I discovered a bug when using the 6.3.1855 Rescue Media during restore operation that if you click Next button on the screen that shows the partition layouts of the backup and destination, then press the Back button in order to delete the existing partitions on the destination, you cannot delete the destination partitions.

You have to cancel the restore operation and start again in order to delete the existing partitions on the destination when you are on the screen showing the partition layouts of the backup and destination for the first time.

This bug may exist in the 7.x Rescue Media.

+x

 

Reflecting Mirror - 8 October 2018 2:24 PM

I discovered a bug when using the 6.3.1855 Rescue Media during restore operation that if you click Next button on the screen that shows the partition layouts of the backup and destination, then press the Back button in order to delete the existing partitions on the destination, you cannot delete the destination partitions.

You have to cancel the restore operation and start again in order to delete the existing partitions on the destination when you are on the screen showing the partition layouts of the backup and destination for the first time.

This bug may exist in the 7.x Rescue Media.

Thanks for posting. Try clicking the 'Undo' button after pressing back. However, there's no need to delete partitions that are being overwritten by the restore as these will automatically be deleted. 



If you are seeing different behavior then please let us know.

Kind Regards

Nick

Macrium Support

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Thank you for the reply Nick. The Undo button works, however from a user interface prospective, it is not intuitive due to I did not make any changes to the destination.

I merely clicked Next button and then the Back button. From a user prospective, there was nothing to undo for the destination. Without making any changes to the destination partitions, what is being changed automatically to the destination when I press the Next button that requires the Undo button to be used when I click the Back button?

@Reflecting Mirror, by default the "Copy selected partitions when I click Next" option in the lower-right corner of the UI is checked, so clicking Next would trigger that action and would therefore make changes to the destination.  Would that account for what you're seeing?  Or are you trying to delete a partition that already exists on the destination and would NOT otherwise be touched by the restore operation, e.g. a Data partition that wasn't captured in the image you're restoring?

If the former scenario accounts for this, then I grant that having to undo something after clicking Back might not be intuitive since the user may not have realized that the "Copy selected partitions" action occurred when they clicked Next, but I feel that option makes the UI more intuitive for more people overall than not having it.  As I understand it, the "Copy selected partitions when I click Next" option exists to facilitate performing the most common restore operation, namely restoring the entire disk.  If that option didn't exist, then achieving anything meaningful would require the user to at a minimum manually select partitions, click Copy, etc.  That would be arguably less intuitive and certainly less efficient than simply being able to click "Restore Image" > Next > Finish to perform the restore that most users will want most of the time.  Your use case of clicking Back in order to delete something seems much less common than the very typical restore scenario I described, so to me it makes sense to optimize the UI for the typical case rather than the edge case.

The backup and destination are the same partition sizes and same partitions. Hence, from the user prospective, no change has been made to the destination's size of partitions or number of partitions.

+x

 

Reflecting Mirror - 8 October 2018 3:58 PM

The backup and destination are the same partition sizes and same partitions. Hence, from the user prospective, no change has been made to the destination's size of partitions or number of partitions.

Right, but the name of the Delete option is "Delete existing partition".  That's meant to delete a partition that already exists on disk, even if it won't be overwritten by anything else as part of the restore.  But when you click Next and source partitions are copied to the destination per that checked option, then the partitions you see on the destination are no longer existing partitions.  They are the source partitions being staged for restore.  This behavior also isn't unique to the scenario of clicking the Back button.  If you select an individual source partition and "Copy selected partition" (or drag it down to the destination), you'll see that the "Delete existing partition" option gets grayed out, for the same reason.  If Macrium allowed the Delete option to apply to staged partitions, that could become even more confusing.  If the Delete option when executed against a staged partition simply undid the staging operation, leaving the existing partition intact, that wouldn't really be a delete operation; that would be an Undo operation.  If on the other hand it deleted the staged partition and the existing partition that's already on disk, that could be a massive problem if that's not what the user expected to happen.

When you hit the Back button the default "Copy selected partitions when I click Next" is still enabled. Correct?

If the default is still enabled, the point I am making is that it should not be necessary to click the Undo button after hitting the Back button when the default "Copy selected partitions when I click Next" is still enabled and no changes were made to the destination sizes and/or number of partitions.

+x

 

Reflecting Mirror - 8 October 2018 4:11 PM

When you hit the Back button the default "Copy selected partitions when I click Next" is still enabled. Correct?

If the default is still enabled, the point I am making is that it should not be necessary to click the Undo button after hitting the Back button when the default "Copy selected partitions when I click Next" is still enabled.

Not correct.  That option is only available if no partitions have been copied to the destination yet.  So if the user manually copies something or the user clicks Next with that option enabled and then clicks Back, the option is grayed out.  And even though clicking Restore Image to access this wizard and clicking Next causes the partitions to get copied, clicking Back does not undo that copy operation, nor do I personally think it should.  Clicking Back simply moves to the previous step of the wizard, leaving all staged partitions as they are, regardless of whether they got staged by manual user action or as a result of that checkbox.  And clicking Next again AFTER having clicked Back will not trigger that "Copy selected partitions" action again, unless you clicked Undo enough to clear all of the existing staged partitions.

@Nick, playing with this a bit more, one potential improvement I can see here would be to clear the "Copy selected partitions" checkbox when that option gets grayed out.  Currently, when that option gets grayed out because something is already staged for copying, the checkbox itself is still checked, which makes it seem as if that option will occur and cannot be disabled, rather than being disabled.  And if it would be important to reactivate that option if the user undoes all existing staging operations, perhaps also have it switch to getting checked again whenever that option's state switches from grayed out to available.

I booted from the DVD Rescue Media for version 6.3.1855. Previously, I did not notice that the default "Copy selected partitions when I click Next" was grayed-out however it is still enabled when I used the Back button.

You are misinterpreting my posts regarding the selectable default option "Copy selected partitions when I click Next" being enabled.

Again, the point to be made is to improve the user experience by making the GUI more user intuitive.

My logic is as follows:
1. On the backup and destination screen, all defaults have been kept and no user changes have been made to the destination's partitions.
2. When hitting the Back button from the next screen, the default is still enabled, although now grayed-out, and the user did not make any changes to the destination's partition sizes or number of partitions.

My request for GUI enhancement would be as follows:
1. It does not make sense that the user should have to click Undo button because nothing from the defaults or the destination has been changed by the user when returning to the backup and destination screen.
2. I feel it is unnecessary for the user to click the Undo button to remove the grayed-out still enabled default option.

So either Macrium support agrees that the interface could use a GUI enhancement or decide not to make the change. Sometimes it is difficult for people to see the end user experience when you work on an application daily.