Macrium Reflect

Hey Great! Thanks Froggie

 

Wait.. So if I as a home user purchase the workstation edition then I am technically not allowed to use it for personal/home use?

 

A big difference between Standard and Professional is the restore to different hardware (Redeploy feature). I wonder if they'll make that part of Home now given the previous comments. We'll see.

EDIT: My question was answered from the link to the user guide.

"Macrium ReDeploy is now included all editions of Macrium Reflect except for the Free Edition."

 

I think you'll find that whatever the DIFFs between the new HOME and WORKSTATION version are, you probably won't need any of the WS enhancements for your home system. Other than that, I really don't know...

 

Panagiotis, although they're purposely keeping that date/time info the same at the moment, they really have no use for it in the long term. As a result, they will be removing that date/time stamp freezing in the next release, allowing the file system to do its normal thing. This should solve my backup File Replication issues.

It appears the image file merging functionality is also non-destructive and fairly robust. This means that should a merge be aborted for any reason, e.g, a network dropout mid consolidation or your PC shutting down before the consolidation has completed, the next time Reflect opens the target folder, the backup set is automatically and quickly reverted to its pre-merge state. This enables continuation of the same backup set with no loss of data or backup chain integrity. In my mind, this is a very big deal... and a huge confidence booster (for me anyway).

This product is just getting better and better... thanks again, Macrium!

 

Be aware... this is a WORK IN PROGRESS (some parts missing) but useful all the same.

 

Wow! These animations are worth their weight in GOLD... a really quick way to learn about v6 image scheduling capability!

My testing method... SYNTHETIC FULL
Pete's testing method... INCREMENTAL MERGE
...and roll your own... CUSTOM RETENTION PLAN

Give them a quick look (a few seconds each)... well worth it.

 

Pete, you are correct, of course... but that's not what I'm using the INCREMENTAL plan for. I'm running a custom retention plan (similar to the one shown) that gets me my important file backup... that's where needed historical data will come from. The SYNTHETIC FULL plan is nothing more than an "umbrella" that moves along with me throughout the work week. It's only purpose is to protect me from baddies, faulty restores, anything that may affect my system in a negative way... that's why it's running on an hourly basis across a moving 1-1/2 work day window (24 Incrementals). The two serve totally different purposes. I may be tuning the umbrella (running in TARANTULA MODE) as time goes on. That's what's really great about this Macrium release... you do what you wanna do!

 

Re the mount issue,,,,,,thanks guys,,,,sound simple enough.

 

Hummmm, I actually did not get a headache while reading this,,,,,product does indeed look to be pretty darn awesome.

 

Ummm...fellas...when you're using the terms "mount" and "unmount", what are you referring to (using Macrium and AX64)?

 

That was interesting,,,,,I can see that a clear understanding of whats going on with each method is very important when you set up your schedule. You may think you are covered for a particular problem when in fact you are not.

 

Mounting in normal terms means creating a virtual drive that reflects the state of the system (as seen in Win EXP) at the time of the snap. So if you deleted a file on Wednesday after your snap was created, and on Thursday you realized that you needed that file, you could mount the snap as virtual drive x, navigate to the file in question, copy it and paste it into your c: drive. Once done you no longer need virtual drive x so you close it down (unmount). The difference with AX64 was that all snaps were always available via the browser, so, in effect, simply clicking on a snap in AX64s browser acted as if you had mounted that snap. It was real easy to find which snap you needed because all you had to do was click on another snap and instantly you had access to the state of the drive at that time.

If you think about it Isso was on the road to a brilliant app,,,,,,too bad it was derailed.

IMO Macrium V6 is not for folks new to imaging as the complexity of the program will tend to overwhelm them.

My problem now is first I have to learn the ins and outs of MRv6 which I am def willing to do, then I have to convince the folks I talked into buying AX64 into buying something else, then I will have to set the program up for them, and still, when they have a problem, I will have to hold their hands as they restore. ........... I am not really looking forward to this.

 

How would they know?

 

Let's not speculate too much on licensing. The information is not out. However, judging from the preliminary guide I saw, the Home edition will suit me quite well.

 

I've been silently following this thread and conducting my own tests. I am impressed with Reflect v6 on multiple fronts.

They dramatically increased the speed of checking the disk and scanning for changes. It takes quite a bit longer under v5. Now it is significantly faster.

The new scheduling feature is absolutely stellar. With v5, I had a mixture of scripts and batch files to do space management. Now it's built in.

I tested the rapid restore a few times using a USB 3.0 drive. Used to take me 2hrs to restore a backup and now it's down to 10mins in the worst case.

There's more, but this is one of those rare cases where an upgrade really means an upgrade. I am totally sold in moving my v5 licenses. What v6 is offering by far justifies the price.

 

It seems that Macrium has caught up with other imaging programs in this respect.

 

But that was really unnecessary in AX64, I never did understand the need for the ability to mount in AX64, I don't think there was any advantage to doing so over just using the browser and clicking on a snap,,,,,,sorry, this is getting off topic.

 

Froggie, thanks for the great link but can you elaborate for an old mind like mine what the actual benefit would be of using synthetic full over incremental merge or vice versa? I watched this twice and can't get my head around it. In both cases you start with a full backup of the same data. Assuming we move 10 days into the future, your complete restore in either case would be the same, right? You would use the full backup plus all incrementals, so for that scenario I don't see the difference. If I wanted to go back to a different time in the chain, in both cases I would have the same rolling incrementals of 5 days or so- the only difference I can see is that in full I retain my original system state. However Starting Date plus 1 would be gone in both cases? Or is there more?

 

In video 1, the full backup moves ahead in time as incrementals are merged. The full backup isn't a real full backup at this point. It is a synthetic full since it is a full with merged incrementals.

In video 2, the full backup remains unchanged as incrementals are merged. The full backup remains a real full backup.

There's no right or wrong. It all depends on your level of trust of a synthetic backup.