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AlienRespawn Premium issues
Problems:-
1. Restoring from backup to the same drive configuration chooses a different boot drive and makes the system non-bootable on completion. I have two ssds (Hdd0,Hdd1) + a 500gb wd black drive (Hdd2) with the system backup. I have to remove the SSD I don't want recovery to install on in order to get a working restore. Instead of automatically choosing a drive to restore to. How about letting me select the drive as an advanced user to avoid issues.
2., Usb recovery. Scanning for USB drives. Sandisk extreme Usb3.0 16gb. Doesn't get detected? Apparently its a known issue. It works with everything else I have tried. Memtest86. Windows images. I used a Sandisk extreme 8gb stick and did the recovery backup onto that. Then cloned it using imageusb onto the 16gb stick. It works fine for recovery so what is the problem with detecting it? Again why not let me the user selected advanced options and select the drive manually if nothing is appearing.
3. The whole 500gb Hdd is available for backup why is it limited to 30%. Both my ssds are 500gb so my backup is > 30% of the drive. AlienRespawn nags me about diskspace every time it starts, and everytime I connect to a new network, so much that I ending up uninstalling it. I have just recently started trying to use it again. I had a full system backup and to stop the nagging I selected the delete backups when there is no space checkbox. My current recovery index is 8. I look on my Hdd and the backup has been deleted. I have no backup at all and you give me an 8? How about increasing the percentage to allow whole backup Hdd to be used and avoid nagging. Only delete the back up once a new backup has started and the user has either backed up the old image or chosen to risk a new backup.
Question: When will these issues be addressed? I normally wouldn't moan in public forums. But I purchased this software and feel it is seriously lacking.
Cheers
Phil
PhilLewin
8 Posts
0
January 30th, 2014 03:00
Additional:-
3b. Every time I connect to a perforce server. It pops up the Nag window. Let me turn it off please!
4. Check for Update crashes. Abnormal program termination. Known issue. Not fixed. Any response? Is this software even supported?
Cheers
Phil
Tesla1856
8 Wizard
8 Wizard
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17K Posts
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January 30th, 2014 12:00
Hopefully, someone from Dell can help you (I don't use this software, and therefore, cannot provide support for it).
I'm curious though ...
- What exact computer do you have?
- How much did you pay for this software (Premium upgrade)?
PhilLewin
8 Posts
1
January 30th, 2014 16:00
Hi,
M18X R2 purchased November 2012.
£31.40 paid from within the factory installed basic version. Supplied via Cleverbridge. Current version installed 9.4.67.
Cheers
Phil
BJFox
763 Posts
0
January 31st, 2014 16:00
I started having similar issues with the AlienRespawn Premium version under Windows 7 and I could never get it to function correctly under Windows 8. I finally just gave up. I now create my own drive images with Macrium Reflect and Acronis True Image using those utilities instead. They are more flexible programs and the added bonus is that I reclaimed the drive space that AlienRespawn was using for the recovery partition.
I wish I knew of a solution to get it to work correctly. Since I never found one, I am sharing what I have done instead and found to actually work better. If you want to consume part of your drive for a recovery partition, both of these aftermarket utilities offer that option as well.
Dell and Alienware both use the same software (different name branding... AlienRespawn, Dell DataSafe Local, now known as Dell Backup and Recovery) for drive recovery purposes. It is a disk recovery product made by SoftThinks Technologies (their own product is PC Angel). Likewise, AlienAutopsy and Dell PC Diagnostics are also specially branded versions of PC-Doctor software.
Tesla1856
8 Wizard
8 Wizard
•
17K Posts
0
January 31st, 2014 17:00
Pretty much my experience as well. Basic/free version (still called Dell DSL in Aurora-R1 days) just stopped working on Win7-64. Support requests did not result in resolution or much response at all. It is simply too important to leave to broken un-supported software. I went to using Acronis2010 like on my other machines.
For $50, you would think Dell would support/fix or let users use SoftThinks support directly. I'm not sure bug-reports even make it back to them for fixing. It would be great if Dell jumped in now with a response and impressed us all.
potatomaker
4 Posts
1
November 18th, 2015 08:00
PSA: this is still an issue as of this writing. After working with tech support to confirm order of operations starting from a new HD replacement with Win 8.1, updating to Win 10, creating the backup installation media, installing Win10, updating and installing softwares, updating DBR and AlienRespawn only to arrive where I started.
USB will not initialize.
A lot of my time wasted working for Dell/Cleverbridge QA.
BTW: I found the Alienware helpdesk folks to be better then average for what thats worth.
UPDATE: I'm running a Area-51 R2 (Centaur) After all was said and done, when I asked whether the BIOS version was current, as I had searched for that info before initially updating to Windows10 (v. A01 was current), the tech informed me that they are in fact up to A03. We updated the BIOS and Respawn started working.
UPDATE your BIOS