Which Imaging Programs for UEFI/GPT?

I'm finally getting a new computer with Windows 7 and UEFI/GPT. Which imaging programs will work with GPT disks and have a rescue CD that will boot and run under UEFI?

Thanks,
nozzle

 

Hi Nozzle

If my memory serves me properly, there are several that "claim" support but end user experience was a bit different in some cases.

*TerabyteUnlimited <extremely reliable one of the best in my opinion and experience. Excellent support and regular updates that are free for 1 year.

*Macrium Reflect < also extremely reliable and top of the list and my second choice of imaging app.

*Farstone Total Recovery Pro 9 < I did not have a good experience with this one, but they do support UEFI/GPT.

*AOMEI Data Backupper claims GPT support, nice application although fairly new within the last 6 months or so. Some users love it, some had issues with it, I found it a good free alternative, capable and fast but needs a few things looked at.

*RealCopy is a potential candidate also. I have recently tried this and found it to be very fast and simple. Nice tool, lacking some important features in my opinion, but quite capable it appears. Very fluid interface and pretty straight forward.

Of course your built in Windows Imaging/Windows backup program supports UEFI/GPT, but I have not used this feature.

I offered my comments only out of personal experience and what I have learned regarding the apps listed.

I hope the above helps in some way. A good starting point, and I am sure others will have some good advice also

Jim

 

I agree'

*Terabyte Unlimited reliable one of the best in my opinion and

*Macrium Reflect is reliable my second choice of imaging app.

Does terabyte only allow updates for one year ? I didn't know that.. Correct me if I am wrong. I thought you can have updates till next major release.

Chris

 

That's correct. The current version 2 software was released 5 1/2 years ago and there have been almost 100 updates.

I've restored Win8 UEFI images. No problems.

 

Thank you Jim1cor13 and routerguy99. I have a license for IFW and thought a different kind of imager was needed. I agree with you both. IFW is great and I am very happy it will work with my new computer.

ps. Brian_K introduced me to batch commands to use with IFW and I still use them. Thanks again Brian.

 

nozzle,

This explains boot media....

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/kb/article.php?id=572

 

Hi Brian

Thank you for that information. I originally purchased the entire suite in Feb of 2012. Recently I tried to login with my order# and update, and I got a message that it was invalid login information. I tried again and the same message. First time that ever happened but it is beyond 1 year of my original purchase. I guess I assumed free updates were free for the time period of 1 year based upon not being able to login to download under my order#. I was aware of the Major version details, but since I was unable to login under my order# after 1 year, I assumed the free updates were over. I am certainly not complaining, TBU have been excellent and in one year there was at least 11 updates that I had access to which is quite generous.

Did I do something wrong or have I missed something?

EDIT: My apologies Brian. I just now tried to login and I had no problems. I think I made a mistake when I tried the other night...I forgot to include my email address, that is why it gave me invalid login. I just tried now, and was taken right to the upgrade page. It was my oversight. Thanks again!

@Nozzle: Glad you were helped with the information

Have a good day!
Jim

 

Let me add my voice in praise of Macrium as in a separate post I have chronicled some of the worst backup experiences I have ever had recently with Acronis True Image 2013 and Macrium saved the day for me once I realized the problem. It is as easy to install and work with, as any software program I have ever used.

 

Jim,

Thanks for letting us know it works.

 

Jim, Could you expand on what features RealCopy is missing?
Perhaps adding your thoughts to https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=344531 would get some discussion going.

 

Hi Bob

Certainly, I will share what my experience has been with it. A few quick points. I used both the windows version to image within windows, which went fine. I also per RealCopy instructions, copied over to USB flash drive the rc.exe and rclib.dll files, (although RealCopy states "rc.dll" the file should be "rclib.dll" along with rc.exe), that can be used to both backup and restore outside of windows using the Windows recovery environment Winre.wim which one can also simply use the installation DVD then open the rc.exe using the command prompt after booting from windows media. This also went well, but after taking an image and exiting the recovery environment, each time I backed up in this method which went fine, upon reboot, windows stated an "improper shutdown". of course I knew this was not the case, but it did appear RealCopy caused windows to think this. I just chose "Start windows normally". I found this strange behavior especially since the imaging was done outside the operating system, so my question is how is it causing this issue, or perhaps it is causing an issue with the windows recovery environment, just not sure yet. It could be that it improperly dismounts the windows partition in some way that causes windows to "think" it has had an improper shutdown. I am just thinking out loud here.

In the case of mounting an image outside of windows, this also seemed to be fine, but one needs to utilize a portable file manager in order to actually "see" the mounted image. This I found to be also a shortfall with using it in the recovery environment, AOMEI Data Backupper boot media also has the same lack of being able to "see" the image after mounting. One must use a portable file manager which several are available that run under WinRe recovery opening them via command prompt. A43 file manager is one such utility as well as Explorer++.exe that I have used and work well. One can simply copy them over to USB flash drive and execute them from there using command prompt from Windows recovery environment or open the command prompt using RealCopy utilities tab, then execute the portable file manager to see the mounted image.

That is a few things I discovered. Second, one cannot backup an entire disk, only each partition separately which is not a bad thing, just a feature that could easily be implemented to choose an entire disk as a choice as well as individual partitions.

Otherwise, it works, as fa as creating an image and it works quite fast. But at this time, I have NOT attempted to test a restore which is where the real test comes in. I shall try this but expect it to also work. some have stated restores seemed to take much longer than imaging, but I cannot confirm this until a test a restore function.

Hope that helps, I will copy the above details I found so far to the thread you stated also, hopefully others will chime in. Please also share your experience with RealCopy as you have time. I like it, simple, nice interface, but have yet to perform the real test of restoring. i will try this but at this time I am testing another software so it may be a day or so.

Thanks for bringing this up

Have a good day Bob!
Jim

 

This thread was supposed to be about UEFI. Apart from the good Terabyte article, I don´t see anything about UEFI. It seems that nobody is backing up UEFI computers.

 

Not really so as I have stated Macrium Reflect works perfectly with Uefi bios as I have had a multitude of issues with Acronis where I mutilated 2 different Ultrabooks using 2013 version, supposedly for Windows 8. Re read my post and failed to mention Uefi bios but I was referring to its use regardless.

 

Robin, I am. See Post #4.

 

I have backed up my Windows 8 UEFI/GPT disk with Macrium Reflect (free) and successfully did a bare metal restore from its recovery media.
I have backed up with Windows 8 built in tool to create a system image, and done a bare metal restore with a Windows 8 Recovery disk.
I have backed up my Windows 8 C: partition with AXTM and successfully restored it with it's recover media; there is a known issue doing a
bare metal restore on UEFI/GPT but it is planned to be fixed in the next release.

I also tried AOMEI Data Backupper, which claims UEFI/GPT support.
If you click click on System Backup, it will tell you it does not yet support GPT and says it’s coming in the next version.
But what is worse is that if you click on Partition Backup instead of System Backup, it doesn’t warn you that it doesn’t work with GPT.
So if you back up your system with Partition Backup and then try to restore it, your system will not boot, and you will have to recover
with something that does work.

 

Hi rjbu

I contacted the developer about the misleading claims. The undernoted is their response.

"Hello Terry,

Thanks for your kindly support.
About the problem we felt sorry, it is our mistake. We have not clearly stated that it do not support operating system (based on UEFI) backup$&restore is bootable. It currently only available for data partition and disk. We are sorry for making all our visitors confused, we have revised the description on our webpage.
However, there is a good news, the next version that plan to be released on next month will fully support UEFI system disk backup and restore. And also will add schedule backup, file-level backup&restore and fix the bugs that found in the old version. When it released you can have a try.

I hope you could help us explain this situation on the forum, because we are unable to post on this forum. Thanks for all your support. Besides, do you use skype? If you do, what is your account, maybe we could keep in contact via skype."

Hope this removes any possible concerns about misleading claims.

Terry

 

Hi Everone

Aomei Backup

Reference my post 16 in which I quoted verbatim the developers response to post 15.

The developer has contacted me again with a revised respons to post 15:

"Hello Terry,

Thank you for your help.
I am sorry for my poor English, I find there are many mistakes which may lead misunderstanding in my previous response. Would you please revise that post to the following words.
"Thanks for your kindly support.
About the problem we felt sorry, it is our mistake. We have not clearly stated that it do not support backup&restore in system partition based on UEFI. But currently it does support other data partition in the GPT disk. We are sorry for making all our visitors confused, we have revised the description on our webpage.
However, there is good news, the next version is to release next month, which will fully support UEFI system disk backup and restore. And it will also add schedule backup, file-level backup&restore and fix the bugs that found in the previous version. When it released you can have a try.

I hope you could help us explain this situation in the forum, where we are unable to post. Thanks for all your support. Besides, do you use Skype? If you do, maybe we could keep in contact with it. My Skype account is kimjiongs."
And please help me correct my possible mistakes."

Hope this clarifies

 

I'm using the latest Acronis on my UEFI/GPT system without any issues. I've had to restore once so far and it worked fine. I only use the bootable CD I created for both backup and restore. I don't know how good the Windows resident software is because I've only ever used it to create the bootable CD (in a VM of course).

 

Can you tell us about your system and especially hardware and how old it is?

 

While trying to recall my hardware (I'm not at the system right now), I realized that my boot disk is formatted to MBR. My internal disk that I backup to is GPT formatted. I'm not sure if that is why you're asking for my hardware specs.

My apologies for not being more specific in my first post. I can't say that I'm certain Acronis would not have problems backing up from or restoring to GPT. In my case, it does back up to and restore from GPT. If it can see GPT to load the backup image, I don't see why it couldn't restore to GPT as well. Also, I bought the Acronis Plus pack and I think it was because this added the GPT support.

Anyway, to answer your question, my motherboard is an ASUS P8Z77 (don't recall exactly which model offhand). My boot drive is an 80Gb SSD and my backup drives are both 3TB drives.

 

I only asked hardware and age because I have 2 older desktops with Uefi bios that also work with Acronis. it's only my brand new laptops that do not.

 

This software is "certified" to work with UEFI/GPT :
http://activeimage.net/products/desktop/new-features-in-aip-desktop/

I did use the previous version, 3.1, that was blazingly fast.

 

I would try it but it sounds a bit pricey at $59 a pc and with Yearly Maintenance
charges and licenses that end in given time periods, so personally I don't want to like it.

 

I got my 3.1 license with a rebate just by asking them if they had a trade-in program, and I used an Acronis license for that. I don't remember how much I paid but that was worth it.

One feature of AIP is that it monitors the sector changes in real time so incremental backups are fast because the software already knows which new sectors to save. The drawback is that in case of a crash, sector monitoring gets faulty and you had to perform a new full image. But it seems to be fixed now, in case of changes not monitored detected, the incremental backup is done the traditional way, slower of course.

 

Well, I got curious and tested the current trial version (desktop edition). The claims on the website sounded very promising, the underlying technology seems identical to the technology used by AX64.

The results of my tests were a major disaster. In its current incarnation the trial version is completely useless...


Downloading and installing was easy. I installed it on a notebook with Win7 32bit, just the system partition C: plus the hidden 100 MB partition in front of the system partition.

The user interface takes a little time to understand. Incremental backups have to be made by creating a scheduled task, the backup wizard can only make full backups. For daily backups you must choose the weekly option, for hourly backups the daily option must be selected. A little confusing, but manageable.

The real trouble began when I tried to make a recovery CD. The software asks for the installation CD... Which installation CD? All I could download was an executable. I even downloaded the Linux ISO file available on their trial download page (the only available ISO), but of course it was not accepted.

The trial version does not allow you to create a recovery CD.

Then I made a full backup of the whole drive to an external HDD. No problem. But when I tried to restore this backup from within Windows, the software did not let me specify the target drive. This means that you cannot restore the system drive from within Windows. (AX64 can do that...).


This makes the trial version completely useless. You cannot restore your system from within Windows, and there is no way to create a recovery CD which you could use to restore your system. Stay away...



Cheers
manolito