Yes, it is possible. Could you explain a bit better what you want to achieve? Restore the same OS image on 2 different partitions and dual boot between them or create a second partition and perform a new installation of 8.1 in it? Only one of them need to have it but even if it does not macrium should be able to recreate it, e.g. when restoring on a blank/raw/etc. disk. Both are ok; I prefer manually selecting the partitions to backup. ps. you can even install the seconds OS on a virtual HD on the same partition http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/wi...iew-in-a-dual-boot-configuration-using-a-vhd/ Panagiotis
Thank you pandlouk. Yes, I have to images both 8.1 but one has photography and video editors installed and the other development software etc. Having both as a single installation proved to be troublesome and slow. One fault and everything becomes a problem. I would like to boot to the Photography system then free up another partition, restore the Development image to it and create a dual boot. Previously I have done this using AX64 but no dual boot. Also updates must be backed up before booting up the other image. The time it takes for the second image to be copied over the existing partition from an external drive is excessive. I would see what you say is possible, as being a better solution. I would be grateful for any guidance re restoring the second partition to the blank without messing up the main system. Do I need the paid version, I have the free at present, but would purchase if needed?
I'm interested to hear Panagiotis' comments re the UEFI system. One approach would be to convert each Win8 installation to MBR and then dual boot with BIBM. BIBM can do the GPT to MBR conversion. I've done dozens of these conversions and it works well.
From your description I would advise you to take a look at Raxco's InstantRecovery. It fits your intended dual boot usage perfectly (a lot of wilders members use FistDefence-ISR and now InstantRecovery the way you just described). -Yes, it is possible to restore to a second partition and dual boot but is also the hardest of all (you will have to change the uid of the cloned OS partition, modify the bcd and create a new user account id to prevent conlficts between the two OSes). Panagiotis
Hi Brian, the UEFI is not a problem per se. The problem lies on how to completely separate the two identical installations (duplicated unique ids of partitions, user accounts, ntfs junctions and so on... True, BIBM solves those problems easily by hiding one OS partition from the other and viceversa. By the way, do you know if windows 8.x respects the hidden attribute on gpt partitions? Panagiotis
Thank you pandlouk, I guessed there might be a caveat. With Windows 7 and MBR I had no trouble using easyBCD etc. and hiding partitions, but this sounds a bit risky. I tried InstantRecovery but the caveat there is that if you don't backup/update the second copy (not separate partition) while using it then next time you boot it you lose any auto updates that may have happened. Therefore it seemed that the 'equalisation' had to be done each time (sometimes quite slowly). With separate partitions at least it was always in its last state when next used. Also any Macrium image is much larger as a result of the now very large single partition containing two images. If there is something I have missed in my trial, I would be very happy to hear it so that I may try again.
Yes, unless one of the partition is hidden the OS es will get confused. InstantRecovery, for your intended usage I would the following: Create 2 snapshots Photography and Development. Disable the quickboot feature of Windows 8.1 (this hybrid hybernation was probably responsible that you lose updates when booting to anther snapshot). Take an image with macrium or another program (you'll use it only in worst case scenarios, e.g. hard disk failure.... for everything else you'll use IR's archives. When inside the Development , select the Photography snapshot and select extract to archive, name it Photography and point to another drive (you can also select if you want to divide the archive in GBs). Boot to Photography, select the Development snapshot and select extract to archive, name it Development and point to another driver.. Those archives won't be displayed in IR settings but you can update them normally, the only difference is that you'll have to point the app where the archive resides during a manual update. If you want to use schedules automatic updates of archives, etc. in the options select where you want to save the archives (always use a different drive from the OS). The difference with the above method is that those archives cannot be devided in multiple pieces by size, they will always be one large file. Panagiotis
Thank you again Panagiotis, I think maybe I was not using InstantRecovery quite as you say; it sounds worth another try, following your advice closely. As you say, a one off Macrium is not a big deal.
Finally an actual need to restore after allowing the Firefox 38.0.1 update which made it impossible to use FF. Had to revert to 37.0.2 I keep 6 rolling Reflect incrementals, created every morning at 9am, the elapsed time to Reboot, Recover today's 9am and reboot again took only about 4 minutes total. (the Recovery itself took only 1 minute 9 seconds). So I'll use Macrium for dealing with problems of bad 'current day' updates and FD-ISR weekly updates to 'be safe'.
Panagiotis, I've been playing with this and I have Win7, Win8, Win 10 and Ubuntu on a GPT disk. All installed in UEFI mode. Multi-booting using a BIBM (or IFL) UFD as the "Boot Manager". I've removed the relevant drive letters in Disk Management for each OS. I hope this suffices. I'll see if I can get it to work with "bootfile". Edit... Bootfile works so a UFD isn't needed. (except coming out of Ubuntu) Edit... I just added another Win8. A clone of the previous Win8. No problems. Five OS now. This is not a Microsoft multi-boot. The OS are independent. Edit... not really a clone as it was a differential image taken 10 minutes after the previous differential image. So, "almost" a clone.
I've been running the MR6 trial for 3 weeks and all seems to be working well. I set up a 'Synthetic' backup schedule with 1 full and 14 incrementals. As expected, the incrementals completed quickly, but every backup following the 14th incr image a merge takes place and the total backup time is extended considerably! So I have a couple of questions... What would have happened had I specified 2 full backups instead of 1? ...and to get a better 'handle' on the scheduling methods I'd like to ask those of you who do schedule backups which scheduling method do you use and why? Scott
As soon as you add a 2nd FULL to the mix, this is where the "if possibkle" comes in with the FOREVER INCREMENTAL. Macrium cannot move the FULLs along your timeline as long as their might be more than one FULL being referenced by that INC. At this point, using the retention rules, it would start doing what they call an INC MERGE (the same thing that would happen if you had not CHECKed the "Synthetic Full" option. This will continue until all the INCs are referenced to the same FULL at which point Baseline crawling will occur once again. During INC MEREGE, only the INCs will crawl and merge, not the baseline. If that 2nd full appears in the middle of those 14 INCs, INC MERGing will occur (INCs only will be merged forward in time). As soon as there are 14 INC children of the same Baseline, the Synthetic mode will resume and now the baseline and oldest INC will me merged along. You should try and unCheck the synthetic mode and let INC merging occur for a while. Although the merging will begin after the 14th INC, merging INCs are far quicker than merghing the baseline with the oldest INC. Of course after a while that oldest INC will start getting pretty big as well. Scott, I use your FOREVER INCREMENTAL schema just for snapshotting my system when I'm doing some strange and unnatural things to it... that's all I use it for. I don't usually have an INC retention set up in this schema... I just roll with it as needed. At the same time I use a GFS schema in another folder for preserving my system for the timeline I want to. In my case I create a FULL every 4-weeks on Monday at 7am, a DIFF every week on Monday at 7am (they don't get created automatically when a FULL runs) and an INC every night at 9pm. FULL retention is set to 2, no DIFF retention (they'll be handled by the FULL's retention schedule when the FULLs are deleted) and 7 INCs (which crawl nicely along my timeline in INC MERGE fashion). This provides me with from 2-3 mo. of readily accessible backup, and kind of daily snapshots for a week if I need anything special (of course some of this is duplicated in my FOREVER INCREMENTAL schema but I trash that often just to clean up things along the way.
Thanks Froggie, but that has my noggin aching, and because of that I believe I'll continue to use just 1 full backup with the Synthetic method. Hmm, now you have me ready to try GFS in a like manner (actually, this may be all that I need)! Thanks again, Scott
A picture is worth a thousand words... I have two schedules, a '2 Full only' each month on the 1st day and a Rolling Incremental with 6 incrementals. I had to restore to the 'last' incremental a couple of days ago and it took only a few minutes (to roll back prior to Firefox 38 which was buggy) Since I set up the '2 Full only' at the end of April I did a manual April 30th, then the schedule kicked in on May 1st. Once the June 1st is run the April 30th will be deleted. This is a "FS" rather than a "GFS", i.e. the grandfather always dies. Immediately after the Full backup on June 1st I'll only be able to revert to one month earlier, i.e. May 1st or I can revert to up to one week earlier, by day, with the incrementals. However you can see that the Full parent to the incrementals grows over time. The first full was about the same size as the other Fulls (29.7GB) but has grown (to 33.1GB) as incrementals 01 to 32 were 'merged' with the parent. This works because different folders are used for the backups.
Sorry, Scott... that whole scheduling thing can really get your thinking twisted Rather than make this difficult, use the "Backup/Backup Templates/New" function and create your own template (Scottso ) with its own unique name. Just create your schedule, set your RETENTION rules and GO... it's really very easy. Then you won't be confusing what your using with any of Macrium's templates. If you want from 1-2 months of availability, RETENTION: FULL=1, DIFF=unCHECKed, INC=<however many RECENT days you'd like access to>. Just up the FULL retention if you want more months.[/QUOTE]. The result will be at least 1-FULL, the four most recent DIFFs following your FULL (your 2nd month), and the last <n> INCs for possible daily access. It all runs very nicely managing left overs as it moves along in its time line.
Thanks guys. I just want to avoid all of the merging that started after my 14th incremental. Before then my incrementals completed quickly, whereas now the backups process (with merging going on) takes much too long to complete for my liking and slows-down my PC noticeably during that time. Froggie, I really didn't intend to use MR6 as a 'snapshot system'. All I want from MR6 is a simple imaging schedule that runs in the background without placing too much of a burden on my 6-year old i3 PC, so that I can continue doing other things on my PC without feeling too much impact from MR6. Scott
Then you should try the following suggestion and lemme know if it feels any different... 1. Edit your current schema and unCHECK the "Synthetic Full" option... you can always create FULLs if you need them along the way. With this option, only INCs are merged, never the FULL. ...and 2. In the Macrium UI, in the ToolBar go to "Edit Defaults/Backup/Priority" and make sure the slider is set to the "Lowest" setting. See if those settings make things feel any better.
Yes! - moving the slider to the low end worked a treat insofar as unburdening my PC! Backups take longer to complete but I don't see that as a problem as long as my PC remains responsive for concurrent use.
While editing my backup schedule I noticed the (checked) checkbox at the bottom of that window "Run the retention purge before the backup". Can someone please explain the resulting benefit of that being checked (or not checked)?
Scott, I would only use it if you have sertious SPACE problems on the volume you're storing the drives on. If you have FULL=2 retention setting, that will DELETE the first FULL before creating the 3rd FULL. I would much rather have the 3rd FULL created SUCCESSFULLY before the 1st FULL is deleted. If the retention purge is set to BEFORE, and the 3rd FULL has some sort of problem, you'll lose that 1st backup before you know you have a problem.
Well as I've implemented your suggestions of post 2194 I guess it's not too relevant to my schedule scheme. Froggie, do you believe it advisable to auto-verify each image upon completion of backup?
The auto-Verify is very quick, especially with INCs. The FULL verify takes a bit longer but is still much faster than the imaging operation. Edit your schema and turn it on for a while... if you like it, leave it on, if not, re-Edit and just turn it off. It's fun to play with this stuff
There are different auto-verify for creation of backups? I can only find how to enable it, not different ways..
