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Win7 System Restore vs Rollback Rx

jefboyardee

Extreme Android User
Jan 18, 2011
5,518
1,791
I've been using Rollback Rx for years. It was disabled when I started Linuxing and Grubbing, but I figured out how to reinstall version 8 over and over. Whenever I tried a new distro I had to uninstall and reinstall Rollback. This has gone one for years, but...

I recently bough a companion laptop. It wouldn't accept my login numbers form the original desktop, which I suppose is as it should be. I eventually decided to buy another, now at version 10. It can't be fooled into un/reinstalling and I don't have its magic numbers anyway. What's worse, they want me to $ubscribe to a service that guarantees it'll keep up with the new Windowses.

And Rollback does work mysteriously, too fast to make sense. I've finally had enough and have just uninstalled and removed stray folder and registry remnants from both PCs. Yes, I'll also have to get then to unsubscribe me.

Feeling naked without my Rollback, I have awakened System Restore. In my experience, that works too but takes forever comparatively, and only allows me to create so many points.

Who here can say something nice about Windows' System Restore? I need a digital hug...
 
To answer some of the questions I asked myself:

Comparison to Rollback RX, EAZ Fix, Comodo Time Machine

Rollback RX, EAZ Fix and Comodo Time Machine are very similar in their internals and operation. For simplicity I'll refer only to Rollback RX from this point on. Same considerations apply to EAZ Fix and Comodo Time Machine.
The operation of AX64 Time Machine and Rollback RX is quite similar - both allow to create "Snapshots" and jump forwards and backwards between them. However the internal workings are completely different. AX64 uses "Disk Imaging" technology (same technology as used by ShadowProtect, Macrium Reflect, Acronis etc). Rollback RX uses "Snapshotting" technology. See more information on these technologies here.

Following are the advantages of Rollback RX over AX64 Time Machine:

Speed: the snapshots and rollbacks with Rollback RX normally take only 3-5 sec, while AX64 takes 10-40 sec to do the same.

More features (like advanced scheduling, taking snapshots at certain events)

However RollbackRX has significant flaws:

Cannot be used as a backup program, because there is no way to recover from a disk failure

No way to recover from a corrupted MBR caused by rootkits or other malware
No way to backup to other drives such as external drives, network drives etc
Power failure may corrupt the data on the drive
Bad compatibility with imaging, defragmentation, file recovery, and other programs
Decreases SSD performance and life by blocking TRIM commands
Snapshots need defragmentation, uninstallation is a pain
Prevents use of Multiboot system, because modifying the volume from another OS corrupts the snapshots
Disables Windows recovery environment, because running the latter may corrupt the snapshots
Prevents normal OS use of paging file, as a result some of OS functionality doesn't work properly
Messes with the disk MBR
Stability issues - lot of disk corruption reports
AX64 Time Machine is free of all above-mentioned problems. It's easier to use. Also it adds efficient means to browse the backups and recover old or deleted files/folders.


I agree with some of those Rollback flaws; that and it's so freaky fast it must be cheating.
 
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Anyway, in case anyone but me is reading this, AX64 Time Machine works pretty good. Still a bit young and stubmbly, it's a very unobtrusive disk imaging machine that takes a new image every hour, containing only what has changed in that hour. I can take a named snapshot, install some trial package, then go back to the snapshot, erasing all traces of that trial. Rollback does that too, but does so cloaked, in the dark.

The only thing that's stopping me from paying its twenty bucks is that when choosing a usb flash to backup to, it always results in 'disk full' failure, even though it's not full. But they do communicate and I'm waiting for their reply on this matter.
 
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