Hasleo Backup Suite

Almighty1 said:

@Josey Wales - I guess I wanted to try Hasleo Backup Suite and at least found a issue that they could use which will benefit others, let's see how long it takes them to fix this. Hopefully soon since I am trying to migrate to the new 4TB SSD as I don't have enough space for the swap file, hibernation files on the current 1TB drive.

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I do not use hibernation, but it is worthwhile to use on a Notebook.

Josey Wales said:

I do not use hibernation, but it is worthwhile to use on a Notebook.

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I don't either and usually it's when there is a power outage and the battery drains completely. It's just upgrading to 64GB of RAM from 32GB has made all those files bigger as they are all related to the size of physical memory installed.

Is it possible to just use the rescue disk to back up and restore without installation?

pewa said:

Is it possible to just use the rescue disk to back up and restore without installation?

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According to this:



I would say yes but I will let @Froggie comment on that one since he's the one who has the expert knowledge from using the product

I knew I forgot something, you have to install it first to create the Emergency Disk and then you can uninstall it as @Froggie mentioned below.

Only using the boot-ISOs from all my backuppers !
Macrium, AoMEI, Hasleo and more , these resque-ISOs are all placed on a Ventoy-stick ( bootable)
Start Ventoy and choose your backup/restore ISO...............

If you use vhdx files (physical vhdx) and keep OS decently small with user data, email, multi-media etc on a separate drive or partition then the simplest and easiest way is just to use boring old file explorer to copy the vhdx file(s) to an external device (always have 2 though whatever system you adopt).

One needs to distinguish between system backup, data backup and archive (e.g things like music cd's ripped which don't change once you've done the rip and therefore only need to be backed up once -- again to 2 different devices in case one device fails / gets corrupt etc.

These 3 sets of data types (system, data backup and archive) are very different and need different data strategies. These days much "critical" data such as work documents etc can be stored cheaply on cloud servers -- Microsoft and Google are infinitely less likely to have problems than home users !!

Of course if you are one of those people that store everything on a big windows install system (C) then it's another whole ball game. However even if you DON'T use vhdx files you should still keep the basic windows system (the OS) small and have the rest on another drive / partition.

I used to use acronis - gave that up around 2016, then used macrium free up to V8 with the final patch) for years until they went all subscription and cheap NVME storage became available. Once I learned how to use vhdx files (and it's quite simple really) I just copy the thing with file explorer --easy, works every time and no complex 3rd party software of any kind is required.

I have about 6TB of music backed up on to 2 X 14 TB "classic spinners" copied via DD (I used linux - but file explorer is fine on windows) and the advantage is that no "compression, proprietary formats, encryption" etc is used - you can just access the music as bog standard files / directories as normal files.

But whatever method you chose - if the stuff is important keep 2 separate copies -- AND DO CHECK FROM TIME TO TIME THAT A RESTORE WORKS !!!!.

I've seen so many times on even this Forum where people have backed up data with no error messages reported and then when trying to recover stuff it fails due to either device error, corrupt image or some other nonsense.

Backup software as well as Anti Virus 3rd party software needs to change to suit latter part of C21 rather than still having methodology that worked fine 20 years ago with the hardware that was then available.

(Restoring a vhdx file is simple -- boot up a Windows install / WnPE type of device, get into command mode and simply use the bog standard copy command !!!!).

@pietcorus2

K.I.S.S -- I don't know what you are backing up but having that lot ??????


Cheers
jimbo

pewa said:

Is it possible to just use the rescue disk to back up and restore without installation?

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No. It needs to be installed to make the Emergency Disk. At that point it may be Uninstalled and the rescue disk may be used off-line.

Of course at that point the rescue disk is nothing more than a manual imager/restorer... very few, if any, LIVE features are available (no scheduling/retention mgmt, LIVE mounting of images for purposes of transferring files, etc.).

" K.I.S.S -- I don't know what you are backing up but having that lot ?????? "................always make two/three backups with different Backuppers .............if one fails the other will succeed !
btw; safety first !!

Only using the boot-ISOs from all my backuppers !
Macrium, AoMEI, Hasleo and more , these resque-ISOs are all placed on a Ventoy-stick ( bootable)
Start Ventoy and choose your backup/restore ISO...............

You mean to say I can Hasleo boot rescue without installing the suite?

pewa said:

Only using the boot-ISOs from all my backuppers !
Macrium, AoMEI, Hasleo and more , these resque-ISOs are all placed on a Ventoy-stick ( bootable)
Start Ventoy and choose your backup/restore ISO...............

You mean to say I can Hasleo boot rescue without installing the suite?

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Yes ! But you have to install these programs first , for making your resque-ISOs
When your ISO is made , no reason for keeping the software on your PC..............

pietcorus2 said:

Yes ! But you have to install these programs first , for making your resque-ISOs
When your ISO is made , no reason for keeping the software on your PC..............

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Well, one reason is you cannot run Windows whilst making backup.

cereberus said:

Well, one reason is you cannot run Windows whilst making backup.

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Only making backups with the backup-media ( Ventoy with ISOs ) , running Windows after backup/reboot ...........

Quandary said:

You should be able to resize the partitions when doing the restore from an image backup, so a one step activity for the larger drive and no need for another tool.

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You can resize but only within the range of the size of the partition(s) that was backed up. Basically, a example is for the C: drive which I will say is 900GB on a 1TB drive. Even if you restore to a 4TB drive like in my case, you can only make the partition either smaller than 900GB or 900GB maximum. You cannot make the partition any number bigger than 900GB which is what I wanted to do as I wanted I wanted to make it 3TB bigger or 3.9TB's in size. This is from trying Hasleo Backup to restore and playing around with the restored partition layout.

Hasleo has been constantly updating their software. It is version 5.4.22 now. I have been waiting for it to settle down with a fixed version before giving it a try.

Many users have been singing its praises, so it must be good.

pewa said:

Hasleo has been constantly updating their software. It is version 5.4.22 now. I have been waiting for it to settle down with a fixed version before giving it a try.

Many users have been singing its praises, so it must be good.

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It's very reliable already.

How would you rate Hasleo with say Veeam Agent for Microsoft, Stigg?
About the same or better?

pewa said:

How would you rate Hasleo with say Veeam Agent for Microsoft, Stigg?
About the same or better?

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I tried it a few years ago on one of my computers, but I didn't keep it for long.
From memory, I didn't like it's interface or design.

I've read a lot of positive comments about it, though.
If you've got it installed and you like it, then try some backups and restores to see if it's reliable and suits you.

With any image application, you first need to be comfortable with using it, and even more importantly, you need to be able to trust it.

Hasleo also offers free support.

Stigg said:

It's very reliable already.

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Reliable yes but not totally bug free as I have posted about the problem I had.

First, the current released version is unable to backup a unlocked bitlocker DELL Recovery partition as mentioned earlier.
They provided a August 12, 2025 version except that one did not work because that one complained with an error.
Hasleo Backup Suite uses Microsoft's Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) technology to implement Windows hot backup/cloning. The error had been
analyzed, Windows returned the error code 0x8004231F (VSS_E_INSUFFICIENT_STORAGE, Insufficient storage available to create either the shadow copy storage file or other shadow copy data.) when Hasleo Backup Suite tries to create snapshot (This is what caused the backup to fail.), which usually means that the storage space allocated for VSS is too small.

This is on a 1TB SSD with 10GB of free space.

A newer Hasleo_Backup_Suite_Free_250815.exe was provided which basically changed it to not use VSS when backing up partitions without drive letters and instead use Direct Disk IO so it does work at least as far as backups are concerned, unfortunately the restore will fail on the same unlocked Bitlocker Dell Recovery partition.

Of course, one has to be curious why the VSS will fail on a 1.06GB unlocked Bitlocker partition when the VSS works without complaining failing and being out of space on a 949.67GB partition which 895,000% larger.

they then provided a August 16, 2025 version which requires doing a new backup and this time it finally works for both the backup and restore but what I noticed was that my Power Plans are all there but it is using a different power plan on the restored 4TB drive after I swapped it.

So it is not without it's issues as in my case, it took 3 fixed versions before everything worked correctly and I can't be the only one who has a Dell machine or any machine for that matter that has a OEM Recovery partition that is hidden.

They have good free support and will fix issues and provide a new version within hours of my reply and they will even followup and ask if you don't respond within a day or so.

My only issue now is I am trying to figure out how to get my C: partition bigger so it can use the free unallocated space.



Normally during the restore process, it would allow one to use the unallocated space as it will add it to the last partition except in my case, the issue is that Hasleo Backup Suite backs up a unlocked Bitlocker encrypted partition as encrypted and restored as encrypted which is what is preventing that function from working. As even Hasleo Support says that the data would be backed up unencrypted as mentioned in this post:

Macrium Reflect X and earlier versions will backup the BitLocker partition as unencrypted and restored as unencrypted which is why it can restore and use all the available space of the target device but of course with Macrium Reflect, one will have to turn BitLocker on and encrypt the drive manually.




When researching BitLocker partitions yesterday, it appears that 100% of all software out there cannot image a encyrpted BitLocker partition, they all require unlocking the partition and will back up as unencrypted. The only way to backup BitLocker encrypted partitions even without recovery keys is to clone the storage device.

pietcorus2 said:

Only making backups with the backup-media ( Ventoy with ISOs ) , running Windows after backup/reboot ...........

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Ah the old chestnut - not trusting backups made whilst Windows is running.