Macrium Reflect

Discussion in 'backup, imaging & disk mgmt' started by Stigg, Nov 23, 2013.

  1. paulderdash

    paulderdash Registered Member

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    Legacy interface also has advantage of offering F8 Advanced Boot Options (Safe Mode, etc.).
     
  2. korben

    korben Registered Member

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    I have set it to the Legacy and as a result of this trickery, I can now see the loader very easily - thank you!
     
  3. bgoodman4

    bgoodman4 Registered Member

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    I have a new Win 10 PC with a SSD drive and I am running the most recent version of MR. I wanted to try a new program so I did a snap shot of the PC which took 1 and 1/2 min to complete. I then installed the program and decided after about 1/2 hour that I was not happy with it so I decided to do a restore. I am a bit confused by what happened. Its likely that I am just not used to the process with SSDs and Win 10 or it may be that something is off.

    The first thing that has me wondering is the statement "Bit Locker Removal Restore" is this correct? Does MR 7 remove Bit Locker and then restore it every time a restore is done? If so why would it do this rather than simply restoring the things that have changed since the last image?

    Then the program indicated that a full copy was being performed. Why would it do a full copy restore if not much had changed since the last image (I have the settings set to full, differential, incremental, the snap took about 1.5 min to make so I assume it was an incremental snap, why would MR do a full copy restore under these circumstances?). I should mention that the restore took just over 25 min to complete. Seems like a long time given what was done during the time between the snap and the restore,,,,,,or am I missing something here.

    Finally, the program indicated the following, " SSD Target Detected Attempting TRIM Operation", There was no indication if TRIM was successful or not. Is this normal?

    Thanks in advance for any clarification/information about the above.
     
  4. Osaban

    Osaban Registered Member

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    I don't know about Bit Locker, but I often use MR in the same way as you described, and a restore after a recent incremental lasts between 2- 3 minutes. 25 minutes seems too long even for a full restoration. If I were you I would try again and see if you get the same results. There are 2 experts of MR who might chime in and give you some good advice...
     
  5. camelia

    camelia Registered Member

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    Thank you very much for your help

    Last question for now, I know it can be the dumbest question in all this threat, How do I know if a PC computer has WIFI?

    Due the pandemic my brother bought to an old lady a PC, it is not HP, Dell or a branded computer, We thought the computer was broken to be honest (he only wanted to help that old lady) but the computer works, the computer was running a non legit Windows, some drivers were easy to find but not all of them, I have installed a legit Windows 8.1 License, but since not all the drivers are installed yet, How do I know if this computer comes with Wifi? any trick to find out?

    Thanks
    Camelia
     
    Last edited: Sep 20, 2020
  6. Osaban

    Osaban Registered Member

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    Last edited by a moderator: Sep 20, 2020
  7. camelia

    camelia Registered Member

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  8. Osaban

    Osaban Registered Member

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    You are welcome.
     
  9. stapp

    stapp Global Moderator

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    You could always just use a wifi dongle instead. I use one in a PC I have in a spare room upstairs. Works well.
     
  10. camelia

    camelia Registered Member

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    Thank you but I am ok without WIFI in this computer, :)

    Camelia
     
  11. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    A USB wifi dongle is only $5 and they work fine. Usually, drivers aren't needed.
     
  12. jphughan

    jphughan Registered Member

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    Macrium has a great KB article about how restoring with BitLocker works here. In terms of why a removal restore was performed, if you staged the restore from within Windows and had it reboot into Rescue to perform the operation, then Rescue might not have had the necessary BitLocker auto-unlock file to unlock the target partition in Rescue, in which case Reflect wouldn't have been able to perform a "BitLocker Live Restore". That requires that the target be unlocked at the time of the restore, in addition to all requirements for performing a Rapid Delta Restore being met as well, such as the volume can't currently be smaller than it was at the time of the backup that you're restoring.

    I always set up my OS restores by booting into Rescue first. I don't see the point of staging the restore with Windows just to reboot into somewhere else to perform it; I figure that since the work is the same, I may as well just stage the restore in the environment where it will occur in the first place. That way I can always verify that my target partitions are unlocked before setting up the restore. I choose NOT to store auto-unlock files in my Rescue Media, so I use manage-bde to manually unlock them.

    Also, are you using a paid version of Reflect? Reflect Free doesn't support Rapid Delta Restore, and therefore doesn't support BitLocker Live Restore.

    I think the SSD Trim log presentation is expected. I guess it's a bit unintuitive not to have an explicit success confirmation, but a TRIM operation is a pretty simple and quick thing to have happen, so if you see that Reflect attempted it, then I believe it always worked. But in fairness, I don't know what Reflect would differently if the SSD threw some sort of error there.
     
    Last edited: Sep 20, 2020
  13. bgoodman4

    bgoodman4 Registered Member

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    Thank you for your reply jphughan, I am using a paid version of MR, I will try a restore again and see what happens, also, I will do the restore from the boot media in the future, seems reasonable to do it that way.

    EDIT: just tried a new restore and had exactly the same results as posted about above. I did this from within Windows but will try again from the rescue media. The image restored to was created at 8:30 this morning and the only use the PC was used for was to check e-mails and visit this forum. Full Copy seems way too excessive for this amount of usage.
     
    Last edited: Sep 20, 2020
  14. jphughan

    jphughan Registered Member

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    Fyi, you don't have to perform the full restore to see what Reflect ends up doing. The type of BitLocker restore that will be performed is indicated by the icon that appears in the first step of the restore wizard if you drag and drop the source partition to the corresponding destination partition -- as shown in that linked KB article. Or you can read the text-based activity summary at the end of the wizard (before you click Finish) to see the type of BitLocker Restore that will be performed. If however you're finding that staging the restore in Windows causes Reflect to indicate that a Live Restore will be performed, but it ends up actually performing a Removal Restore, that would further suggest that the issue is that the volume isn't unlocked when Reflect reboots into Rescue. In that case, Reflect can see that a Live Restore is feasible based on the conditions within Windows, but those conditions change after rebooting to Rescue. And again, in that case setting everything up in Rescue would likely resolve this.
     
  15. bgoodman4

    bgoodman4 Registered Member

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    Just spent about 3 hours with DELL tech support trying to enable booting from the rescue media (flash drive). The only way we could get it to work was to disable Bit Locker and with the rescue media plugged into the PC (not a hub) tap F12 as the PC booted. This gave me the opportunity to select the rescue media (flash drive) and all went as expected from there.

    I then booted into the PC and using the MR7 online restore (rather than using the flash drive) I did a restore to a restore point that I had just created. Time to restore was about 2.5 minutes. No TRIM message, no full copy, no problems.

    Thanks for the input jphughan, I do appreciate it,,,,,but your last post is way over my head. Bottom line though is everything seems workable now,,,and I know I can access the rescue media if need be. The only thing is that Bit Locker is now off and is going to stay off. Nothing on my PC that is that critical to protect that I need it.
     
  16. jphughan

    jphughan Registered Member

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    Hmm, I probably could have gotten your PC booting from Rescue Media in a lot less than 3 hours. But you absolutely should NOT have had to disable BitLocker to boot from a USB drive. Pressing F12 during boot invokes a firmware-level one-time boot menu. At that point, the PC hasn't even attempted to boot from the hard drive, so whether or not it's encrypted (or even has any data at all) is absolutely, completely irrelevant to the ability to use that F12 boot menu to boot from another flash drive. If Dell Support told you that booting from a flash drive was impossible with a BitLockered system, then they were wrong -- it would hardly be the first time. If you're inclined to use BitLocker, I would try enabling it again -- back up your new Recovery Key!! -- and try booting from a flash drive again.

    In any case, it's good that you've at least figured out how to boot from a flash drive, because that's definitely something you want to know how to do BEFORE a crisis strikes and you NEED to do it.
     
  17. bgoodman4

    bgoodman4 Registered Member

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    Dell support did not tell me it was impossible, in fact the tech tried to get it to work but we were not able to change the boot order and it was after 3 hours that we finally got all the parameters in a row to do 1 time boots from the flash drive. Part of the problem was that I had the flash drive plugged into a USB hub. With it there it would not show up in the boot menu. Once I plugged it directly into the laptop it showed up right away. Any way, I am comfortable without bit locker and will leave it off. I will use the flash drive for emergency's and unless times to restore take a long time to do from within Win I will use live restores for testing etc. Simpler is def better.
     
  18. jphughan

    jphughan Registered Member

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    The whole point of the F12 one-time boot menu is that it allows you to boot from another device without having to muck around with the boot order in the BIOS Setup interface. But yes, some combinations of systems and hubs do seem to block booting from attached devices. Glad you've got a solution that's workable for you though.
     
  19. paulderdash

    paulderdash Registered Member

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    @bgoodman4 I was going to respond yesterday but decided against it.

    I also had Bitlocker by default on a new Dell XPS 8th gen Win 10 Home, but IIRC even eventually traced problems with the Win 10 v1903 cumulative update down to this.

    Just configured a new Lenovo ThinkBook 10th gen Win 10 Pro which also came with this, so just disabled it (consequently also Device Encryption).
    I don't really need it, and don't want any BS&T, or surprises, especially with image restores.
     
  20. bgoodman4

    bgoodman4 Registered Member

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    We could not even get to a screen where we could change the boot order. MS has certainly made things more difficult.
     
  21. bgoodman4

    bgoodman4 Registered Member

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    Surprises are def not something to be desired, especially as you say with restores. I am surprised though that MR does not take care of the Bit Locker issue. Maybe in some future version of MR it will. Do you know if the developers have commented on this situation?
     
  22. jphughan

    jphughan Registered Member

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    That's not Microsoft. The way to change the boot order is to press F2 during startup to enter the BIOS Setup. Or press F12 to access the one-time boot menu and then choose the "BIOS Setup" option that's also available there. Given how fast modern systems boot, I suggest that you start tapping the desired key immediately when booting begins, not waiting until the display wakes up. Microsoft has nothing to do with those functions because those are firmware-level functions that become available before the system even tries to boot an OS.

    But again, you do not need to change the "permanent" boot order just to boot off a USB drive. Just access the one-time boot menu to choose to boot from that device when you want to do so. That also happens to be much faster overall, since otherwise you have to go into the BIOS Setup, change the boot order, save changes, reboot to allow booting from USB, and then when you're done go back into BIOS Setup, change the boot order back, and save changes. That's all on top of that fact that due to the way UEFI booting works, temporarily attached USB devices don't even always show up in the "permanent" boot order anyway. That's been the case on every Dell system I've worked with that is set up for UEFI mode.
     
  23. bgoodman4

    bgoodman4 Registered Member

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    We did that multiple times to no avail. No boot order selection interface was ever available. I tried to do the F2 thing a couple of times before I called support, the tech tried walking me through it numerous times even though I told him it did not work. It was rather frustrating for both of us to spend 3 hours and not be able to change the boot order.
     
  24. paulderdash

    paulderdash Registered Member

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    Never had an issue accessing boot menu via F12 on this Dell. (I do it at least every time I update Terabyte BootIt-UEFI from a UFD).
    :thumb:
     
  25. jphughan

    jphughan Registered Member

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    Did you try Fn+F2 or Fn+F12 in case your keyboard defaults to using the F keys as multimedia keys and that behavior is in effect even at boot (even though it shouldn't be)?
     
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