AOMEI Backupper FREE + AOMEI Partition Assistant FREE - Mini-Review

[tomos]

Aomei Backerupper on BDJ today:
Pro for free
Lifetime Pro for ~22US$
http://www.bitsdujou...in=todays-deals-home

Note #1 there is no info available about what exactly the lifetime offer involves (one commenter claiming it's not lifetime -- but I think it's just that the fineprint only covers the free offer).

Note #2 appears Firefox and Chrome and some anti-virus are labeling it (presumably the free offer) as malware/virus. Possibly because of something like opencandy in the installer?

Comparision of Standard etc. versus Pro:
https://www.aomeitec...m/ab/comparison.html

[IainB]

@tomos: Thanks for the heads-up re BDJ for Aomei Backupper. I shall d/load it.

[IainB]

... Things tend to change, and now that Windows 10 offers some more useful backup functionality - especially the apparently really useful backup and restore functionality of File History - I shall trial it, and maybe, after I have trialled it, it could well end up becoming my new de facto backup/recovery tool to a PHD. ...

-IainB (May 02, 2016, 07:29 PM)

I recently finally got around to trialling the Win10 File History utility.
Verdict:              
I'll not be using it any more.
Reason: It apparently can't handle long path/file names. In the Event Viewer the File History logs show repeated instances of this (following) kind of error:

File was not backed up due to its full path exceeding MAX_PATH limit or containing unsupported characters:

C:\Users\[UserID]\OneDrive\C-Drive\Workdata.004\LIBRARY\Private\Some directory ID\Another directory ID\Application for registration as a something with a very long filename that goes on and on and on - Form-XXKF-06-2015 [BLANK].pdf

If you want it to be protected, try using different directory and file names.

I would have been blissfully unaware of this crippling limitation in the File History utility had I not gone to look in the relevant logs in Event Viewer.

The creation of the same long filenames/paths can be supported in Win10, and Windows Explorer and xplorer² and Everything can find/operate on these filenames.
Why on earth Microsoft released File History in such a state as to be unable to support long paths like the rest of the system would seem to be a mystery.
Sheesh.

[IainB]

Once the Free AOMEI Backupper Pro v4.1 was downloaded, I couldn't figure out - HOW THE HECK DO YOU REGISTER using the key sent separately via email?
Others had asked this Q in the discussion thread at BDJ, but there seemed to be no answer as yet.

At the time of installation of this latest version, my installation does not ask for a key or anything. It just works.
The installer removed an earlier Pro version that I had and asked if I would like to keep the key, or something, so I said "Yes".
I wonder - is that how it "registered" - i.e., automatically using the old key?

[tomos]

Once the Free AOMEI Backupper Pro v4.1 was downloaded, I couldn't figure out - HOW THE HECK DO YOU REGISTER using the key sent separately via email?
Others had asked this Q in the discussion thread at BDJ, but there seemed to be no answer as yet.

At the time of installation of this latest version, my installation does not ask for a key or anything. It just works.
The installer removed an earlier Pro version that I had and asked if I would like to keep the key, or something, so I said "Yes".
I wonder - is that how it "registered" - i.e., automatically using the old key?

-IainB (June 19, 2018, 11:11 PM)

the offer continues today.
I got the free/Pro version -- but downloaded the software (trial version) directly from their site, and added the key to that successfully.
It sounds like yours is registered, but hard to know...

[IainB]

...It sounds like yours is registered, but hard to know...

-tomos (June 20, 2018, 04:20 PM)

Yes, I was fairly sure that was likely to be the case.

Interestingly, in the BDJ discussion thread @Pequi Smith said:

The license is tied to the Machine ID. So if you upgrade from 4.0.6 to 4.1.0 and elect to keep the registration(it will ask), it will upgrade to a registered version of 4.1.0. Which is what happened to you (and me).
If you clone the partition to another HD, the registration will be invalid since it uses the HD serial number (and other stuff) for the registration algorithm.

Copied from: AOMEI Backupper Pro - Backup and Restore Software - 100% off PC - <http://www.bitsdujour.com/software/aomei-backupper-professional#comments138248>

I was aware that the registration was probably attached to the Machine ID but not that it was attached to the HDD ID also. That could be a good reason for NOT using AOMEI Backupper Pro.
For example, in this Mini-Review, I originally used AOMEI Backupper FREE to clone a failing HDD on my laptop to a new HDD. I then replaced the failing HDD with the new (cloned) HDD, and the laptop worked perfectly - including AOMEI Backupper FREE, which I used to test it all out after the switchover.

However, if the registration was attached to the HDD ID also, then I would presumably not have been able to have done this using only AOMEI Backupper Pro throughout, because the registration would have been rejected due to the new/changed/unrecognised HDD ID.

If this is the case, then it could probably serve as a good example of the sorts of knots that software vendors can unintentionally tie themselves and the user up in when they try to create a rock-solid and loophole-free registration key/process. This sort of thing could tend to be frustrating and detract from the perceived utility/value of the software to the customer - and there is evidence of that frustration in the discussion thread. There is also significant frustration shown regarding the apparent inconsistency of virus reports from downloading the installer software from the same and/or different sources. These points/problems do not seem to have been adequately addressed by the vendors in the discussion thread, so I would suspect that the BDJ result for this software giveaway might be somewhat less than its potential might have been, and that frustration could have created negative consumer confidence in AOMEI products.

Despite this, I think that my live trial of the software in this Mini-Review demonstrates that AOMEI Backupper FREE is a brilliant tool. That would probably go for AOMEI Backupper Pro as well.

[tomos]

I was aware that the registration was probably attached to the Machine ID but not that it was attached to the HDD ID also. That could be a good reason for NOT using AOMEI Backupper Pro.

-IainB (June 20, 2018, 09:02 PM)

I'm presuming this is only the case for the free version unfortunately Aomei hasn't clarified this (unless they did since my last post).
EDIT//
I see Aomei did comment (only once but on the topic of lifetime licenses) and didn't clarify, so i guess one would have to work on the presumption that tied-to-machine is also true for the paid version.
Tied-to-HDD seems extreme :-/ I wonder where they got that info.