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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Mon Aug 19, 2013 6:36 pm 
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Well I had a moment like Reldel. I installed a utility, that I just was all that keen about. Decided to restore it away, but by mistake I selected the snapshot, I took right after installing said utility. Restore sat and sat at 0%. I waited more than a reasonable amount of time, and finally had to do a power reset. (This was the real machine) On reboot, it was clear the system was hosed. Message said no boot loader. Hmm. Soo...

I booted up to the Recovery Disk and restored to the right snapshot. Restored fine and system booted fine. Then tested booting back and forth between snapshot. All worked fine.

Pete


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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Mon Aug 19, 2013 9:48 pm 
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That's a whole lot of stuff Pete and I admit it's a nice way of getting back from a really big oops but in effect all it shows is that AX64 can restore from an incremental, right? Everything else you did.

And shame on you for forgetting that recovery disk! :lol:

I just bought a Patriot 32GB [$30] flash drive. It's USB 3.0 and wow was the recovery media created quickly. I walked away for just a little bit thinking it was going to take a while and it was over by the time I got back in less than 3 minutes or so.

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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Mon Aug 19, 2013 10:06 pm 
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Manny Carvalho wrote:
That's a whole lot of stuff Pete and I admit it's a nice way of getting back from a really big oops but in effect all it shows is that AX64 can restore from an incremental, right? Everything else you did.




All the restores have been from incrementals. Not really much point in going back to the baseline. Once you have a chain going incrementals are where you will be restoring.

Pete


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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Tue Aug 20, 2013 10:05 am 
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Much of this is a copy/paste from what I just posted at Wilders but not 100%.

Well, I FINALLY got around to installing this baby (Win7 system). Haven't done too much with it yet but I would like to say, this thing is insanely fast. (Doesn't that usually mean damn good programing engineers?) My initial backup (baseline or whatever) was 43 gig and it took 4 minutes 50 seconds! In all fairness my c:drive is a SSD but not the recovery drive. This was much faster that ShadowProtect ever did on my SSD and THAT IS SAYING SOMETHING.

Tested it just once for recovery, again, insanely fast, of course I had not made that many changes to my system at that point.

As Manny said above, this thing is "Dead drop simple to use". I have NEVER had a backup up program that was so easy to use. Isso and his fellow software engineers: Who are these guys? Overall first impression: :bow7:

Thanks to all who helped me get started on this, especially Peter2150.
Isso, if this thing continues to work this silky smooth, I will be purchasing a family license. (Manny, I will contact you for the coupon, thanks).

Acadia

EDIT: Just did another restore just for timing purposes. 1 minute, 20 seconds and that is including reboot. Remember, my c:drive is SSD, my recovery is mechanical (and not a Western Digital Velociraptor).

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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Tue Aug 20, 2013 12:09 pm 
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It's nice to hear that the moose finally go to doing it's thing. I'm glad it worked out for you as well

I have tested the recovery process although not yet from bare metal. Recovering from a restore point is very quick and easy. It worked quickly and without any issues. I did do the first step of a bare metal recovery - that's is booting to it's own recovery environment, the browser - and it worked nicely. I'm not quite ready to take that final step of recovering my whole machine but I see no reason why it won't work. It's just a big step and I need a little more time with this software.

My next scenario is going to be to recover using the recovery media and then go forward in time with an incremental. I'll do it when I have a little time when I can watch the whole thing.

I have found some minor logic problems when changing storage locations and such but nothing fatal. It's just minor stuff that fixing would make the software more robust. I think there are a few improvements that it needs which I will detail later but for a version 1 this backup program continues to impress me. I do believe I'm going to buy the multi license version.

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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Tue Aug 20, 2013 1:14 pm 
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Manny Carvalho wrote:
I'm not quite ready to take that final step of recovering my whole machine ...

LOL! Do you realize that it took me almost two years to do a full recovery using ShadowProtect ... I WAS SCARED TO DEATH!!

Manny Carvalho wrote:
I have found some minor logic problems ... It's just minor stuff ... this backup program continues to impress me...

Yup, let's remember this new program is still only on version 1.

Acadia

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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Tue Aug 20, 2013 2:15 pm 
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Manny Carvalho wrote:

I have tested the recovery process although not yet from bare metal. Recovering from a restore point is very quick and easy. It worked quickly and without any issues. I did do the first step of a bare metal recovery - that's is booting to it's own recovery environment, the browser - and it worked nicely. I'm not quite ready to take that final step of recovering my whole machine but I see no reason why it won't work. It's just a big step and I need a little more time with this software.


Hi Manny

In that post above where I describe experiencing what Reldel did, that wasn't a virtual machine, that was the new desktop. Having to power reset when hung during the windows restore, did hose the machine, but booting to the recovery disk and restoring from there fixed it like new.

Pete


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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Wed Aug 21, 2013 9:48 am 
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I tested the bare metal recovery option. It worked great.

In one operation I was able to recover to the latest incremental [I had the choice of any backup point on my recovery drive] with two clicks, maybe three, off it went. Twenty minutes later my C drive was recovered as if nothing had happened and AX64 was going about it's duty of scheduling the next incremental.

Had my PC been unable to boot for some reason - aside from disk failure, of course - this would have saved countless hours of reinstalling the system and my software. Very nice indeed.

My next test is to recover the system to my brand new 90 GB SSD. This may take a while since it's sitting on the counter-top since I'm having to get a caddy for it but I may just do something temporary and get on with it.

I'm pleased!

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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Wed Aug 21, 2013 9:58 am 
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Manny Carvalho wrote:
My next test is to recover the system to my brand new 90 GB SSD.

You're going to love your SSD, pure sweetness. What brand might I ask?

Acadia

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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Wed Aug 21, 2013 11:37 am 
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Question for either Manny or anyone.

I want to add AXTM to my Lenovo X60 ThinkPad. I feel from experience the recovery media is vital, and for reasons not worth the typing I can't use the CD that came with it. (It's on an external Docking Port)

1. The Thinkpad Bios says USB is enabled, and the machine can boot from a USB CD drive. That being the case, do you think the machine would boot from a USB Flash Drive.

2. Creating the recovery USB stick essentially erases the drive. Can I remove what is on the drive create the recovery disk, and then add my other stuff back to the drive.

Thanks,

Pete


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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Wed Aug 21, 2013 1:07 pm 
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Acadia wrote:
Manny Carvalho wrote:
My next test is to recover the system to my brand new 90 GB SSD.

You're going to love your SSD, pure sweetness. What brand might I ask?

Acadia
I purchased and just installed with a makeshift caddy a Corsair Force GT Sata 3 90GB for $100.

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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Wed Aug 21, 2013 1:13 pm 
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Peter2150 wrote:
Question for either Manny or anyone.

I want to add AXTM to my Lenovo X60 ThinkPad. I feel from experience the recovery media is vital, and for reasons not worth the typing I can't use the CD that came with it. (It's on an external Docking Port)

1. The Thinkpad Bios says USB is enabled, and the machine can boot from a USB CD drive. That being the case, do you think the machine would boot from a USB Flash Drive.

2. Creating the recovery USB stick essentially erases the drive. Can I remove what is on the drive create the recovery disk, and then add my other stuff back to the drive.

Thanks,

Pete
Well, a Thinkpad, uh? I would say:

1. A big maybe. It might be able to boot from a flash. I don't know really. Try it and see. You might need to muck around in BIOS to get a boot screen.

2. I don't see any reason why not. Create a folder for your other stuff and it should be ignored. I haven't actually tried this on my recovery flash drive but I just can't see why using up the free space should cause problems.

Pete - moving the envelope a bit more.

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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Wed Aug 21, 2013 1:41 pm 
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Manny Carvalho wrote:
Pete - moving the envelope a bit more.

:rofl2: But isn't that like Peter, and we love him for it. If he wants to be the guinea pig, better him than me; he knows how to recover from ANYTHING, me, I'd be up the creek without a paddle (and heading towards Niagara Falls).

I just had my first TRUE recovery (not testing) experience with this AX64. Attempting to install a new program for testing, realized I had done it wrong. Got screwed up ... enter AX64. Had me back to normal in less than 2 minutes. :bow7:

Acadia

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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Wed Aug 21, 2013 4:21 pm 
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Manny Carvalho wrote:

Pete - moving the envelope a bit more.


ROFL. Yep, but that's how you build confidence. With Shadowprotect, I pushed it way out there. You remember my one beta mess. But you learn from that.

That's why I am pushing this software to the extreme. For example: as I've been loading up the new machine with software and data, the snapshots have been very big, like between 1 and 2 gigs. I've notice if I take a snapshot and then immediately restore it, I get a hang in the restore. Having to kill them hasn't been fatal and upon reboot, another restore immediately works. Well that got me thinking. So after installing Adobe Acrobat Pro(1.4gb in the program folder) I did a reboot, Took a snapshot, and rebooted again. Perfect restore.

So again I learned something from pushing the envelope.

Heck in the virtual machine, it's even worse. Deliberately crashing the VM during restore to see what happens and how the recovery goes. Will keep you posted.

Pete


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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Wed Aug 21, 2013 5:45 pm 
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I agree the way to gain confidence is to torture the software and do things the creator never thought about.

Keep on stretching....

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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Wed Aug 21, 2013 6:46 pm 
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Manny Carvalho wrote:
I agree the way to gain confidence is to torture the software and do things the creator never thought about.

Keep on stretching....

That's why Isso and crew brought AX to Wilders first. They knew if it could survive Peter and all of the others ... :gunner:

Acadia

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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Wed Aug 21, 2013 11:26 pm 
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I couldn't do what I wanted would y'all see if I missed something.

I installed my new SSD in the second bay of my laptop. I formated and it shows up nicely as a second drive which I assigned as E:\.

I booted to the recovery environment but could not figure out how to restore Win 8 from my first drive to E. I could restore fine for C on my first drive but nowhere else apparently.

I believe this was possible in ShadowProtect and I suppose I could do this by pulling out the 1st hard drive and replacing it with my new SSD but I wanted my way and my laptop is all buttoned up.

Did I miss something?

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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Thu Aug 22, 2013 1:05 am 
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Manny, I cannot speak as to specifics of this software as I have not even yet installed but many such software packages will not restore to a drive that is smaller than the drive from which the backup was made. Don't know if this is the case with this software but is not impossible.

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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Thu Aug 22, 2013 7:51 am 
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Manny Carvalho wrote:
I couldn't do what I wanted would y'all see if I missed something.

I installed my new SSD in the second bay of my laptop. I formated and it shows up nicely as a second drive which I assigned as E:\.

I booted to the recovery environment but could not figure out how to restore Win 8 from my first drive to E. I could restore fine for C on my first drive but nowhere else apparently.

I believe this was possible in ShadowProtect and I suppose I could do this by pulling out the 1st hard drive and replacing it with my new SSD but I wanted my way and my laptop is all buttoned up.

Did I miss something?


Hi Manny

I not sure it is possible. Remember this is designed to be very simple for folks to use, not a replacement for ShadowProtect. I do infact have that capability in my back pocket, because of the disaster last year, so now I do image the other internal drives and keep those images on external drives. But that is only because of beta testing SP. Probably less then 1 % of SP users do that, and I suspect no AX64 users would ever consider it.

I think the intent is to try and keep AX64 simple enough so the average user can handle it. Even with SP, try setting up Imagemanager. You need it for Continuous Incrementals. Since I don't do it often it still is a challenge. Worth it but a challenge.

Pete


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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Thu Aug 22, 2013 7:53 am 
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To further amplify

As Acadia has set nothing ever will beat the flexibility of SP and FDISR. But first FDISR is essentially gone, and second, to do what I usually did with that combo could take 10 to 15 minutes, whereas with AT64 I can literally do it in 2 minutes, and just as effectively. That makes it worth the change.

Pete


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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Thu Aug 22, 2013 10:02 am 
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Yes, you guys are right. This is a limitation of AX64 but one that most users don't really care about. To get this done I'll have to swap drives. I may do that but it's a pain to open my laptop and I got other things to do.

Jay the size of the drive does matter but it can be smaller. As long as the data fits and a little more for safety it should work. Here from the FAQ:

"For size requirements - if the new disk size is the same or bigger than original, it will always do. If the size is smaller - it will work provided that your source partition can fit into it. Let's say your source disk has 500GB size, and you back up a 100 GB partition that has 50 GB offset. In such case a 150GB disk (size + offset) should suffice."

Here's the KB by the way: http://feedback.ax64.com/knowledgebase

I'm not put off by this at all. It would be nice to have this flexibility but certainly not an issue. I'm with Peter about Shadow Protect, it's an awesome program but a bit geeky to use. AX64 is wonderfully simple but powerful. With a few enhancements it would be great. Here's what I think it needs:

1. More extensive scheduling.

The hourly automatic backups does work but I'd prefer to set my own schedule of how to time my backups.

2. Ability to verify backups.

Right now a user has to assume that all backups will work. Aside from using a point there's no way to determine if a backup is viable.

3. Be able to monitor different partitions/folders.

Sometimes I would want backup a subset of a hard drive. That could be partitions or a set of folders.

4. A boot time console.

Create a boot console that allows a user to recover from a drive rather than removable media.

5. There must be more.

As it stands AX64 [ it needs a better name --> "The Way Back Machine" thank you Mr. Peabody] is an excellent and dead drop simple program to use. Even though I think ShadowProtect is better in terms of flexibility I often have to think about how to go about doing things. However, in AX64 it's rather obvious. With a few minor improvements that won't cause the simplicity of this program to suffer it could easily be the top dog. I'm impressed!

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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Thu Aug 22, 2013 11:56 am 
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Manny Carvalho wrote:
Here's what I think it needs ...
With a few minor improvements that won't cause the simplicity of this program to suffer it could easily be the top dog. I'm impressed!

Manny, actually I believe that some, if not all, of your suggestions have already been requested at Wilders. I have read thru maybe, 50%, ok 25%, of the 4000 post thread, and many of your recommendations sound familiar.

Again, remember everyone, this program was just set loose on the public in January and is still only on version 1.xx. I resisted posting about this program for a while here at the Haven but so many of the folks that I respect at Wilders started raving about this new and simple to use program, well I could not resist any longer. Then even I tried it. :shhh3:

If this new company can remain financially viable well into the future (unlike FDISR) can you imagine how good this program will be by version 4 or 5. I wonder if another company will release a similar product (AXTM is truly unique and one of a kind at this time). Even if so, AXTM has my full attention at this point, they started the whole ball game and has had excellent tech support up to this point both at Wilders and their web site. :happy65:

Acadia

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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Thu Aug 22, 2013 1:25 pm 
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I've only skimmed that Wilder's thread but I' sure I'm not alone in thinking of these new possible features. I only posted them so that when Isso comes by that he can see what others have to say and consider how to improve the program. I still have 26 days left on my trial version but honestly I'm hooked.

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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Thu Aug 22, 2013 2:21 pm 
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Hi Manny

I agree about the scheduling, I'd also like a start, stop and interval.

As to the verify it's a mixed bag. It was explained to me a long time ago by my expert friend at Storage Craft, that all verify does is confirm the checksum now and into the future, but is no guarantee there will be a successful restore. Only real test to know the restore will be successful is to do it. When I first started with Shadowprotect, I restored every image after I took it. That is what I am now doing with AT64.

One thing I've noticed is I do have occasional failures with hot restores from in Windows, but no matter what it did to the system the restore from the recovery CD has been a 100% success. That is important.

Pete


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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Thu Aug 22, 2013 5:43 pm 
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I agree, Pete, that verification is no guarantee but it's something and better than nothing. Verifying by recovery is, of course, the ultimate but it's too onerous for a regular procedure in my opinion.

I haven't had any failures but I'm sure you've done more recoveries than I have. What symptoms do you see when you have a failure?

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