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Is the drive backup image created by AOMEI generic?

I made a disk backup before I took laptop to shop for new hard drive.  Now I am reading about all kinds of problems using RESTORE.  Like drive letters changing, computer not booting, systems trashed.  Very scary reading.  Is the drive image I created with AOMEI standard generic or proprietary?  Can I use Windows 10 restore with the AOMEI image I created?  I am afraid I will lose everything because I chose to use AOMEI to make my disk backup.   Does anyone know if I can use other software to RESTORE the AOMEI image on new hard drive?  

Comments

  • No, it's proprietary. You can only restore with Aomei program.
    Yes, I understand how restoring can be a scary experience while waiting to see if it will work. And yes, you have read about other's disasters in this forum. I have experienced some minor glitches using the disk restore by having it add a letter to my System Recovery partition, which was removable in disk management. But I have also had 100% success in using Aomei doing either test System restores or when upgrading my SSD or upgrading friends SSD's (in lieu of cloning). I would have to believe that in the majority of cases, the program must work or it would be getting slammed in reviews. I've read about various failures on other recovery software forums so I would image they all present a chance not to work as advertised. If the laptop was functioning when you took it in, I suggest you ask them to clone the current HD while installing the new HD. They should be able to do it easily. If it was not working, don't panic until you try the restore first. Good luck and post here when you're done about the results.
  • I am going to shop to pickup laptop with new hard drive (not SSD) now.  They are giving the old one hard drive back to me so I can always use something else to clone it to the new drive.  They wanted $85 to do the cloning and I felt I could do this myself.  If Aomei fails to restore the drive image onto new drive, at least I have options using other cloning software.

    I tried 5 times to create Aomei bootable DVD disk (fresh DVD+RW each time) using from your website through Aoemi software and failed each time. So how do it make a bootable DVD so I can even do the restore.
  • Burning the bootable disk is a long known problem but the disk you made should work.
    I just upgraded to 4.5.1 and tried to create a new bootable media. The burn process stopped at 99% and ejected the disk. I shutdown the program in task manager. I then proceeded to boot from the disk and it booted up fine into the new 4.5.1. If you find that does not work for you, use the ISO method. That should work using the Win 10 burning function. Just right click on the ISO file and choose the burn to disk option. You can do this on your PC or any other PC running Aomei.
    There are many free cloning programs available. I don't know the brand of the new HD you installed, but most manufacturers provide a free clone program for their disks. You could also try EaseUS Todo or Macrium Reflect Free. Both get high marks. Try restoring your image first. You really want to know if the backups will work for you.
  • The disk burning stopped at 70% and never finished.  All subsequent tries gave an error message that creation FAILED after just 27%.  Tried after rebooting computer but nothing different.  So I have a disk image of old drive on external USB hard drive that cannot be used.  The new drive has already been installed.  Bought a Apricorn USB data transfer cable to mount old drive.  I would rather NOT clone the old drive as it probably has bad sectors and DELL is infamous for doing weird partitioning.  Apricorn cloning is known to have a problem with DELL partitions.  So looking for disk imaging software to do transfer.  So I will attach old hard drive to my desktop with USB transfer cable and try to make new disk image to USB external hard drive using different software.  Hopefully new software will make bootable media so I can finish transfer.
  • Use Aomei PXE to start
  • Not sure what Aomei PXE is? Where do I get it? How to I use it?
  • edited August 2018
    You can get PXE from here: https://www.backup-utility.com/help/pxe-boot.html
    But I would suggest, again, try the ISO option in step 3 to burn the bootable media. It should work. Win 10 should be able to burn it by right clicking on it.
    https://www.backup-utility.com/help/create-bootable-disk.html
  • I give up.  I have tried everything.  Wrote WinPE ISO file and burned to DVD.  No boot.  Wrote Linux ISO and burned to DVD.  Not bootable.  In fact, I got the error message that a WinPE bootable disk was required.  So why bother with Linux if the AOEMI software rejects it without trying to boot from it.  I transferred the IOS file to my desktop computer and tried burning with both DVD+RW and CD-R.  I suspected that the laptop DVD/CD drive had a bad laser.  Then tried using that on laptop DVD/CD drive.  NO BOOT.  The ISO WinPE file created does have boot files in it when inspected by File Explorer.  So absolutely nothing works for me to restore saved drive image.  So I backup up entire drive that was failing using AOEMI to preserve all data/photos in addition to installed software and system.  And now have no way to use the drive image.
  • edited August 2018
    You could restore from within Windows directly.
  • This is a long shot, but when I first started using Aomei, I too could not create a bootable media CD. I emailed support and they sent me an ISO via dropbox (or some other downloadable link) that worked. It was Win 7 based but worked fine on my WIn 10 system since it is used in a Pre Windows environment. Try emailing them and ask for a workable ISO that you can burn to disk (or USB). Again, a long shot, but something to try before you give up.
  • I emailed them and their email back just said to try using ISO file and burn to DVD.  They obviously didn't even read all the methods I tried to create bootable.  If the drive backup I made successfully was with a corrupt system, I don't want to write that bad data to new hard drive.  AOMEI is not the proper software to use for a recovery operation on a failing drive. 
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