Gary, using any scheme except FOREVER INCREMENTAL will only allow you to have from 14-28 days or 28-42 days, especially if you want at least 2-FULLs in residence all the time. FOREVER INCREMENTAL (with the "Synthetic Full" option) will easily accomplish what you want but you'll only have 1-FULL and 27-INCREMENTALS at any given time and your 28-day timeline will walk along a day at a time. I have found using such a scheme to be fairly fast (using Rapid Data Restore with a 36gB SYSTEM partition) at restorations if the SYSTEM is in tact at the time of the restoration. If it's not, the usual FULL COLD restoration will occur. Of course it all depends on how big that protected partition is that your running this scheme on. To freeze the system at 2-FULLs and 13-INCs a piece and have them move along a time line, 1-day at a time, is not possible the way the PARENT/CHILD relationship occurs with Incrementals and Differentials.
In rereading my post above... There is a way to do as you require but it will require (3) Fulls in residence at any given time. Feel free to PM me for a quick "How to" guide... or I could post here if others are interested.
Sorry for confusion Pete. I just want to have a rolling backup definition that alloows me to go back in time a maxium of 28 days if need be reagarding restoring my system drive. I was just trying to set up something to do this but would appreciate the simplest way you can think of hopefully saving some storage space as well. Hope this is clearer and thanks. Gary
A FOREVER INCREMENTAL with "# of backups = 27" and "Synthetic Full" option checked will do as you require above using the least amount of image storage. Don't forget to EDIT the schedule item for the time of day you want the incremental (I do 10pm).
Thanks Froggie. For retention urles on the 1 full and 27 inc. sy7nthetic backup, then I would just check 1 full backup to be retained and 27 inc. Is this correct and thanks much. Gary
Just select the INCREMENTAL FOREVER template, EDIT the single scheduled item it gives you for the time of day and days of week you want it to run, CHECK only the "Incremental" option and set it for 27 BACKUPs, CHECK "Create a synthetic Full if possible," and select the bottom 2-options to whatever you'd like (or leave them at the DEFAULT). No FULLs need to be selected. When this definition begins, if it sees no FULLs it creates one and then incrementals off of that full for the next 27-days. On day #28 (and each day after) it will merger the earliest incremental back into the full, delete that earliest incremental (now giving you 26), then immediately creating a new incremental. This process, after the 1st 27 incrementals, will continually move your reference FULL up 1-day to the merged incremental's time point and add a new incremental... essentially walking the whole chains time line up one day at a time. It works very well for what you need.
...and Gary, if you feel energetic... Use the Macrium menu item (Backup/Backup Templates) and create your own TEMPLATE with your own reference...
First, the only reason I try to keep up with Macrium is because the free version is what I recommend to friends and family. I personally use other brands for my data. I know free version 6 is coming soon. When I check the free website, the large comparison box shows what features are currently included with each build. One item confuses me. It states that all versions except the free one support SSD TRIM. How can any imaging program support TRIM? SSD geometry, yes. TRIM, I don't understand. (And BTW, do all versions of Macrium support SSD geometry?)
I may be misunderstanding but I think this is what you want. Go to the "Backup" menu and select "Backup Templates" Click on the down arrow beside "Grandfather, Father, Son" and then select "Incremental Backup Set" Adjust the settings to your pref as pointed out in attachment 1 Select Full (center of window)(see attachment 1 again) and then hit "Edit Selection", adjust settings as to your pref (see attachment 2) - if you want 2 fulls in the 28 days then select "Every 2nd Monday" or whatever Select Incremental (center of window) and then hit "Edit Selection", adjust settings as to your pref (see attachment 3) Hit OK This should give you a full every 2 weeks, 14 days of incrementals tailing each full, and if you select to keep your fulls for 1 month you should be golden. I think this is what you are after (at least I hope it is).
Han, when watching this function actually perform (during a RAPID DATA RESTORE), Macrium issues TRIM commands to the volume it will be restoring to prior to the operation beginning. The only process this can be is that it's TRIMming all unAllocated disk space (using TRIM in the WinPE build) prior to beginning the operation... which really doesn't accomplish very much at all. If, on a FULL restore, they were deleting all the partitions, recreating such (empty) prior to restoration... then a TRIM would be useful. Even a TRIM operation after the restoration would be somewhat useful cleaning up old data blocks on the disk that weren't being changed upon the restore... but I don't see that happening during the process. Macrium would be the only ones who could tell you exactly what's going on but it looks like only a pre-TRIM is happening upon restoration. As far as alignment is concerned, Macrium will restore exactly what was imaged unless told to do otherwise. It offers basically 2-options upon restoration... CHS alignment (Cylinder/Head/Sector - LBA 64 basically for HDDs) and 1mB alignment (2048 512-byte sectors - in use since Vista, basically for SSDs). This existed in v5 and v6 (don't know about earlier versions).
BG, that's one of the methods he could use if he wanted 28 discrete days of access. The problem with that is he'd need to maintain at least (3) successive FULLs (14-days apart) and 26 INCREMENTALS to insure he has full access to 28-days... doable but a lli'l extensive as far as storage is concerned. His statement about the absolute requirement to access 28-days is much more efficiently handled by a FOREVER INCREMENTAL set to 27-backups.
Understood, but he did say he wanted 2 fulls and forever incremenatls will only give him one, thus my suggestion. I guess it will depend on how much storage space he has, or wants to buy.
Thanks everyone. For now, until I figure things out more, I decided for my system disk to go with forever inc.l with 30 incl, 1 done each day. Then I used the saqme scheme for my important data partition. This should give me 30 days of access and i used synthetic backup option so it will roll forward after reaching 30 days. Then, flor less important data partitions that change mostly on a weekly basis I used forever inc. with 8 inc. 1 done each week and synthetic backup checkied. I will try this for a while and see how it goes. I appreciate everyone's help. BG, sometime when I can I will look into those options down the road. But, I found the other options a little more streamlined after Froggie gave his good input. Thanks again. Gary
Hi - I want to do something similar and have followed your instructions but I don't see "Incremental Backup Set" in the drop down box. It does list Differential Set and the rest. Is this a template previously constructed, or have I misinterpreted your instructions? Thanks
David, it should be listed right under the "Differential Backup Set" unless someone's deleted the TEMPLATE. ...and this is v6 you're using right?
Frog and bgood, I'm completely stumped! I want incrementals forever. I thought that is the schedule I'd selected a few weeks ago after upgrading to v6 but that may not be the case. However, no matter how many times I try to set it to incrementals forever, it defaults back to Gfather, Father, Son. I've tried Reset, Edit and just starting all over again. Perhaps I need to format the backup drive and then set the schedule again, which would merely be one daily incremental at 7:00AM. I don't even care how many incrementals before it merges with the full, at least within reason, like at least 10! What am I doing wrong or is MR haunted? Thank you!
I'm not sure what you have on hand as far as other images are concerned (what you've already taken) but I'd do the following... Instead of trying to modify an existing scheduling template for your needs... create your own as follows... Use menu item "Backup/Backup Templates"... Screen #1: <click> on "New Template." Give it a name ("Ratchet Rocks" ) and a description (required). Screen #2: Use the "Add schedule" option to create your 1st (or only) schedule, select "Incremental" then set the parameters for this incremental schedule. If you need more than just (1) per day, use the "Add schedule" feature again and keep adding (2 per day, 1 per hour, whatever) the ones you would like. After last schedule addition, unCHECK "Full" and "Differential" under retention rules, set the incremental "Keep" # to however many snapshots (other than your baseline) you'd like to have in your crawling protection window of time, make sure the DropDown next to that is set to "Backups" then CHECK the "Create a synthetic full if possible" option, then hit OK. At this point you now have a new TEMPLATE to reference which will create the number of snapshots you've pre-programmed in your template schedule and provide for a crawling protection umbrella. Now get rid of all accumulated backups associated with the DEFINITION file you wanna use. This is best done by using the Macrium UI, going to the RESTORE TAB and selecting your oldest FULL snapshot, using the "Other actions" option and select the "Delete file" option. This will present a window showing your FULL and all its dependents at which point you may delete them all at the same time (they'll all be CHECKed)... CLOSE the eventual completion window. If you have other FULLs in that location, you'll need to clear them out until your target folder for the DEF file is empty. Once emptied, you may select your DEF file (under BACKUP TAB) and use the "Edit" toolbar item (a pencil) for editing your definition. The first screen should remain the same as you've had all along then hit NEXT, on the 2nd screen use the dropdown and select YOUR NEW TEMPLATE, then NEXT to see the summary of the new backup definition then FINISH. What you've just done is nothing more than create your own TEMPLATE and modify your existing backup DEFINITION to use that template... pretty simple really. You've also cleared out your existing snaps so that the new scheduling definition doesn't get confused by possible existing multiple FULLs or other types of snaps you may have laying around. I do this because when you configure for FOREVER INCREMENTALS, it will only migrate the reference FULL if it's not ambiguous (more than one FULL). This is a clean way to start things. You don't have to create the reference FULL (in the now empty folder) unless you want to... the 1st incremental in the chain will create the necessary FULL if it's not already there. You can do it manually if you'd like by selecting your DEF file then using the "Run the backup definition" tool on the toolbar, <click> on FULL and let 'er rip. This really isn't necessary unless you feel you need the image NOW. Lemme know if you have a problem with this...
Ratchet... ...and when you're done with setting up the above, select your BACKUP ATB in the left hand pane then the "Scheduled Backups" in the right-hand pane and make sure that only the scheduled items yoiu have in your new TEMPLATE are set up in that scheduler... you may have some leftovers from before.
Froggie/BG - thanks for the replies. No definitely not there, but I have discovered in the template window there is a reset button which will re-furnish the missing default templates, and the incremental set is back. Obviously I must have deleted it at some stage. What I am wanting to do is to create a full system image and then incremental, but I want the full image to remain untouched/not to include any subsequent merging of incrementals. I can't see that there is anyway to protect the original. Any pointers please.
