Feature REQUESTS

[m.e.]

Hello!
I'm really happy with this program! Incremental backups work great and fast, and restoring works great with the internal file browser.

I'd like to mention that USB-flashdrives ("USB-sticks") can overheat if many GB are written onto them. It might be a good idea to add either a "pause" button, or an "auto-pause" feature that will pause for X minutes every Y minutes to prevent a drive from overheating. For example: "overheating protection: pause data transfer every x (1...99) minutes for y seconds (0...999) if the backup has been running for longer than z (1....99) minutes. It can be frustrating if a quality USB-drive (e.g. 1TB Sandisk) overheats after 20 GB has been written and the user has to start again. The option could also be made available in an "ini"/"cfg" file for advanced users, so the interface does not get cluttered.

[Froggie]

Personally, I don't believe it's an application's responsibility to try and protect any and all hardware against any and all limitations those hardware options may have.  Many UFDs don't have this overheating problem you mentioned... maybe better to try an find quality hardware to use instead.  IMHO...

...and I surely don't consider a Sandisk UFD to necessarily be a quality device... especially after Western Digital bought them up. I've had lots of Sandisk issues with UFDs, not necessarily overheating. One of the better Sandisk devices is a multi-gB EXTREME UFD. I can write up to its 61gB size at full speed without any heat issues. Maybe you've got a flakey drive.

[m.e.]

Hello Froggie,

I understand your concerns, but let me explain further:

I am using a MacBook with Parallels, and therefore I do not have an SD-card slot and no secondary internal SSD.

I want SSD failure protection on the go, so I need a small (!) USB-C (!) 1TB (!) flash drive ("stick") (no annoying USB-cables and large external SSD drive "dongles") where I can conveniently quickly make an incremental "snapshot" three times a day. This has worked great with Macrium, but Macrium is now no longer ARM-compatible. Paragon, Aomei and MiniTool are also either not compatible or have considerable issues. Hasleo thankfully is compatible and has no issues.

I got the SanDisk Ultra® Dual Drive Luxe USB Type-C™-Flash-Laufwerk which generally has favorable reviews.
I also have the Kingston MobileLite Duo 3C SDXC card reader. Last time I used it it always got very hot (could try again).

For the initial full backup, I need to create a very large file, obviously, with all my data. The compressed file might be 40GB or so. I remember the SanDisk has overheated several times when I was like 70% done. So I paused the process in Macrium 3 or 5 times or so, and it worked.

Subsequent incrementals are no problem because they are much smaller.

I could also try to get robust dash cam / video 4K SDXC cards that might not overheat so fast, but last time I checked they had limited capacity and/or where very expencive. Plus I think the card reader tends to get really very hot.

I also tested R-Drive Image which was the only other program besides Hasleo Backup Suite that worked well on my Mac. But it's not free. It has some disadvantages and some advantages compared to Hasleo.

R-Drive Image in fact does have an option to limit bandwidth. I think it is also of relevance for network connections perhaps? In any case R-Drive Image has the possibiliy to limit both the READ spead (from the source, in MB/s), and the WRITE speed (onto the target destination device, in MB/s).

Another possibilty might (!) be that I could pause the Virtual Machine, and that could hopefully pause the data transfer, and cause (hopefully) Hasleo to resume the backup process after resuming the virtual machine from the pause. But I was a bit sceptical as this might introduce additional potential backup integrity issues (or not, I don't know). In any case most people don't use virtual machines. Perhaps hibernations or standby of Windows during the Backup task will also work? I have not tried that because of fear that it might cause consistency/integrity issues with the Backup, though it is all VSS-based and should probably work.... But also consider that pausing the VM / Windows standby is not very convenient to do during a backup, depending on one's backup habits. For my scenario, it would be possible because I do not do large backups often.

[Froggie]

I shouldn't get into this, not being a MacBook user , but your screed above only mentions Macrium when experiencing overheating... no mention of Hasleo doing the same (I assume it does).  If you haven't tried it, you should.  Both v8.x of Macrium AND Hasleo make extensive use of multi-core/thread operations so they will, indeed, run your external devices at their maximum capability if you're making all your cores/threads available to the Parallels virtual machine... possibly causing this condition you're seeing.  You can always shrink (less cores/threads) the size of your virtual machine to see if that may help.

I don't know about Parallels but VMware does allow you to configure "virtual" USB ports as either USB3 or USB2.  Since USB2 by design is slower in its protocol use, if that's possible with Parallels I would try it.  Your FULL image will be slower but your Incrementals should be decent.

The end result, though, should be the use of a UFD that doesn't overheat or die when used at its maximum speed allowed... remember, the device itself controls how fast it may be used, not the laptop and its device controller.

I'm not sure what else I could suggest... will give some more thought to it, though... good luck!

[m.e.]

Hello, and thank you very much.

* Yes, you are right that it's the USB device's task to take care it won't overheat.
* I have not yet performed a full backup with many dozens GB but will do so this week and I will report here about the result. (But it could be that high temperatures (it is winter at the moment) might have different results in the future.)
* I will also try limiting the cores if I run into problems. Thanks for the idea.
* I could not find a feature to limit USB to USB2. (I think that could also be *too* slow then?). I could still switch back to USB3 after a large Full image has been made, by the way. But like I said I cannot choose USB in Paralllels, it seems.

Finally, I still think limiting transfer read and write speeds (like in R-Drive) can be a practical option - but let's wait until I report about how my huge full backup will perform.
I remember with Macrium, I tried several times, and it always overheated after like 30 GB or so.

Till later

[Froggie]

I don't know what GUEST Windows VM you're using but the guest's Task Mgr should let you see the I/O rate of the disk being targeted during the imaging operation... probably something worth knowing. There might be something on the Mac as well...

[m.e.]

I am VERY impressed!

Hasleo managed to save a 60GB backup (orginally 70GB) on the Sandisk USB-C-Flashdrive on my Windows 11 ARM VM on Mac M1 with no issues. Incremental also worked with no problems.
I was able to restore a file from that incremental backup also with no issues, for testing purposes.
VERY good.
I think perhaps no overheating issue occured because write speed was a bit slower. (Speculation)
I would like to thank the programmers for this excellent program! I'll mention this success in another software forum, really happy!!!

[admin]

Hello, and thank you very much.

* Yes, you are right that it's the USB device's task to take care it won't overheat.
* I have not yet performed a full backup with many dozens GB but will do so this week and I will report here about the result. (But it could be that high temperatures (it is winter at the moment) might have different results in the future.)
* I will also try limiting the cores if I run into problems. Thanks for the idea.
* I could not find a feature to limit USB to USB2. (I think that could also be *too* slow then?). I could still switch back to USB3 after a large Full image has been made, by the way. But like I said I cannot choose USB in Paralllels, it seems.

Finally, I still think limiting transfer read and write speeds (like in R-Drive) can be a practical option - but let's wait until I report about how my huge full backup will perform.
I remember with Macrium, I tried several times, and it always overheated after like 30 GB or so.

Till later

Thank you very much for your suggestion, we will implement the feature of limiting write speed in a future release.

[admin]

Sorry, I posted a future request HERE and it should have been here.

...and last but not least, can this application be made standalone, as in PORTABLE, so it may be carried around on a UFD as an auxiliary program that can run under any modern Windows API available without application installation (LIVE installed Windows or an add-on to a WinPE)?

Thanks for your consideration...

Maybe we can provide a special app loader to start the service program and the GUI program in WinPE, so that the user can run the loader to start HBS without installing the application.

[Froggie]

Wow... that would be great!