Home Forums SharewareOnSale Deals Discussion Isoo Backup and System Restore / Jan 22 2019

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  • #12940814 Reply | Quote
    Ashraf
    Keymaster

    Have something to say about Isoo Backup and System Restore? Say it here!

    Have suggestions, comments, or need help? Post it here! If you know of better software than Isoo Backup and System Restore, post it here! If you know of issues with Isoo Backup and System Restore, post it here! Share your knowledge with all of us. :-)

    #12942225 Reply | Quote
    Peter Blaise
    Guest

    .
    It’s like AOMEItech Backupper — or OEM Dell, HP, Lenovo, and so on — in that it can make a partition on the hard drive to backup to and restore from, only unlike OEMs, it can make that restore partition current, adding new user files.

    It offers to access that partition to restore it during boot by tapping the [ F3 ] key — if your Windows fails, just reboot, tap [ F3 ], and supposedly restore to the condition that was last backed up.

    And it promises to make a boot USB flash drive, presumably to access and restore that partition if the main OS partition won’t even boot.

    All good ( I did not test ).

    Suggestions for improvement:

    Auto analyze the drive and offer to move and shrink existing partitions to make room for a backup / restore partition, otherwise, to be best effective, I’d have to use another tool to do that, then use this tool.

    Offer selectable insight on what can and will be backed up — Operating System directories, User directories, or everything, or selectable additional directories, for example, I have many ROOT directories outside the OS and User area for Install, DCIM, Backup, Audiobooks, Downloads, Ebooks, Music, Movies, Videos, even my User Documents are in the Root, but only some of those are set as User Location for their name, so would this program auto-check that C:\Documents is my User Documents location, or would I have to, or even have the opportunity to, select it manually, every time, or automatically in a backup set on demand.

    Options before backup and during restore, such as, if I’m restoring to refresh the operating system, which Microsoft itself declines to do, or to restore the as running operating system, which may have backed up a virus or other failure, am I restoring to fix a Windows failure or a virus invasion, am I restoring to replace lost or damaged files due to virus, idiocy, or hard drive failure, can I backup to CDs or thumb drives now that thumb drives are gargantuan, can I backup to an external USB hard drive, can I restore to any computer after backing up to an external hard drive, can I yank the internal drive and use it as an external drive to restore to a new drive or even to an already running drive in any computer?

    If the backup partition is too small, what happens?

    During restore, does it simply overwrite existing files, or ask, or wipe existing directories before restore?

    If the restore can’t find enough space on my OS partition, what happens?

    Because this tool is new to us, these explorations should be done by the vendor to show their understanding of end-user situations and show their appropriateness for which end-user situations they are addressing, and especially tell us in the program what conditions it will not address, such as too little space for any task, and enable us to plan to address that either inside the program, or on our own outside the program.

    I think this is meant to be an OEM restore tool, with the added feature of including User files on occasion instead of just returning the drive to an OOB Out Of Box fresh installation, though it can probably be used for that, too — their web page shows computer makers as their customers.
    .

    #12942250 Reply | Quote
    Peter Blaise
    Guest

    .
    … AND can this work in tandem with the OEM partition, such that the OEM partition can restore the computer to OOB Out Of Box, and this partition can restore to ALBU ( ! ) As Last Backed Up, your choice at boot?

    This really needs a partition manager inside to make space and advise.
    .

    #12942331 Reply | Quote
    joji
    Guest

    If you want your computer to run perfectly avoid this crap and use AOMEI Onekey recovery great software in this category. It has saved my computer from being destroyed many times.

    #12944654 Reply | Quote
    Julian Zambanini
    Guest

    HELP! I installed Isoo Backup and System Restore on my Surface Book 2 running Windows 10 and proceeded to create a backup. The directions said that that the computer would restart which it did and showed the Microsoft Window on the screen but did not do anything after that … after 30 minutes I turned from the computer and tried to reboot it … but the only screen I was able to get in Windows 10 is the “Surface UEFI” … When I exit “Surface UEFI” it indicates that Windows will be restarted … but the only thing I see is the Window’s logo. What to do? to get my computer to work the it did before I installed “Isoo Backup and System Restore”????
    [email protected]

    #12944821 Reply | Quote
    Peter Blaise
    Guest

    .
    [@Julian Zambanini] Oddly enough you need to have a separate backup of all your own data, and separate re-installation materials for any programs you installed, and probably separate re-installation materials for your operating system, BEFORE you install something like Isoo Backup and Restore, so you can recover from any misbehavior.

    You may need to present your computer to a Microsoft tech or equivalent who may be able to undo what you did, or re-do a fresh installation, be prepared to purchase a new internal SSD so your current internal SSD can be used as an external backup from now on, hopefully it still contains your data and permits access.

    Also, contact Isoo.

    Let us know what you do.
    .

    #12945030 Reply | Quote
    Jeff
    Guest

    If you didn’t test, why are you writing here?
    And if you didn’t test, what value your “suggestions for improvement have”?
    [@Peter Blaise]

    #12945314 Reply | Quote
    정해홍
    Guest

    HELP! I installed Isoo Backup and System Restore on my Surface Book 2 running Windows 10 and proceeded to create a backup. The directions said that that the computer would restart which it did and showed the Microsoft Window on the screen but did not do anything after that … after 30 minutes I turned from the computer and tried to reboot it … but the only screen I was able to get in Windows 10 is the “Surface UEFI” … When I exit “Surface UEFI” it indicates that Windows will be restarted … but the only thing I see is the Window’s logo. What to do? to get my computer to work the it did before I installed “Isoo Backup and System Restore”????
    [email protected]

    #12945771 Reply | Quote
    Gary
    Guest

    @Jeff:

    As a developer, companies will bring to me an idea for a program to promote that serves a particular purpose, and usually not even a prototype (no code written). If someone offered the same things Eassos Isoo Backup and System Restore claims, I would not need to install it or test it before I would want the same questions Peter Blaise has asked be answered. I would want to know how well did they think this project through before even considering it a viable product. It would be the same way even if they had a working product, even a user base already established. Peter did all of us a great favor by bringing up some important points, and after posting (even an additional post), he probably has other questions that should be asked. I would gladly hand a project such as this off to him so he could get those answers before I find out it is a great concept on the surface but a disaster in how it handles those unusual situations. Peter does not need to install it either to wonder about those same questions. I’m glad he asked all those questions. If Eassos were to answer every single question he asked (no exceptions), I would be more than glad to make a donation to Peter’s favorite charity, and match it for a charity that Eassos proposes. That is how much I am glad Peter asked; now if we could only get the answers to all of them.

    @Peter Blaise

    Good job; keep asking.

    #12945891 Reply | Quote
    Peter Blaise
    Guest

    ,
    [@Jeff], thanks, but … “testing” would require not just installation ( which is ambiguously unclear and risky ), but also backing up, and then restoring, an arduous task we all would prefer to never do let alone do just because someone offered us some software.

    Regardless, I inspected the program and found way more questions than the vendor answered, so I raised those concerns, and sadly, someone already reported experiencing a catastrophe ( which my unanswered questions predict ).

    What would you like the vendor to tell you about their software before you install it, let alone used it?

    I at least try to inspect what I am going to expect, and found the vendor’s information lacking way too much for me to trust exploring and discovering and compensating for it on my own.

    I’ve been a beta tester for some vendors, and it takes long dedicated days worth of effort, sometimes all for naught as they ship updated software the next day anyway that may be different enough that my prior day’s experience no longer applies.

    That’s not what I’m offering here at SOS, and I don’t think vendors should expect us to beta test.

    The stuff we explore here aught to be ready for prime time.

    I do not believe this is.

    What’s your experience of investigating today’s offering?
    .

    #12946372 Reply | Quote
    Joji
    Guest

    I had written my first post that this software is a big crap so don’t use it. There was also the same problem with me when I first use the software from the same developer and my computer stopped responding and I spent a lot of money for recovering my computer system.

    #12947434 Reply | Quote
    Николай Стоянов
    Guest

    Mr. Peter Blaise. Thank you for the analyzes They were very helpful for me I do not have time to experiment A and I do not have to do here, there are many programs that are for restoring the operating system and one is making it difficult for them to use Once again thanks for the clarifications . Be alive and healthy.You know I have problems with English I do not speak, so I’m short.This is a Google translator.

    #12950180 Reply | Quote
    AKBAR SHAIKH
    Guest

    [@Peter Blaise]
    Today after I installed the software, this happened to me as well when my system failed to boot and asked me press “R” key multiple times at booting to remove the boot option of the software, but I could not. I kept restarting till I was asked by Windows setup to enter the Bitlocker key which I had enabled. Fortunately this worked for me and I was able to restore my system.
    I am bit wary of using this software again. Beware!

    #12950183 Reply | Quote
    AKBAR SHAIKH
    Guest

    [@정해홍] Today after I installed the software, this happened to me as well when my system failed to boot and asked me press “R” key multiple times at booting to remove the boot option of the software, but I could not. I kept restarting till I was asked by Windows setup to enter the Bitlocker key which I had enabled. Fortunately this worked for me and I was able to restore my system.
    I am bit wary of using this software again. Beware!

    #12951304 Reply | Quote
    – bill
    Guest

    This is hardly a new product, being simply a renamed version of Eassos Backup and System Restore (according to Isoo’s company profile link Isoo is actually Eassos – not to be confused with EaseUS! – rather than a remarketer) which has been sold since mid-2013.

    The ‘eassos’ Isoo.com link provided leads to information which seems to answer most of Peter’s questions:

    a. It appears simply to make a conventional backup image of the system disk (or system partition with any required supporting partitions), with optional additional incremental images to support staged recovery of the backed-up partition(s) to any backed-up time (even the free version of AOMEI Backupper does the same, and more, though the Acronis-based OEM freebies from the likes of Seagate and Western Digital did not last I knew). What this means is that the only control provided is over what gets included in the image(s), and the stored image will over-write the entire partition into which it’s restored without any ability to preserve existing material in the partition. Whether the saved image can be accessed independently to restore individual files does not seem to be mentioned.

    b. Its apparent default to placing the backup image(s) in a local partition on the same disk seems imprudent, given that this would certainly not protect the backup across a whole-disk failure (one of the explicit perils it claims to protect against) and might well not protect against sufficiently nasty viruses which did not limit themselves to the system partition, though should help repair user errors and faulty (but not malicious) software.

    c. Given that it emphasizes being a simple, easy-to-use backup mechanism its failure to include general partition-management capabilities is hardly surprising (and Eassos does sell its own partition manager under the name DiskGenius – formerly PartitionGuru – which includes both normal partition-management functions and backup/restore functions). It does, however, appear to offer to shuffle unused space within existing partitions on the system disk to create a target partition for the image(s) if an existing partition seems inadequate, though how much detailed control the user has over this is unclear.

    As for the problems which two users each noted (twice) here, they do not inspire confidence and could have arisen either from vendor inexperience with GPT-partitioned drives (their frequent references to MBRs perhaps offering a clue here) or from confusing choices presented to the user. The bottom line is that while I find nothing in this which would encourage me to forsake more tried-and-true (and free) solutions such as those from EaseUS, AOMEI, Macrium, Paragon, and some open-source live CD offerings, it does not appear to be quite the piece of trash some here seem to think it is (and DiskGenius might actually be worth looking at if it should ever pass our way).

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Reply To: Isoo Backup and System Restore / Jan 22 2019