issues with active@ 5.3.1

few issues im wondering if anyone else is having, first after a restore all the windows files are crazy fragmented. i could not believe how slow the system was booting. i decided to run a boot time defrag with auslogics since that's what is installed currently and it found 14 files HEAVILY fragmented one file had over 200 fragments!! after the defrag boot time was considerably faster but still not what it should be. i then ran a chkdsk and it had to repair a couple things again much improvement after. also what im seeing is windows update now says never far last checked and all the hidden updates i had are now unhidden so all my update history is gone and i can not remove any old updates now as there is nothing in the list.

this happened on my primary laptop so i decided to test on the wife's laptop since i had a backup with ifw and i had it here. SAME result to the letter with her laptop which is a totally different model than mine i.e.different hardware etc.

os for both is win 7 x64 active@ version 5.3.1 backups made via the bootdisc and restored via the bootdisc. i know this is not the active support but i know a lot of you use it so i wanted to see if this was common before going further. thanks

EDIT: also now notice my firefox info i had saved like the sites i was logged into already when i made the backup are gone. the passwords are saved but i have to log back in to them. seems very odd..

 

zfactor,

I don't know the answer. Does Active@ do sector based image/restore? If so you should not see fragmentation which isn't present on the source partition.

 

honestly im not sure ill have to grab the manual and see what it says i have uninstalled it for right now while testing some other programs i dont like to run multiple imaging programs since i have had issues in the past. i was hoping tree would chime in here i sent a support request but have not heard back from them yet.

also to start with source partition is def not fragmented...

 

hi zfactor, i wish i could help but i have never experienced your issue or heard of it happening before, lets hope tech support can solve it as i too would like to know what caused this (if anything).

i see you are using the very recent release of active@ boot disk so maybe you have discovered a bug?

the 'Create Raw Disk Image' does a sector by sector copy and the 'Create Backup Disk Image' copies the occupied clusters only.

 

I'll be very interested in hearing what you find out. I just downloaded the update to Active@ Boot Disk 6.5 (released Nov 16) and it includes Disk Image 5.3.1.

Looks like I'll stick with Clonezilla until we learn more on this...

 

Hi zfactor

Just a thought. Have you by chance looked into the Event viewer under your Admin tools? Specifically to check for any event listing a "Dirty Volume" after you restored? I had this dirty volume issue after doing a restore a few years back when testing Drive Snapshot and also if I remember correctly same problem after trying out Easeus Todo backup a year or so ago after a restore.

My understanding of it had to do with "hot" imaging, and upon restore, the event viewer shows one or both of the following: The NTFS Dirty volume event, and also under the Critical section in Event Viewer, it would show a Kernel power error, or 'improper Shutdown' after restoring a "hot" image. The Critical event of a 'bad shutdown' would happen everytime I restored a hot image using Macrium also, but no dirty volume issues with Macrium that I recall.

This is when I began to perform only 'cold' imaging and never had the Critical kernel shut down error again. I did find that the bad shutdown was not really critical at all, it was simply showing no record of a proper shutdown when a hot image was rstored. The dirty volume part happened for me when I tried both Drive snapshot, and Easeus Todo over the last 2 years. I had emailed Tom Ehlert at the time of drive snapshot, and he suggested using the VSS service option which I was not using, which appeared to help, but still an occassional problem.

I thought I would mention it, at least to check and see if your event viewer shows this event of a 'dirty volume' after you restored. I can say that every hot image I restored from Macrium Reflect always showed 'improper shutdown' and a kernel error under the Critical section, but no dirty volume NTFS file system error issue with Macrium. I never had such issues after cold imaging with IFL or other cold imaging such as using Lazesoft or Macrium Winpe boot cd, or Keriver Image boot cd. It seemed as long as I would stick with cold imaging, the kernel error went away, have not had any dirty volume reports since I started doing cold images, but that is just my experience.

I understand now that the improper shutdown was showing nothing more than the lack of record of windows being shutdown properly, it was not a critical issue in the sense it was due to restoring an image created within the windows environment and did not cause any problems. But the dirty volume issue was a problem and could have been related to when I hot imaged win 7 as mentioned above.

I hope you figure it out and hear back soon from Active@.

Jim

 

yes you are correct a ton of volume errors after restoring. this plain sucks. i did not think to look for those in the event viewer. will send that info over as well. but there are like 20+ of the same error for the last 2 days since restoring and i did already run a chkdsk /r /f as well and they are still there so now i guess i will have to do a fresh install imnot going tolet these just go on like that. was using the previous version prior to this and did not have this issue at all just fyi. this stuff only started with 5.3.1

 

zfactor:

Are you running Active@ Disk Image alone or the version of it that's part of their Boot Disk product? After reading Jim1cor13's reply, I'm curious.

 

alone not the full boot disc though i do have the full boot disc

 

so far no responses back from them. did a ifw restore on the very same machine with zero issues.

 

Thanks zfactor for the update. Sorry to hear they have not yet replied. From what I have read so far about your particular experience, and the resulting dirty volume and fragmentation issues, it would appear to me that your Active@ restore failed at the sector level, failed to delete partition before restore, so the result was a very overwritten volume, both dirty and fragmented.

Do you agree, or am I missing it? To have the fragmentation level you mentioned, it would have necessarily did an overwrite of data, and not a sector based restore, and also failed to delete the partition before restore which I believe is what happens or should happen before executing a restore? Sometimes an imaging app may state All data will be overwritten, which I assume the partition is deleted and in fact the restored data is overwritten sector by sector, generally of just the occupied sectors that were backed up.

I am not sure how else you would have had the restore in such a state after restoring. Bad thing is, it did the exact same thing on your wife's laptop, which is more than a one time event or failure. I sure hope you hear from them with some ideas. I am just thinking out loud and can not figure how else the restore became so messy, unless it was nothing more than a data overwrite producing much fragmentation. It would also at least to me, explain why the IFW restore solved the issues, as it actually restored cleanly writing the backed up sectors to your disk.

Jim

 

i believe you are correct.

 

Hi zfactor

I just wanted to follow up and check to see if you had heard a reply yet from Active @?

Have a good day z

Jim

 

nothing. a bit dissapointing. ill be resending a email later today hopefully ill get a response to that one... dont know why i have not heard back.

 

Is active@ backup by storage structure(layout)?

If it it backup by files, it should have no fragments when restored.

 

Any news on this issue? I tried updating my Active@ Boot Disk (hadn't checked it for a while) and it keeps wanting to make me pay for the update, even though I bought an extension 3 months ago. So needless to say, I'm not very happy either. On the verge of rethinking my use (and endorsement for whatever that's worth LOL!) of any of the Active@ products. IMO, poor customer service is the straw that breaks many companies backs.

 

14 fragmented files with a maximum of 200 fragments is hardly a big deal. The initial slow boot was probably due to other reasons.

 

the slow boot was 100% related to active @ tested this over and over with multiple imaging apps. and active@ was the cause this time. now i like active@ but i have went fully back to ifw. ifw simply never fails me and i just dont have issues the only one i had recently was my fault not ifw's and ill admit that. and the ONE FILE ALONE had 200 fragments was what i meant not 14 files combined just that one file. the other 13 were not far behind either with the next lower one have 179 fragments then 13x (dont remember the exact number but it was 130 and change) the files were badly fragmented.

i even went as far to fully reinstall and attempt the same scenerio again and the same thing happened. where as with ifw and the other apps i tested i did not have this issue. this tends to also happen with easeus todo i have found. but with easeus i have far worse issues.

 

nothing of any real help. i did get a couple responses but one told me to upgrade to 5.3.1 i was running 5.3.1?? i told them that. also what is very strange is i went and installed 5.3.1 and it was running fine without issue and said it was activated etc. well after i reinstalled windows and tried again they did the same they asked me to buy a upgrade?? i sent them a email explaining it was working fine without buying a upgrade and have not heard anything back. i think im ready to move on honestly and its a shame i liked this program a lot...

 

Will your email block by Active's spam filter?

You can try to send again the email

 

i have no idea if it was blocked but i have no notification it was blocked. they did respond but there response was basically auto type response and of zero help to be honest i was running 5.3.1 and told them that and the reponse was to try to upgrade to 5.3.1 and now i cant install as its asking me to buy a upgrade to use 5.3.1 i have no idea why.. installed fine the last time i installed it