When I click "Browse for a backup file..." or "Browse for an image file..." I can see all backup files. The paths in "Folders to search" are all correct. However, I do not get that backup file list in MR.
Sigh... MR is too complicated for me. I think I should go back to Iperius Backup, which I had been using for years without any problems before I switched to MR. Edit: I only updated my computer to Win 10 1903 two days ago. Maybe this has got something to do with it. Dunno.
May be isolated incidents, and / or have 'workarounds', but these two posts incline me to hold off on build 4440. Build 4325 is working, no need to immediately upgrade as @TheRollbackFrog has pointed out. The trouble with an unreliable update to an imaging program is that it jeopardises restoring .
You're right. Anyway, I created a full backup file a couple of minutes ago and successfully restored it via an MR USB flash drive. Yes, it did work but not being able to see my backup files in MR is a bit annoying. Who knows what other "glitches" there are in build 4440. This is certainly not the kind of backup program that I need. What I want is something that is both user-friendly and reliable. Aomei Backupper, maybe? Hm...
If you’re brand new to MR, you have indeed joined the fray at a less than ideal time, as Macrium has had some bumps in their recent releases. In general though it’s quite reliable and straightforward, and I’ve seen several posts on the Macrium forums from people coming from Acronis, AOMEI, EaseUS, and others saying that they find Reflect easier, faster, more reliable on OS partition restores, etc. Rapid Delta Restore is a particularly killer feature if you have a paid version, and Reflect also has some nice touches for people who use BitLocker. I would encourage you to stick with Reflect a bit longer, since I believe you’ll end up liking it whenever Macrium fixes whatever is going on at the moment, but if course I realize there are no second chances with first impressions.
Thanks for your encouraging words, @jphughan MR is fast, yes, IF it works. Easy to use? Not really. Going through all the options is a daunting task for a "backup newbee". Reliable? No, I'm not even able to restore files and folders from within MR because they are not listed under "File and Folder Restore". Not being able to select a backup file here is not what I call "reliable". And yes, I have the paid version because I want to be able to restore files and folders in a hassle-free way, a feature that doesn't work here at all. I will give MR a couple of weeks to fix the bugs or whatever it is that needs to fixed before I go back to my old backup solution (Iperius Backup). Anyway, I do appreciate your help very much. PS: At least I'm not the only one who is currently struggling with this bug (or whatever it is): https://forum.macrium.com/FindPost30766.aspx
Yes I saw that thread; I'm quite active on the Macrium forums under the same username. As I said, you've started using Reflect at a rather inopportune time. As for ease of use, I suppose I should have said, "easy to use given its capability and flexibility". If you want to maximize ease of use, it's hard to beat the one-click, set-it-and-forget-it nature of Windows File History. Reflect isn't really designed to compete with solutions like that. It is vastly more powerful, flexible, etc. And while good interface design can maintain ease of use on such applications to a certain extent, that's only to a certain extent. Someone on the Macrium forums once quoted an adage that if you make something idiot-proof, then only an idiot will use it. I think there's a degree of truth to that. I personally would characterize Reflect as targeted toward power users and light enterprise. There are other solutions better suited to those who are willing to give up capability for more simplicity, and still others for large enterprises. But if you're a backup newbie who came to Reflect because you'd LIKE to leverage some of the extra capabilities over whatever you were using in the past and you find it a bit daunting, I would encourage you to look through the Reflect User Guide, available as a website here and also also available as a PDF download via a link in the upper-left corner. Macrium's documentation is far better than most, and I would argue that when it comes to your backups, time spent learning how to use the application to the best of its capabilities and to the closest service of your needs and goals is time well spent. And while again I grant that you've had a bad first impression, I will say that the reasons I've stuck with Reflect and have been so active on the Macrium forums is because a) Macrium staff are active on those forums, and they are the actual developers (including Nick who also happens to be the founder and CEO), as opposed to support reps with minimal technical training, and b) they are very responsive to enhancement requests from users. I personally have had several of my enhancement requests make their way into Reflect. It's the only application I use that has that level of support and responsiveness from that level of staff.
But is anyone else here having this issue: 'backups not being listed in the Restore area in the Rescue Media environment'? Or have others updates been without issue?
Yes there are reports of this on the Macrium forums, including reports of backups not being listed in full Windows and not being able to be restored even if the user manually browses to them. See the various posts in this thread.
Thanks for the advice. This is exactly how I usually do as a part of my backup strategy (along with using FreeFileSync to echo sync my selected folders to my external HDD).
Reply from Macrium on the issue of backups not appearing in Reflect. Chris just posted in the above-linked thread, "I can reproduce the issue by running Macrium Reflect with English settings on an OS with German region but the issue does not reproduce when running Reflect with German language settings on an OS with German region set." He also included instructions for how to change Reflect's language setting to match the OS. It will be interesting to see if this also addresses this issue for @Buddel here and for the OP of that Macrium thread (Stefan). The OP's Reflect screenshots indicate he's using a Reflect in German, and he found that 7.2.4440 WinRE works fine, but 7.2.4440 WinPE 10 doesn't show backups. Maybe WinRE is using a German language kernel to match the installed Windows OS while the WinPE 10 base WIM downloaded from Microsoft is always in English? Of course Stefan also noted that previous Reflect releases didn't have this problem, so even if the issue is limited to cases of language mismatches between Reflect and the OS, hopefully Macrium can develop an update that doesn't cause this issue. But in the meantime there may at least be a workaround.
It does. I was also using the German version. Things are back to normal now. Thank you very much for your help, @jphughan .
Definitely interesting posts on that issue about language with the new version! I haven't yet upgraded, usually I do want to wait! Would be interesting to see whether the same issue would happen on Win 7 Dutch using MR Home Edition English while using WinPE 5. I sort of expect it would happen there too. Hmm, maybe maybe I'll test it if time permits ...
It is interesting indeed, but also a bit annoying. It would never occurred to me that Ctrl+Shift+L would be the solution to this problem. I have just made a note of it for later reference.
OK, I don't seem to see those issue(s), I did some little tests. System: Win 7 Pro 64-bit Dutch. Hardware: here Macrium Reflect Home Edition English, using PE 5.0 (64-bit) (UEFI). MR upgraded from version 7.2.4325 to 7.2.4440 Upgraded by first manually downloading reflectdlfull.exe and then letting that one download v7.2.4440_reflect_home_setup_x64.exe Checksums of v7.2.4440_reflect_home_setup_x64.exe : MD5 - F32201FE54FD4172B396F0A1BAD41DC9 SHA-160 - FDF2C7502994951837E2D473E0D5A8D904198D53 SHA-256 - 6FB570BE9A534FE389D1EAF24C19E784197DB810B6A49CEDA442132E80C0933F I manually installed MR 7.2.4440 over the top. Reboots. I manually let the new MR 7.2.4440 make the new MR boot recovery environment (this takes some time as new WIM things need to be downloaded and installed). Then I manually let the new MR 7.2.4440 make a new CD recovery media. In the whole process I did several reboots. Before I had downloaded/installed 7.2.4440 I had made a full backup-image of the C-drive to the D-drive, using 7.2.4325. After installing 7.2.4440 (and making the boot menu recovery environment and the CD recovery media) I did the same, now using 7.2.4440. As said, I did a lot of reboots, and I did several on-demand scanning with Eset. OK, now I had the whole MR 7.2.4440 thing installed. And I had made a new backup-image of the C-drive to the D-drive. Now came the question: can I see my backup-images from within the new MR version? That was the problem with which other users were confronted, if I understood it all right. Well, the answer is: Yes. No problems with seeing my backup-images (of the C-drive on the D-drive). No problems whether using the boot menu recovery environment or using the CD recovery media. Actually I have now put back the backup image (using the CD 7.2.4440 recovery media) which I made just before upgrading MR. So, I am now back at MR 7.2.4325. I don't know why others are having problems with 7.2.4440 and I am not (as it seems in this little testing).
@FanJ, maybe there's something special about German. A while back, version 7.1.2697 was released with this as the sole change: Crash When accessing the MIG settings dialog German language customers could experience a program crash when accessing the Macrium Image Guardian settings dialog. This has been resolved. And prior to that, 7.1.2607 had this as the sole change: MIG settings dialog resource issue Systems with non UK English Windows locale would incorrectly see the MIG dialog in German. This has been resolved. I can't help but think of Mark Twain's highly amusing essay, "The Awful German Language": https://www.cs.utah.edu/~gback/awfgrmlg.html
I have updated to v.4440 and everything looked fine. I did a restore with v.4440 which was flawless, although when the computer rebooted with the restored image and I ejected my USB backup drive (Toshiba HD 1 TB) I got a BSOD. I then restored an image with v.4325 and ejecting the same backup drive was successful without any BSOD. I'm quite happy to stay with v. 4325, although I have reported the problem on the Macrium forum...
May i ask you if bsod occurred before the reset of the motherboard or after? I mean, when have you removed the usb?
I'm not sure I understand your question, but I will try to describe again what happened. I updated to v.4440 from v.4325 without any problems. I created several incremental backups (with v.4440) and everything was fine. Today I decided to restore an image using v.4440 to uninstall a program I was testing. To restore, I plug in a USB hard drive with the images, and let Macrium do the operation. When the computer rebooted using v.4440 everything looked fine except when I unplugged the USB hard drive that provided the image it created instantly a BSOD. The same operation done with v. 4325 didn't have any problems. I'm happy with v.4325, and I still think Macrium is arguably one of the best imaging programs out there, I was able to try the new update, had a problem, and the same program brought me back to a safe configuration... Impressive.
Haven't posted in a long while, mainly due to having no issues. But sometime in the last couple of weeks or so my restores started taking a long time (45m or longer, when they used to take 6-10m). I'm using the current paid version. I don't know when the underlying issue began because it's been well over a month or more since I did a restore. My system is the same and nothing I know of should be causing this significant slowdown of restores. At first I thought it was because there were many incrementals so I deleted them and started a new set. Still takes way longer than it used to (30m or so with one full and two incrementals). Does anyone have a suggestion? Is this a common thing with recent updates? I'm really troubled to find my quick restores are no longer quick. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Haven't seen this reported as a common thing. Is it possible Rapid Delta Restore is no longer being used whereas it would have been before? Even if you have it enabled, that just allows Reflect to use it if it determines that it's feasible to do so. If you have the logs from your restore operations (which Reflect does create after performing a restore, at least in some cases), then see if the restore job included a "Looking for changes" step. If it didn't, then RDR wasn't used. If you're restoring using Rescue Media because you're restoring your OS partition, also make sure your Rescue Media contains a paid version of Reflect, otherwise it can't use RDR. The reason I mention this is that there have been cases where upgrading to Windows 10 1903 causes Reflect to lose its activation status and revert to Reflect Free. That's fixed by re-entering your activation key, but if you created Rescue Media while Reflect was in Free mode, then you wouldn't have RDR available in your Rescue environment.
Thanks! The image below seems to confirm that on my C partition a full restore was done, whereas on other partitions there was indeed the "looking for changes" you mentioned. Any suggestions on how to resolve this? Uninstall and reinstall Reflect? Thanks (I will be in a meeting for a few hours and unable to reply to any new posts.)
