following: any program needs to use some kind of trade-offs. In our case, in order to achieve "snapshot-like" experience we had no other option as to use incremental backups. In the end we have a program that provides similar experience to Rollback RX eta, but can be actually used as a backup (like Acronis eta). Also it doesn't hijack your system like Rollback and doesn't take ages to backup/restore like Acronis. Maybe it's a little bit slower than the first, and little bit less reliable than taking full backups every time, still in my opinion we made the program as close to both of these worlds as possible, and I know no other program on the market that can offer comparable experience. Hope this makes sense.

Isso

 

Just want to verify that .899 is the most recent beta before I install. Thank you!

 

If the length of time between each backup is longer, the backup will take a while, right? I'm talking about manually backing up and not using the automatic hourly backup. I left it just over a day before I backed up, and found it took a while to do so.