Solved Restore Comparisons using Macrium Easeus, Aoemei & Hasleo

Thanks. Tomorrow I will check it.

cereberus said:

Edit - I was mistaken - it does not back up the recovery partition as part of its system backup.

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I am not sure what version of Hasleo you used but when I tested the latest version 3.6 the recovery partition was included as part of a system backup.

Thanks @cereberus I downloaded Hasleo just in case

@cereberus, thanks for the post. I download Hasleo as well

jimbo45 said:

Please though - just don't assume because a backup has completed successfully it will necessarily restore OK -- DO TEST A RESTORE from time to time. Always good to have more than one restore image which you can use if the original fails.

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And what do you do when EaseUS backups all fail when you attempt a restore? Unless you have a spare computer I think you have to backup and then verify the backup. That's all you can do.

I keep reading that Backup and Restore (Windows 7) legacy control panel is going to be depreciated. But people have been saying this for a very long time, so have Microsoft. It has never once failed me in many years. Every other application has failed me at one point or another. For as long as it works, I’ll keep using it. And just in case, a spare AOEMEI. (And I should try Hasleo)

Thanks for your post

antspants said:

I keep reading that Backup and Restore (Windows 7) legacy control panel is going to be depreciated. But people have been saying this for a very long time, so have Microsoft. It has never once failed me in many years.

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You are very lucky then. I used to use it extensively and have had many inexplicable failures. When it worked, it worked well. But when it failed there was no obvious reason why. It's most common failing was that it did not recognise a perfectly good system image as being available to restore, saying "Windows cannot find a system image on this computer". I've seen that one many times. So have many others.....

If you only have the one computer to back up, and if you only ever keep the one image, then the chances of seeing this are low (but not zero). But if you back up more than one machine to the same drive, or try to keep multiple images they become increasingly higher.

Backup and Restore (Windows 7) has been deprecated since 2017. Deprecation does not necessarily mean removal, but it does mean, as Microsoft says in this article, that deprecated features "....are no longer being actively developed...".


This lack of any further development or support from Microsoft was neatly illustrated the following year when Microsoft broke system image backup for the 32-bit version of Windows 10 version 1803 and made no efforts to fix it. It didn't start working again until version 1809 was released.

Bree said:

You are very lucky then.

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If it wasn’t for you, I’d still be using windows 7. You helped me get 8. You were very kind to me on the 8 forums.

I’ve never learned how to put multiple windows images on one drive, but I do keep one image on each of my extra drives. Install, update, software, tweaks. But I chop and change so much I never know how long I will keep them, I’ve also been fortunate with the incremental backups using this image method. The only 2 fails I ever had were due to corrupt drives.
Having said all that, I have been taking notice. So far I have an AOEMIE and now a Hasleo. I am liking that I can put them on the same drives in their own folders.

antspants said:

I am liking that I can put them on the same drives in their own folders.

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Yes, almost anything is more flexible and has more user options than Backup & Restore, a destination folder with a name of your choice being one of them. Another is the compression level to use. Backup & Restore does have compression, but it would only use it if you were saving the system image to DVDs. For an image saved to a hard drive compression wasn't available, the image would be the same size as the used space of the drives being imaged.

I haven't tried all of the backup solutions that are available (apart from a brief and disappointing encounter with Acronis), but I have used Macrium (free version) for many years. Several months ago, I decided to purchase the home version of Macrium (version 8). I had been completely satisfied with the free version and couldn't find any reasonable excuse for not purchasing the software.
In any event, I just upgraded to Windows 11 Pro on August 5. The process stalled using Windows Update, but sailed through using Microsoft's Upgrade Assistant. As soon as I verified that all of my current software and hardware was functioning properly, I made a complete image of my ssd. Shortly after I decided to do a DISM scan. For whatever reason, the scan seemed to stall and I started to panic. Viewing a few on-line articles about this problem, I read one response from the MS forums that indicated that a simple restart would stop the scan and return the system to normal operation.
Unfortunately, during the restart, I was presented with a screen that told me that "updates were being applied, do not turn off your computer". After several hours of watching the spinning arrow, I was getting more and more uncomfortable. But MACRIUM to the rescue!
Following a hard shutdown, I rebooted with my Macrium USB recovery stick, selected the Restore option and approximately 6 minutes later, I was back in business.
This was just my latest positive experience with Macrium (it had rescued me more than once on Windows 10). Macrium Reflect simply works, and considering any other backup or imaging option seems pointless.

jpeattie said:

considering any other backup or imaging option seems pointless.

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Possibly you’ve never lost anything very important. Some of us (that I have read) have lost much due to failed drives and failed backups. I lost 20 years of my life's work. I have as many backup systems I can get.

antspants said:

Possibly you’ve never lost anything very important.

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You are correct. I've not lost anything very important because I use a backup solution (Macrium Reflect) that has never failed me. Why would I test other software as a possible alternative to something that works flawlessly?

jpeattie said:

You are correct. I've not lost anything very important because I use a backup solution (Macrium Reflect) that has never failed me. Why would I test other software as a possible alternative to something that works flawlessly?

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Just because it has never failed is not a 100% guarantee it will never fail e.g. a windows update could cause it to fail (it has happened).

It is always a good plan to have an alternative backup. I do this but only once a month or so, pragmatically accepting I might need to do some recent updates again.

My critical data is also stored elesewhere - I do image backup my data drives (backed up separately).

In the end "Do not keep all your eggs in one basket".

jpeattie said:

You are correct. I've not lost anything very important because I use a backup solution (Macrium Reflect) that has never failed me. Why would I test other software as a possible alternative to something that works flawlessly?

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That’s what I said, before I lost 20 years of my life's work.

"Do not keep all your eggs in one basket" and "That’s what I said, before I lost 20 years of my life's work", are both legitimate responses, and if you feel more secure using multiple backup solutions, that's fine too. I guess it all depends on past experiences. At the end of the day, hopefully we can all avoid situations where using this type of software is necessary.

I

jpeattie said:

hopefully we can all avoid situations where using this type of software is necessary

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I'm not sure that will ever be possible. Even if we invent computers that are 100% crash proof, what happens if your house catches on fire (think Maui), or someone pilfers the computer?

Then you have the really weird cases. I recently ran into two of them a couple months apart:

1) I was getting corruption over my network. Finally traced it down to a single bad cable, but there were no errors whatsoever. Caught the problem by pure accident.

2) Another issue I had was a failing SSD. My backups were happening just fine, verifications would pass. However, in the weeks and months after creating a backup, random blocks would become unreadable. Again, no errors, symptom was simply that when I did an audit and tried to read a backup, I would get sudden failures.

Yep, you can bet I make multiple copies to different locations using different methods. Yes, these issues are rare, but all it takes is one major near loss of data to make me learn my lesson .

jpeattie said:

"Do not keep all your eggs in one basket" and "That’s what I said, before I lost 20 years of my life's work", are both legitimate responses, and if you feel more secure using multiple backup solutions, that's fine too. I guess it all depends on past experiences. At the end of the day, hopefully we can all avoid situations where using this type of software is necessary.

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The point is "You are not paranoid - the pc gremlins are out to get you".

If you have 2 backup tools that are only effective (assuming hardware is fine) 99%, of the time, then you might get a failure once in one hundred times. If you have two backups, probability of both not working at same time reduces to 1 in one hundred squared i.e. once in ten thousands.

This is classic Layers of Protection analysis.

Of course the bigger weakness is probably the hard drive failing - no point in putting backups on same drive as that becomes weakest link.

As Vulcans say "Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations"

I don't have any valuable data on my laptop, but if I screw up some setting, it's often quicker to restore a backup than to diagnose the problem.

kelper said:

I don't have any valuable data on my laptop, but if I screw up some setting, it's often quicker to restore a backup than to diagnose the problem.

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Amen, brother! There are times I have wasted hours trying to resolve an issue just out of pure stubbornness, then I'll do a restore and in 10 minutes I'm back to fully functioning.

antspants said:

It has never once failed me in many years.

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Because you use it in the way MS intended.