Macrium Reflect

Your basic backup design is fine... just make sure the most important images (ones you will need to recover from) are not on the same physical disk as your System is... a failure of that disk will leave you flailing in the wind when you need that information the most.

 

Do you not use Reflect's F & F backup because you solely rely on the imaging or do you use alternative means? I only ask because I have not yet backed up any F & Fs with Reflect and am still using dear old Karen's Replicator.

 

As long as you understand that successful imaging on RBrx Systems is a bit unusual, and takes some additional effort to make it work properly.

I, personally, have dropped RBrx completely from my own personal toolbox. I won't get into all the reasons, suffice it to say that my reasons are sound and I have learned to successfully live without it and all its risks.

I decided to use Macrium Reflect, and its RAPID DATA RESTORE capability, as my primary imaging solution as well as my snapshot capability. Although its snapshot capability is slower than RBrx, it is waaaaaay faster than any other imaging solution when trying to do the same type of operation. Since I do a lot of snapshotting, AND I need an imaging solution to protect my System anyway... Reflect fit the bill nicely as far as capability is concerned.

I use a simple GFS (Grandfather/Father/Son) backup scheme to completely protect my System against any horrible situation that may arise. Incorporated in that scheme is the ability to take any number of manual snapshots (unscheduled incrementals) to support the short time testing I always seem to be doing.

This imaging System works very well for me, mainly 'cause I don't mind waiting 1-2 min. for a recent snapshot restoration as compared to RBrx requiring appx. 1-min. to do the same.

 

TRF,

I dont use Rollback with Imaging software, I meant I use either Rollback or Imaging software.

Macrium incremental backup/restore speed is excellent compared to other Imaging software But incremental is not in free version.

For now I have installed & trying EaseUS Todo Backup Workstation 10 (latest version) on my Win 10 64 Pro (anniversary build fully updated) with incremental scheduled every 2 hours (testing purpose) And will see how it goes...

Thank You for your time & support.

Regards

 

Cache, my non-use of Reflect's F&F capability is not a reflection on Reflect (ahhhh... a play on words ). I use a very speedy file replicator solution (Bvckup2) with DELTA copying capability. It's easy to manage and just works perfectly for my situation.

Reflect's F&F capability works very well for those that I know are using it.

 

"The USB 3.0 DataTraveler Ultimate GT will be out in February 2017"

staggering 2TB behemoth

http://www.theverge.com/circuitbrea...er-ultimate-gt-worlds-largest-flash-drive-2tb

 

Thanks for the info TRF. Bvuckup2 sounds like a good solution but before giving it a try, I will try out Reflect's F&F capabilities first.

 

Well, the Kingston HyperX Preditor 1tB runs aroud $2,700 so my guess for this one is that the price will also be a "behemoth" as well.

 

How many incremental backups are safe? The manual recommends to produce not too many incremental backups. But what is 'too many'? I have now a full backup of my system with succeding 12 incremental backups. Is this safe when it comes to restore my system partition? It's a notebook with 16 GB RAM and Core i7 3rd generation cpu.

 

NatZONE, there is no magic number. If all you have are a FULL and tons of Incrementals, if any of those Incrementals goes bad (and you need to ask yourself, how many of your other files have gone bad over time), the backup from that point on is useless. This is because an Incremental is based on whatever the previous image taken was.

If you want to be a little more careful (and again I ask... how many of your other files have gone bad over time), produce a DIFFERENTIAL periodically and eliminate excessive Incrementals through your retention settings. When that DIFF is produced, the following INC will be based on that file, not previous INCs.

You need to ask yourself how far back you really need to go, safely, to restore your System... that will determine the best approach.

I decided that no more than 2-mo was good enough for me... and that was for my System configuration, not my DATA, my DATA is handled differently. To do that I said make a FULL every 4-weeks, a DIFF weekly and an INC daily. Through retention I said keep 2-FULLS and 7-days worth of INCs. the child DIFFs get removed automatically when their parent FULL is deleted.

That's just one example...

 

"Well, the Kingston HyperX Preditor 1tB runs aroud $2,700 so my guess for this one is that the price will also be a "behemoth" as well."

wow that is amazing. I won't be buying one of those for a few years. my 256 gig 3.0 ultra stick to work well enough to bring my system back.

 

The better guess on the "street price" of the new 2tB stick will probably be about $1000.

Do you know how kewl of a machine I can build for $1000? 'Nuff said.

...but, as with all toys, if ya gotta have one, ya just gotta have one.

 

Thx a lot, that's a particularized answer I'm able to make use of it.

 

The other thing is, this is a USB 3.1 device getting great speed (appx. 1100mB/sec) but needing USB-C to get that speed. Plug it anywhere else and it's just a USB2 or USB3 device with all their limitations... and a whole lotta storage.

 

If you have any other questions on schemes, etc., always feel free to ask. This Forum is really good with useful answers.

 

I do image backups with Macrium daily (except on Saturday & Sunday) and I image to an external HD. I, then, backup that external HD weekly to a secondary external HD.

I use Mozy to backup my files (documents, pictures, music) daily to the cloud. I also use Bvckup 2 to backup my files daily to my first external HD (which again gets backed up to my second external HD).

I'm a little anal about backing up files and images....

 

. Very elegant little program.

Pretty much the same, also pretty anal , except images are taken every day on two computers, and backed up to temporarily connected secondary external HD, also daily, along with Bvckup 2 delta of user directory.
Also different cloud ... I like CrashPlan, but now using iDrive - a cheaper solution for > one computer. Also just started trying out Zoolz Cloud Archive Home - got a lifetime license for next to nothing - which uses Amazon Glacier back-end. Seems a bit slow, but cloud backup is a last resort for me only so I don't mind. Cloud has saved me once though when I had a corrupted Macrium image (bad drive) on a third computer, with no secondary backup. All this a bit OT, but you can't have enough backups!

Thanks for that specific example though, RF. Will refine my GFS to 'replicate' that, as well as try your shortcut method for snapshots, need to find that again in this thread ...

 

Pretty simple, actually. Re-do all your schedules (FULL, DIFF & INC) for the same day & time (you don't have to do this... it's just easier to manage)... Reflect takes care of any collisions very nicely. Set the FULL sched for 4-weeks, the DIFF sched for weekly and the INC sched for daily. Then FULL Retention = 2 (Backups), DIFF Retention unCHECKed, INC Retention = 7 (Days), unCHECK "Run the purge before backup" and you're in.

If 7-days of INCs, including all MANUAL INCs during that time is enough, the above covers it... if you need more days, add 'em. The "unCHECK" setting above will make sure you'll always have at least 2-FULLs before cleanup occurs... otherwise you may dump a good backup before the next good one is created, a bit risky to not do it this way. DIFFs are automatically cleaned up when their parent FULL is deleted.

MANUAL Snapshot Setup
----------------------------
Reflect open, Backup TAB selected. SELECT (single <click>) the Definition you'd like to use for your MANUAL Snapshot (same as your GFS will work fine). In the ToolBar above your Definitions, SELECT next to last icon on the right, labeled as "Create a DeskTop ShortCut of the selected file." A "Create DeskTop ShortCut" window will open. SELECT "Prompt" in the "Backup type" DropDown and enter your ShortCut label in the "Target" field, then <click> OK. You're done.

On your DeskTop will be a ShortCut with the label you used to create it. I specified PROMPT above 'cause that will create a ShortCut that will allow you to create any image type you wish (my snapshots are always INCs) and the most important thing is you may COMMENT those snapshots if you wish (only available with the PROMPT option, I always do for Manual snapshots so I know what the heck I did it for). Hit FINISH and your snapshot is on the way. It really can't be much simpler than that.

Good luck!

 

Thanks (once again) for the detailed instructions, all in one post! Will be useful to many others too I am sure.

Edit: Done!

 

If an interrupted ongoing backup by system restart/shutdown/hard shutdown remain in backup folder (incomplete/damaged image) But the bad image doesn't show up in image list in the GUI, does it affect restore operation?

And can you use Shadow Defender with Macrium?

 

if you have a damaged incremental, you can only restore from the one before, or earlier, as anything after the break invalidates the later part of the chain. deleting the damaged and any subsequent later incremental will allow you to continue the chain, but with missing links.

you could, if you have the disk space, use differentials, as they save any changes from the initial FULL, not from the last differential, each differential is independent of the others, but NOT from the last full. each gets bigger and bigger than the last tho, until you do a new full & do some clean-up. doing a chain of fulls is a tad more bulletproof, but again takes up a lot of space. the full with subsequent incrementals is more space efficient but a bit more vulnerable to breakage. that's why i back up to a secondary HD in my pc, then sync that to an external usb3 passport drive... and why i do a loop with two fulls and 6 intervening incrementals.

not familiar with how shadow defender works with any uncommitted sandboxed info. if it stores it in memory, macrium will not back it up. if the sandboxed stuff is stored on disk & remains thru a restart of your PC, it should be OK and get backed up. maybe a shadow defender user can comment?