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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Sun Aug 18, 2013 10:57 am 
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People, I am going to copy+paste a post that I made at Wilders:

And I would like to say, please, LET'S KEEP THIS THING SIMPLE. If isso's company is to survive they are going to have to appeal to the "many", not the geeks at Wilder's.

Acadia

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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Sun Aug 18, 2013 11:10 am 
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Acadia wrote:
People, I am going to copy+paste a post that I made at Wilders:

And I would like to say, please, LET'S KEEP THIS THING SIMPLE. If isso's company is to survive they are going to have to appeal to the "many", not the geeks at Wilder's.

Acadia


I agree totally. This really doesn't need much more unless you are talking enterprise.


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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Sun Aug 18, 2013 11:53 am 
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OK, Thanks, Pete.

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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Sun Aug 18, 2013 11:54 am 
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Smart fellow, that Acadia. :)

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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Sun Aug 18, 2013 11:59 am 
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MacDuffie wrote:
Smart fellow, that Acadia. :)

Patty, PLEASEEEEEEEEEE, tell that to GG!!!! :337:

Acadia

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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Sun Aug 18, 2013 12:05 pm 
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MacDuffie wrote:
Smart fellow, that Acadia. :)


WHAAT???? You must be referring to some other Acadia, this definitely doesn't describe the one that I know so very well! :rofl2:

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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Sun Aug 18, 2013 1:28 pm 
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:rofl2: @GG
It sounds like a good program, as I said earlier I've got Acronis, the latest version, plus use File History on my Windows 8 Notebook.

I'm finding I use my Windows 8 machine now more than the Windows 7 desktop, on the desktop I just use Acronis to make a weekly image to an external hard drive that's permanently plugged in because it has a USB plug plus mains electric plug that both have to be on to work and it's easier to leave them on than me trying to scramble underneath my desk. :lol:

I have another external hard drive but can't leave that always plugged into my Notebook so of course I get the message if I look at PC solutions I need to plug my drive in to do an image, I'll only do that though once a week and take an Acronis image plus run File History as well.

Now I'll show how ignorant I am when it comes to the technical side of things, this Notebook came with the installed drive partitioned with of course the recovery ones and the OS partition plus a data one D which is bigger in size to the C partition, so far I've not got anything on it nor have I found out yet how I put things onto the D drive. :oops:

I think I should look into finding out more about this program. ;)

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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Sun Aug 18, 2013 2:02 pm 
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JoanA wrote:
...
Now I'll show how ignorant I am ...
I think I should look into finding out more about this program. ;)

Good grief, doesn't sound ignorant at all to me, in fact, I may be contacting you in the future because you seem to have a more complicated system than mine.

As for me and this new program, would you believe that the very person who started this entire thread, ME, has not even installed it yet. I was going to this morning after returning from a very early morning hike with GG, only to find that my system was not working. Had to do a recovery with ... FirstDefense. Love that program but AX64 is sounding mighty similar but faster.

Hoping to FINALLY install this new magic tomorrow,
Acadia

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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Sun Aug 18, 2013 2:58 pm 
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Well I just finished a torture test on AX64. Did this in a Win7 x64 VM machine. Installed AX64 on the c: drive and imaged to it's 2nd hardrive. Took a baseline and one incremental, and then did a restore in Windows to test them. Then I booted into Safe Mode and started deleting as much stuff as I could out of the Windows folder. I succeed in leaving the machine in a state where it would start to boot, blue screen and start to boot again. Had a good loop going. Clearly unbootable.

Inserted the recovery disk I built from the VM machine, booted it, did a restore, and voila, back in business. Perfect restore.

Not being content, with that I booted to another recovery disk I had that booted and had a type of explorer on it. I had put the standalone program Diskwipe on it. What diskwipe does is format a drive and the write zero's to it. I ran it on the c: drive leaving a blank disk in the machine. Clearly no boot.

Again I booted to the ATXM recovery disk, and did a restore, this time using the available advanced options. Again perfect restore, and the disk was back to it's proper state.

Just can't beat that.

Pete


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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Sun Aug 18, 2013 7:09 pm 
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Nicely done and a great test Pete.

I'll do something similar in the next few days but I'm convinced. This program really does what it started out to do.

And I do think that it can add a few more features and still be just as simple. It doesn't need much to really be the top of the heap.

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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Sun Aug 18, 2013 7:18 pm 
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JoanA wrote:
Now I'll show how ignorant I am when it comes to the technical side of things, this Notebook came with the installed drive partitioned with of course the recovery ones and the OS partition plus a data one D which is bigger in size to the C partition, so far I've not got anything on it nor have I found out yet how I put things onto the D drive. :oops:


Joan, why not start another thread on this and I'm sure that we can get you going with using D: for your libraries and other data. Would not be fair to get into any of it in this thread as it would be way too far off topic. :)

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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Sun Aug 18, 2013 9:40 pm 
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GardenGoddess wrote:
:rofl2:
MacDuffie wrote:
Smart fellow, that Acadia. :)


WHAAT???? You must be referring to some other Acadia, this definitely doesn't describe the one that I know so very well! :rofl2:


Nope... I am definitely referring to the one you know so very well! Perhaps you've known him too long. :D Taking some things for granted?

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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Mon Aug 19, 2013 6:39 am 
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I thought I should put my two cents into this thread.

I had/have been following the Wilders thread on AX64 for some time and about a month ago thought it was time for a trial. I installed it on two computers, a Dell XPS 8100 64 bit PC and a Vizio 64 bit Ultrabook, both with Windows 8 Pro. Both machines are set up with Standard User Accounts and use Windows Defender for security. Both machines use Software Restriction Policies through Group Policy. Nothing else special with either set up.

I put AX64 through multiple tests. I ran numerous backups, using both the automatic and manual methods. They were surprising quick. Of course a backup is only as good as its ability to restore an image. I found on the Vizio, (it has an SSD) a restore took maybe a minute or two. Amazing. The Vizio was the first machine I tried it on. I then installed onto the Dell. The backups were quick on it as well. I held off doing restores on the Dell while I did more testing on the first machine.

I restored the Ultrabook perhaps three times before hitting a snag. As those of you who use it know, AX64 must be run from an Administrators account. I tried to run an image restore and the Command Window that comes up during the restore began running as expected. It showed 1% as it started with the spinning character next to the percentage completion number. Other times it would fly through the percentage completion numbers. This time it stayed at 1%. After perhaps five minutes, the spinning character stopped and the percentage remained at 1%. Not knowing what was happening I let the machine set for perhaps 11/2 hours. It became clear the program was not running. I know you are not supposed to turn off the machine but it was the only outlet. Surprisingly, I rebooted the machine and it came back on, the image restore had not completed. But nothing lost. Just questions as to why it didn't complete?

I tried another restore several days later. Again the restore stopped at 1% and didn't complete. Turning off the machine this time resulted in Windows 8 files becoming corrupted beyond repair. I reinstalled Windows 8 and then used an Acronis backup to restore the computer to how it had been before AX64. No harm done.

Short version from here on.

I tried a AX64 image restore on the Dell XPS for the first time. I got the hang at 1% and the restore stopped. Same as on the Ultrabook. After three hours I turned off the machine and on reboot Windows 8 was corrupted. Same followed, reinstall Windows 8, use Acronis to restore image.

Reasons? From observations, looking at event files and sending logs and emails back and forth with Isso the developer. Windows 8 has "automatic maintenance" feature that runs but has no observable settings to control when it runs. In all three corrupted restores, automatic maintenance began running while AX64 was doing a restore. Using the logs, Isso found the problem was reproducible. He said it may be a while before they can correct it. He is excellent. He promised to let me know when they do.

A good rule to follow. Always have at least two restore methods.

Sorry for the long tale.


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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Mon Aug 19, 2013 6:45 am 
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Reldel wrote:

A good rule to follow. Always have at least two restore methods.


:tup:

People, can I safely assume that Win7 does not have this automatic maintenance feature?

Acadia

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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Mon Aug 19, 2013 8:27 am 
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Hi Reldel

Sorry for your woes. One question. Did you try and restore and recovery from the AT64 recovery disk. Since you now have a handle on the problem, any chance you could try again and see if the recovery disk works for you?

Pete


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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Mon Aug 19, 2013 9:43 am 
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Reldel, don't know if this will help or not:

http://www.howtogeek.com/127078/how-to-change-and-manually-start-and-stop-automatic-maintenance-in-windows-8/

Good luck,
Acadia

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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Mon Aug 19, 2013 10:16 am 
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Acadia wrote:


Hi Acadia

Guess what. It is also in Windows 7. I just turned it off on my new machine.

Pete


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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Mon Aug 19, 2013 11:10 am 
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Hi Redel,

Thanks for signing up and sharing your tale about the lousy interaction of AX64 and automatic maintenance. That was indeed an unfortunate coincidence for you that both things where running at the same time. Even more amazing is that it happened to you three times. The default schedule for maintenance is 3AM so that you hit it three times on two different machines is an incredible story.

I just looked at mine and while set for starting and waking my machine at 3AM, it actually started at a little after 8AM a bit after my Windows Home Server backup started. Perhaps that happened to you in that it was the first thing you tried to do and automatic maintenance was working. It also seems like a bug in Windows because it should not start if the PC is busy doing something else.

Automatic maintenance is indeed a feature in both Win 7 and 8 but, as far as I know, there's not a way to turn it off in Win 8. [Smarmy aside: I'm feeling more and more straight jacketed with Win 8].

Thanks again for letting us know Reldel. It's an amazing interaction that should in practical matters happen rarely so it really is incredible that it happened so often to you. And, your are absolutely right - Never have just one method of backing up. When you need to recover you just never know what can happen [I got a story about WHS and network drivers that is close to yours]. I learned that lesson the hard way at least this one was discovered testing. Which is that last bit of that lesson. Test the recovery process fully because you don't want to find out things like this when you are actually going through the painful act of recovering from a failure. It's no time for surprises.

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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Mon Aug 19, 2013 11:19 am 
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This is for Isso whenever he comes around.

While I haven't fully tested the recovery on AX64 it seems that in the case of this kind of interaction with automatic maintenance where the recovery process stalls that what is needed is a feature that enables the user to cancel the recovery process and it all gets rolled back. When a user corrupts Windows because the machine is turned off due to the hang then, even though it's a rare case, that's a very big price to pay. It's not exactly their fault because they have no real option at that point then just pulling the plug.

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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Mon Aug 19, 2013 11:52 am 
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Acadia: I had researched Automatic Maintenance and saw the How to Geek link you offered. Within that article it notes that with Windows 8 Auto Maint. cannot be turned off. I had found that out on my own. I also tend to think going into an Administrative Windows account can sometimes trigger Automatic Maintenance an thus set up a conflict with AX64, but I cannot prove it for certain.

Pete: I don't have AX64 installed at present. After Isso confirmed the problem was reproducible and told me it wasn't a quick fix, I went back to using Acronis and the built in Windows Image program as my duel backup. I was hoping to use Ax64 and Acronis when Windows 8.1 drops in October and the built in Windows image program gets dropped by Microsoft.

I did NOT use the AX64 boot media because both computers booted, it was just Windows that got corrupted. I did have the AX64 media created but did not use it. I did not reinstall AX64 once Isso confirmed the problem. I will try it again once he lets me know they have addressed the problem.

Manny: Good insights, I agree with your observations.

Hope my experience was helpful.


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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Mon Aug 19, 2013 12:20 pm 
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Reldel wrote:



I did NOT use the AX64 boot media because both computers booted, it was just Windows that got corrupted. I did have the AX64 media created but did not use it. I did not reinstall AX64 once Isso confirmed the problem. I will try it again once he lets me know they have addressed the problem.



Hi Reldel

That is the whole point of the boot media. What you could have done is used the AX64 boot media. What it does is boot you into AX64 without using the computers operating system. Then you could have done the restore and it would have fixed everything.

Pete


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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Mon Aug 19, 2013 12:20 pm 
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Well, I just had a VERY interesting experience (and one that I hope I never have to live thru again). First let me state all that follows was NOT AX64's fault, that program had nothing to do with any of this. I finally attempted to install AX64 and in order to do that I wanted to first uninstall FirstDefense (after 12 years on 3 machines :cry5: ) Whoaa, I did not anticipate the problems that would occur with uninstalling FD. I finally had to go to image restoring to recover. EVEN WINDOWS BUILT-IN LET ME DOWN. I finally fell back upon ShadowProtect even though it was uninstalled from my system, the recovery CD saved me. BINGO, I had my old system back from a month ago then I simply used FirstDefense to bring me completely back to date (I've done this before). Why I am bothering you readers with all of this? Isso, it would be really nice if you can make AX64 compatible with ShadowProtect. Now I am more hesitant than ever to let go of that miracle of recovery. Yes, AX64 has some distinct advantages over FD, but the combo of FD and SP is really hard to beat. Can you imagine the power of the working combo of AX64 and ShadowProtect? :dance3:

Acadia

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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Mon Aug 19, 2013 12:54 pm 
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Peter2150 wrote:
Reldel wrote:


Hi Reldel

That is the whole point of the boot media. What you could have done is used the AX64 boot media. What it does is boot you into AX64 without using the computers operating system. Then you could have done the restore and it would have fixed everything.

Pete

Pete,

Your probably right. But after seeing the same thing happen three times on two different machines I kind of lost my confidence in the program. At that point I had not contacted Isso. In retrospect, I could have tried it but didn't.


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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Mon Aug 19, 2013 1:43 pm 
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Re Acacia's post I think we got that solved. I'll let him relate.

Pete


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 Post subject: Re: AX64 Time Machine
 Post Posted: Mon Aug 19, 2013 2:15 pm 
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Another torture test.

First a comment. Bare metal restore. Normally when I restored in shadow Protect, I used the delete volume option. That left the volume unformulated and unallocated. But was it really bare metal. Not really. All you had to do was restore the first two sectors of the drive and the whole drive was back. What I did above and in this post was use a program that first formatted the drive and then completely over wrote the drive with zero's. That's about as close to bare metal as you can get. There is no recovery.

While I totally agree that what I've done might not apply to 99% of the users, in the course of beta testing imaging software I've had it happen. What is should do for most users, is assure them of AX64's power.

Anyway the scenario.

Machine with Ax64, and several changes and incremental snapshot. Based on experience I sync'd the snapshots to an external drive. I setup a folder Test of AXTM and in that folder another folder AXTM which contained the snapshot.

Disaster strikes and both drives are wiped out. To do this, I first used Diskwipe and formatted the c: drive, and then over wrote it with zero's. I just deleted the files on the d: drive. Then Oh my gosh, I had forgotten to make a recovery disk. Oops.

The recovery process:

1. Used the Win 7 X64 Windows disk, and did a clean install of the operating system. So now the machine has an un activated clean OS install.
2. Copied the AX64 installed to the machine and installed it.
3. Since the VM machine can't access the external drives, I just copied the folder Test of ATXM to the VM machines D drive.
4 Fired up AT64 and the browser. Navigated to where the files were, and restored the lastest incremental. VOILA back in business
5 Then I moved the file to where ATXM expects them, did another backup, and then restored back and forth in time. All was well.

With a bit of planning this program can handle just about anything.

Pete


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