Solved AOMEI Backupper (Free Standard Edition) Review

cereberus · Aug 15, 2022

FrankW said:
VHDX is the image (compressed) file format of a W7 Backup, cannot be restored, cannot be mounted, all you can do with it is use the whole set of files (.xml) that come with VHDX file to recover your system on the same PC (WindowsRE). So I cannot test the W7 backup with a virtual disk as the target disk cannot be specified during recovery. Everything else worked fine, I restored personal files to the virtual drive (using W7 Backup and Restore), both recovery disks (WindowsRE and AOMEI) booted fine in W10/11 and I am now creating a backup with AOMEI in W10 that I will restore to F: and then run the BCDBOOT F: command (and try to boot with it). As Bree and others stated earlier W7 Backup is very messy, easy to loose data or probably even unable to boot after a system recovery. After this I may forget about using W7 BU like many have been saying on this thread (lessons learned). I will look for a 2nd simple backup program with a friendly GUI like AOMEI Backupper. EaseUS Todo Backup comes to mind.

You really do not need a backup program for vhdx files - just copy the vhdx file as backup. You could just zip the vhdx folder to save space.

SIW2 · Aug 15, 2022

FrankW said:
@Bree, I located some VHDX files on my external backup drive that I made with W7 BU&Restore but I found that System Image Restore is only possible in W10 with Advanced Startup>System Recovery environment, The W7 Backup and Restore app only restores files, that worked partly, some file did not make it to my VHDX drive. Is that correct? I want to try to restore a VHDX file to my newly created virtual disk to boot from later (to test W7 image files). When I double click on the VHDX file I get the option mount (not restore) and it won't mount because the file is missing disk attributes. Is system recovery really the only way?
Thanks

Not entirely clear what you want to do.

There are a number of other ways to restore from a .vhd (x)

One way is to pick up the .vhd (x) in diskgenius ( free edition is fine) and clone each partition it contains to the target.

Or it can be done with wbadmin command ( from winpe) . Or it can be mounted in windows and then the contents copied/cloned to the target partitions using any number of methods, e.g. xcopy .

FrankW · Aug 16, 2022

SIW2 said:
you could use a giveaway version pro, or an earlier version number of free when they had mounting in free edition.

you should be able to paste the giveaway license into the standard version you already have installed.

AOMEI Backupper Pro – бесплатная лицензия на 1 год

Получите бесплатную лицензию AOMEI Backupper Pro (Professional) – комплексная, простая и надежная программа для резервного копирования системы Windows, включая Windows 11, отдельных дисков и важных файлов

www.comss.ru

I played with AOMEI a few days on two laptops (W10-11) and don't like the displays, after backing up 1 time it showed 2 large backup boxes (Backup(1) and Backup). The same on another laptop. Apparently the 2nd blue box is not the actual backup file but the path to the backup. When I deleted the 2nd Backup box (no data, empty) in Storage Management I had problems finding the backup file when restoring (Tasks) "cannot find the backup". The other thing is that the restore target is the source of the Backup like Windows7 it just recovers the system. I wanted to restore to a virtual drive to see if the restore job will boot but AOMEI support told me that cannot be done, has to be a physical drive.
I downloaded EasUS Todo (free) and it includes mounting the backup and will let you restore to any drive (incl. virtual). I am doing that right now. Another thing I liked in Todo is the Details option during the Backup process, tells you step by step the activity, results and issues if any. Screens are less confusing than the AOMEI screens and the same backup was 15 minutes vs. 20 minutes with AOMEI.

FrankW · Aug 16, 2022

@Bree
You wrote earlier: "If you create the .vhdx file as dynamically expanding, then you must have enough free space on the drive holding it for it to potentially expand to it's maximum size. If not it will fail to boot. To avoid having to keep too much unused free space on the partition holding the vhdx, when you create it make it no larger than required. Or just make it a fixed size."
I created VDHX with 1GB initial size (according to the sample in your tuturial) dynamic, but when the EASEUS Todo recovery started (it located the correct Disk 1 virtual drive) I got the message "insufficient space". So either Todo only can restore to VHD with a fixed size or something else is going on ( Support wrote: "Please use system recovery option and select the virtual disk as the destination locaiton."
What I plan now is to make a new VHDX with Disk Manager, dynamic but initial 100 GB (which will take forever to create and format). The image size is 90 GB, what do you recommend? Alternatively a VHD disk with fixed 100 GB size.

Bree · Aug 16, 2022

FrankW said:
either Todo only can restore to VHD with a fixed size or something else is going on

ToDo should be able to restore to a vhd whether it is a fixed size or dynamically expanding one. I suspect the issue is that you are asking ToDo to restore an image that has more data in it than there is free space on the drive holding the vhd file. Windows would refuse it permission to expand the vhd enough to hold all that data, hence your message "insufficient space".

FrankW · Aug 16, 2022

Bree said:
ToDo should be able to restore to a vhd whether it is a fixed size or dynamically expanding one. I suspect the issue is that you are asking ToDo to restore an image that has more data in it than there is free space on the drive holding the vhd file. Windows would refuse it permission to expand the vhd enough to hold all that data, hence your message "insufficient space".

So what to do VHDX dynamic with 100 GB size or VHD with fixed 100 GB size, here is a picture of the image backup to be restored. Thanks

FrankW · Aug 16, 2022

@Bree
Getting the same error 0x2E517314(?) "insufficient disk space" this time with VHDX dynamic 100 GB. I also suspect this is a Windows 11 error
I have reported it to EaseUS support.

SIW2 · Aug 16, 2022

That 82 gb is compressed. Because you want to apply tha image, it will need to expand to the original size, which could be 2 or 3 times 82gb.

It can't be applied to disk ( or a virtual disk ) that is smaller than the original used space was before compression.

SIW2 · Aug 16, 2022

This an aomei backup .adi file is about 28gb compressed. But because the used space on the source was 72.42 gb it cant be restored to vhd that is only 30 gb.

This aomei backup .adi file can be restored to the 30gb disk, because the uncompressed used space is smaller

FrankW · Aug 16, 2022

Hi @SIW2
I know that but the raw backed-up data on C:\ is ony 100 GB and the DHVX is expendable to TBs, EaeUS support wrote back: " Please delete all the partitions on disk 1, then try to recover again." So what I will do next is delete and recreate a Disk1 but this time 150 GB fixed VHD and see if that error shows up again.
Frank

FrankW · Aug 17, 2022

@Bree @SIW2
This time TODO recovered OK in 40 min. (107 GB), no errors, “recovery successful”. It looks like Todo prefers to restore to a VHD virtual drive (issues with the VHDX dynamic size) with a fixed capacity 50% larger than the source image backup file. I am pleased with the results but not yet tried to boot the virtual F drive, I checked some of the large folders (Office) and did not see anything missing.

FrankW · Aug 17, 2022

cereberus said:
You really do not need a backup program for vhdx files - just copy the vhdx file as backup. You could just zip the vhdx folder to save space.

I know I can clone/paste/mount image files instead of using Backup programs but I want to do this (backup) on a schedule.
I finally managed to restore to a F virtual disk on my new Acer W11, checked the size and some major folders, all seems complete. Not sure I want to continue this backup testing exercise by trying to boot from my F: drive: To revert back to normal C: booting afterwards: you wrote "To remove boot entry, just run msconfig, select boot tab, delete the boot entry" but there only blank check boxes in this MSconfig tab including in advanced? What to do if I boot from F and my system hangs or BSOD; use my recovery USB flash drive to boot from C: (if that still works!) and then detach disk F: in Disk Manager? Can you be a bit more specific how to revert the whole virtual disk process and go back to single boot with C:? I am not an IT tech and this is my first time I am doing a virtual disk job, afraid I do (or have already done) something destructive (or changed something) to my original W11 OS.
Thanks a lot.

Frank

cereberus · Aug 17, 2022

FrankW said:
I know I can clone/paste/mount image files instead of using Backup programs but I want to do this (backup) on a schedule.
I finally managed to restore to a F virtual disk on my new Acer W11, checked the size and some major folders, all seems complete. Not sure I want to continue this backup testing exercise by trying to boot from my F: drive: To revert back to normal C: booting afterwards: you wrote "To remove boot entry, just run msconfig, select boot tab, delete the boot entry" but there only blank check boxes in this MSconfig tab including in advanced? What to do if I boot from F and my system hangs or BSOD; use my recovery USB flash drive to boot from C: (if that still works!) and then detach disk F: in Disk Manager? Can you be a bit more specific how to revert the whole virtual disk process and go back to single boot with C:? I am not an IT tech and this is my first time I am doing a virtual disk job, afraid I do (or have already done) something destructive (or changed something) to my original W11 OS.
Thanks a lot.
Frank

Jeepers - you overthink things.

Run MS config

select boot tab

select OS you want to delete

click delete button

That's it.

The existing C drive should be set as the default boot option.

I always leave it as default option.

If you use switches /p /d on bcdboot command, host os remains default option so if you do not select other OSs on 30 seconds, it boot to host OS.

So after you run bcdboot command, run msconfig to check Host OS is still the default.

FrankW · Aug 17, 2022

cereberus said:
Jeepers - you overthink things.

Run MS config

select boot tab

select OS you want to delete

click delete button

That's it.

The existing C drive should be set as the default boot option.

I always leave it as default option.

If you use switches /p /d on bcdboot command, host os remains default option so if you do not select other OSs on 30 seconds, it boot to host OS.

So after you run bcdboot command, run msconfig to check Host OS is still the default.

Both drives C: and F: have the same OS (W11)
Sooo in my case after booting with F: (selecting W11) that config tab should still state:
Windows 11 (C:\WINDOWS):Current OS: Default OS
Windows 11 (F:\WINDOWS): ???? OS ???? OS
And I delete the 2nd row (F:\ and make sure C:\ is the default boot option (or click on the "Set as Default" button below the box)
Then what, shut down and reboot with c:\ and detach Disk 1 (F:\)?

I ran the BCDBOOT command and configsys confirms the above (see attached). Meanwhile I deleted again the BCDBOOT F: line in the boot tab of MSconfig and restarted, it is gone now to reboot normally tomorrow.

An if F:\ won't boot, the system will hang? How to proceed from there: turn off the power and boot with C:\ with the recovery USB flash drive?

Is booting my F drive really going to prove anything more, I mean I have gone through many progarm files now and they are exactly a copy of the C:\ drive (property)? The details log in TODO during the recovery listed every step, volume by volume, all sucessful, not a single error or unknown remark.

cereberus · Aug 17, 2022

FrankW said:
Both drives C: and F: have the same OS (W11)
Sooo in my case after booting with F: (selecting W11) that config tab should still state:
Windows 11 (C:\WINDOWS):Current OS: Default OS
Windows 11 (F:\WINDOWS): ???? OS ???? OS
And I delete the 2nd row (F:\ and make sure C:\ is the default boot option (or click on the "Set as Default" button below the box)
Then what, shut down and reboot with c:\ and detach Disk 1 (F:\)?

I ran the BCDBOOT command and configsys confirms the above (see attached). Meanwhile I deleted again the BCDBOOT F: line in the boot tab of MSconfig and restarted, it is gone now to reboot normally tomorrow.

An if F:\ won't boot, the system will hang? How to proceed from there: turn off the power and boot with C:\ with the recovery USB flash drive?

Is booting my F drive really going to prove anything more, I mean I have gone through many progarm files now and they are exactly a copy of the C:\ drive (property)? The details log in TODO during the recovery listed every step, volume by volume, all sucessful, not a single error or unknown remark.

Again, will you stop overthinking things!

If you needed to do stuff like detach f drive after rebooting I would have told you.

VHDX files are not automatically attached after a reboot!

If F drive does not boot, reboot and select Host OS from boot menu. Then delete not booting OS entry as I said.

Rather than querying every step endlessly, just go for it - it will be obvious at that point how it works.

FrankW · Aug 17, 2022

cereberus said:
Again, will you stop overthinking things!

If you needed to do stuff like detach f drive after rebooting I would have told you.

VHDX files are not automatically attached after a reboot!

If F drive does not boot, reboot and select Host OS from boot menu. Then delete not booting OS entry as I said.

Rather than querying every step endlessly, just go for it - it will be obvious at that point how it works.

The VHDX drive booted perfectly without a glitch, a bit slow boot (1 min.) and response is a bit sluggish but that may improve, like having 2 laptops, I am running it (F) on C:/ and my original OS is on D:/ now. Not sure I can follow the logic. I ran a few programs like Outlook (IMAP) in Office and write you this e-mail from that.
EaseUS TODO is gong to my only trusted backup program and I may also make backups with AOMEI for safety I will ditch W7 Backup.
Thanks for all your help.

I am now back on my original OS, this is the boot screen I see, not sure the meaning of "Volume 4". So the "Dual" booting works flawless, may delete the second boot after a few days and delete F: VHDX drive.

cereberus · Aug 17, 2022

FrankW said:
The VHDX drive booted perfectly without a glitch, a bit slow boot (1 min.) and response is a bit sluggish but that may improve, like having 2 laptops, I am running it (F) on C:/ and my original OS is on D:/ now. Not sure I can follow the logic. I ran a few programs like Outlook (IMAP) in Office and write you this e-mail from that.
EaseUS TODO is gong to my only trusted backup program and I may also make backups with AOMEI for safety I will ditch W7 Backup.
Thanks for all your help.

I am now back on my original OS, this is the boot screen I see, not sure the meaning of "Volume 4". So the "Dual" booting works flawless, may delete the second boot after a few days and delete F: VHDX drive.

Volume 4 just means host OS is on 4th partition on your drive.

If you have a second hard drive, I recommend moving vhdx to that so it is not on C drive. That way the vhdx is not backed up every time you backup C drive.

FrankW · Aug 17, 2022

cereberus said:
Volume 4 just means host OS is on 4th partition on your drive.

If you have a second hard drive, I recommend moving vhdx to that so it is not on C drive. That way the vhdx is not backed up every time you backup C drive.

Yes I just bought on a sale a 2 TB Seagate USB backup drive ($25) and will copy the vhdx to that. Also may try to restore that AOMEI image (I still have) to that external USB drive, to see if I can get it to boot; should I run that bcdboot "d:\windows /p /d" command assuming the drive is d: or is that only for virtual disks?

SIW2 · Aug 17, 2022

you cant boot an .adi file directly. you can either mount it. or apply the .adi contents to a .vhd(x) and do the same as you are doing with the todo vhd(x).

Do you want to boot the restored os from a usb connected external disk?

After you have restored the image, have a look at the bcd entry in usbdisk\efi partition\efi\microsoft\boot

FrankW · Aug 17, 2022

SIW2 said:
you cant boot an .adi file directly. you can either mount it. or apply the .adi contents to a .vhd(x) and do the same as you are doing with the todo vhd(x).

Do you want to boot the restored os from a usb connected external disk?

After you have restored the image, have a look at the bcd entry in usbdisk\efi partition\efi\microsoft\boot

Hi @SIW2 you wrote:
"Do you want to boot the restored os from a usb connected external disk?"
Yes that's what I want to try next with my *.adi image.
I did try to restore to a VHDX drive but AOMEI won't detect virtual drives, AOMEI support also told me that this cannot be done, only restores physical drives. So how did you "apply the .adi contents to a .vhd(x)" without using restore?
Frank

Solved AOMEI Backupper (Free Standard Edition) Review

Well-known member

My Computer

Well-known member

My Computers

Well-known member

My Computers

Well-known member

My Computers

Well-known member

My Computers

Well-known member

My Computers

Well-known member

Attachments

My Computers

Well-known member

My Computers

Well-known member

My Computers

Well-known member

My Computers

Well-known member

Attachments

My Computers

Well-known member

My Computers

Well-known member

My Computer

Well-known member

Attachments

My Computers

Well-known member

My Computer

Well-known member

Attachments

My Computers

Well-known member

My Computer

Well-known member

My Computers

Well-known member

My Computers

Well-known member

My Computers