Rollback RX v10.x (Home & Professional)

I disagree. RolbackRX is advertised as protection against failed OS updates. That is in their marketing material.

http://horizondatasys.com/en/products_and_solutions.aspx?ProductId=1#Features

If they choose to work outside of the rules of Windows and completely trash the system in the process, the fault is not on Microsoft. The OS updates fine when RBX is not installed.

 

MarcP-

I guess I disagree.

The 8.0 to 8.1 update was abnormal to say the least. I am not sure anyone would expect a Windows update to ignore users settings to not install updates, re-partition drives, etc. It was a clear overreach on the part of MS and more of an entire OS change.

Life is based on lessons learned through history and then some synthesis to guess at what unexpected things might happen. The fact that marketing materials advertise protection against updates, which has worked historically, does not seem to be a lie.

In fact, I am sure that all solutions using snapshots would not have lived through this update.

The fact that Macrium had no issues is solely due to the technology they use. However, if the MS update formatted all drives attached to the PC and wiped out the incremental backups on a non-system drive, I think it would be a stretch to blame Macrium for not having something put in place to prevent that.

I know many people where the 8.1 update automatically launched and half way through told them it needed to uninstall important programs and lose important data... the only option was to continue or pause the update... no abort. Clearly a MS issue.

Don't get me wrong... RB marketers have clearly taken liberties. I own multiple copies of Drive Cloner V5 because I was under the impression I could use it in place of cold raw images to backup. That was clearly a lie. Call them on that and make them give everyone V6 licenses... you would be justified.

Regards,
SteveG

 

Yes, they ran them until they died... but trim or no trim, the read/writes point to the fact that lifespan is generally not an issue.

This is interesting... I do not have SSD - Linux combos operating so I have not seen it.

 

Are you supporting what MS did? I was not affected (absolutely no windows 8 systems) but I was appalled. It was really a roll-out of a new OS to me.

 

Big difference. If Microsoft had trashed something, I'd agree with that conclusion. But in this case, RBX did it and this is far from doing something that disabled one software. It's a corruption that renders the whole system unbootable. Your level of comparison is flawed.

 

I don't think so... RB should never be installed during an OS upgrade or any low level disk operations. Just a fact of life. MS are bad boys

By the way, was your system trashed? If so I can understand why you are upset!

 

Build 1511 of Windows 10 came as a hotfix like all others. Same thing happened and I linked to their forum post. I abandoned RBX long ago to not be affected, but I did post about other nasty negative interactions like restoring a Macrium Image while RBX is in the MBR. Or using Samsung Magician with Rapid Mode enabled on their SSD.

 

Forcing updates upon users which change the partition layout of HDDs is a no-no IMO, it is the typical attitude of monopolists. Microsoft thinks that they own the computers of the users, and that they are the only show in town.

There are many users out there with Multi-Boot setups using a non-MS boot manager, and such an update will nuke the other installed operating systems. MS thinks they can get away with it because they are big enough. Just imagine a Linux update nuking the Windows installation...


More interesting for me is the discussion about the (non-existing) trim support in RB-RX. I asked about this some months ago, but the common answer was that the missing trim support would certainly compromise the life expectancy of SSDs.

After a lot of reading I must say that I don't think so. All posts suggesting this are based purely on theory, not on real word experience. SSDs work just fine under WinXP, in RAID systems and also retrofitted in Macs, and there is no trim support in these scenarios. No SSD manufacturer has ever voided his warranty if his SSDs are operated without trim.

For using an SSD under Rollback RX I would like to remind everyone about the default RB settings after installation. Snaps older than 7 days will be deleted automatically, after 4 new snaps and 4 snap deletions a snapshot defrag will kick in automatically. I cannot see how a HDD will fill up under these conditions. Of course this may be different if your baseline is 6 months old and you have several hundreds of snaps relying on this baseline. But this is not the way RB is intended to be used.


Cheers
manolito

 

Anyone planning to install RRX should read this http://community.horizondatasys.com/forum/rollback-rx/3747-rollback-rx-v11-update-and-plan
It should be no surprise that HDS will blow by their Jan 2016 planned release of their Windows 10 compatible version of RRX. They are still asking RRX users not to install W10. It is clear they are treading water while the current dictates their direction. Amazing. I am convinced RRX will never work reliably with Windows 10 and beyond. Very troubling for a program designed to save data not destroy data.

 

Why do they say it is Windows 10 compatible on their website if it isn't?

 

Because thats what HDS does.

 

Luckily I didn't try it then.

 

manolito, are you suggesting that MS has to (or should) tailor their OS updates to accommodate 3rd party software that may be on a users PC?

If HDS advised all users to properly image their drives on a regular basis because in the real world s$#^t happens I would have some sympathy but....... To advertise that Rx can recover from ANY CONCEIVABLE problem is clearly an outright lie,,,,but thats what they say.

Further, it was not a single instance of MS updates causing problems for Rx users. In fact, HDS advised some users (I say some because it was not communicated to all users but rather those in regular contact with HDS via, for example, the Rx forum) not to allow an update to take place without checking that the update was Ok on the RX forum. I do not know if this direction is still in effect but it was the recommended process for quite some time.

 

Absolutely right.

 

If these OS updates include repartitioning the user's HDD, then yes, absolutely.

Reordering the partitions and / or changing partition sizes will inevitably throw off any third party boot manager (Grub for example). This is unacceptable because it is me who owns my PC and who decides how I partition my HDD, not M$.


Cheers
manolito

 

With a MBR/Legacy system you can prevent the OS from being resized smaller and a new Recovery partition being created when you upgrade. With a UEFI system you can't.

 

So how would you have preferred MS to do the update? Should they (could they) have detailed all possible negative results that might occur given such and such a 3rd party software, told you how to deal with it, and then let you decide for yourself what to do, or should they simply have given you the choice to install the update without any explanation? Keep in mind that the vast majority of PC users would not have a clue what to do if they were given a choice.

Also, would MS not have given 3rd party developers advanced notice of the coming update? If this is the case then is it not the 3rd party developers who should be responsible to make their software compliant?

Just out of curiosity what happened when the update took place on a system using a 3rd party boot manager? Did that destroy the PC and data the way Rx systems did? Would having an image of the drive have mitigated the problem? If you have a proper image you could simply have restored the PC to a pre update state could you not?

I feel its the users responsibility to protect themselves. If they don't they have no one to blame but themselves,,,,,,,which is why I have such a problem with HDS,because they tell customers that they don't need to do anything to protect themselves since they have Rx doing that for them.

 

Thanks for alerting me about this, guys.
I've done a bit of research since you pointed out the inadequacy of this program, and it is not something that I would like to be using.

 

Incase you're on Win 10, and using Rollback RX, and the new "RX breaking" update didn't yet come thru,I'd suggest you change in the settings the connection to metered, that's how you won't get automatic updates.
Ofcourse this is also a security risk kinda..
There is also other ways around to "disable" the updates 100%, but that would require a bit better than average knowledge (google is your best friend) and more tweaking.
(you can also disable windows defender...)

 

A much better option would be to hold your breath and uninstall RRX, update Windows, and install this (not as fast as RRX but the closest alternative IMO) http://xeroweight.com/
A program designed to protect data should NEVER destroy it.

 

I'm not using RX anymore, after I bought Macrium License. ;-)
I also have a paid license for AX64 but atm I'm not feeling like using it, watching closely people's experiences with it on it's topic..

 

Did you know AX64 is now FlashBack? http://xeroweight.com/

 

To clear up any confusion we have been Windows 10 compatible since October 9, 2015. There was a major Windows 10 update though that required removing RollBack Rx before applying that update, then reinstalling afterwards.

More info here on that: http://blog.horizondatasys.com/rollback-rx-and-windows-10-update-1511/

 

Well that blog post has something misleading.

"As such, users who try and install this update with RollBack Rx already installed on the machine will find they cannot load into Windows."

Users with the Home edition don't "try and install". That update comes whether you "try" or not. People are sold on the idea that RBX will protect you in case of failed OS updates (it says so on the site) so it is understandable that users will not check with HDS every single time there is an update. There's a mixed message being sent. RBX will save you from failed updates, but don't trust it to do so for all updates.