Macrium Reflect

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

  1. jimminy

    jimminy Registered Member

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    Hello all. I have a problem I hope someone can help with.

    I use macrium reflect to make backup images on external drives. And I have usb bootable flash drives created using macrium with the win RE option. I have a couple of SATA to USB 3 converter cables. And this is where the problems come. One of the cables works, but it does not support UASP, so I really want to use the other one, for my macrium image files, but can't, and here's why:

    The problem converter cable is a QICENT AD20U3. It looks identical to ORICO 20UTS, and I believe qicent is actually an orico company, so these are probably the same device.

    This QICENT cable works perfectly in win 10 pro and macrium running on this win 10 machine, but if I boot the macrium rescue USB, it is not visible in the macrium rescue environment ,so I can't select an image file. It's as if the drive doesn't exist or not plugged it. Macrium rescue can see all the internal drives, and any other external usb drives present, but never the drive on this particular Qicent usb converter.

    I have tried rebuilding and adding all sorts of driver files to the macrium rescue build. I even used double driver to ferret out any drivers that seem to be associated with the drive on the converter cable, since it works fine in a normal win 10 session. No luck yet :(

    If anyone has any ideas, I would sure appreciate any guidance.

    Thanks
     
  2. jphughan

    jphughan Registered Member

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    If you don't need WiFi support in the Rescue environment, open Rescue Media Builder, click Advanced > Choose Base WIM, and use WinPE 10 rather than WinRE. You'll be prompted to download the WinPE 10 package from Microsoft for your first build, but that's a one-time thing.
     
  3. jimminy

    jimminy Registered Member

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    @jphughan

    Thanks jp. I don't need wifi. I already tried the win pe option several weeks ago, but ran into what seems a common problem. Macrium will do the down load (very slowly), but near the end, it keeps wanting another 205k byte (or some tiny value, I forget) file. No matter how many times I try it, it never actually gets this precious file. From searching, I found lots of others had this same problem, but I never found any that were solved. I even downloaded the latest version of reflect to be sure it wasn't a fixed bug, even though the version I had running was less than a year old. Same result.

    Here is something I thought about, but it seems far fetched: I do have macrium installed on a second (larger) hard drive used for programs and data storage, not on the main "C:" drive where windows 10 is installed. (I did this to place less storage on the SSD). Could this have cause the PE download problem?

    Thanks for any thought you might have.
     
  4. TheRollbackFrog

    TheRollbackFrog Imaging Specialist

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    The REFLECT installation location should have little to do with the download failure you're describing.
     
  5. jphughan

    jphughan Registered Member

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    When this behavior has been reported, to my knowledge it's always been third-party antivirus that is immediately deleting a file that Rescue Media Builder is trying to download, so Reflect tries to download it again, and the cycle repeats. The Rescue package does include some utilities that can be used for malicious purposes, such as those that will update your bootloader files, which is presumably why AV tries to delete them -- but there are also legitimate uses for such tools. And even more annoyingly, AV does not always advertise that it is taking action like this even when it is, which of course makes it more exciting to troubleshoot problems it causes.

    One workaround that occasionally works is to use the Reflect Download Agent application to download the WinPE 10 zip file. Download the agent, click Options, and choose to download only WinPE 10. If all goes well, you'll have a zip file. Then go to Rescue Media Builder, and when it prompts you to download additional files, click Browse instead and point it at your zip file.
     
  6. jimminy

    jimminy Registered Member

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    Thanks JP.
    The only antivirus is plain vanilla windows 10. No others are installed. Would it help to kill win 10 security/antivirus?

    How do I obtain the special Reflect Download Agent application to then download the WinPE 10 zip file. ??

    I am using the latest (I think) , but it's only free version of reflect so I'm not even allowed on their forum, so maybe Reflect Download Agent is not allowed for me?

    I'm not dead in the water yet, only treading deep water, but I haven't been able to get the magic win pe download

    I'm using a plain dell optiplex 790 i5 2400. Nothing else, no video card, or any other peripherals. Plain vanilla windows 10 pro installation.
    No other antivirus at all.

    Thanks for helping.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Sep 25, 2020
  7. jimminy

    jimminy Registered Member

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    SUCCESS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    I'm following up in case others may have the same problem.
    @jphughan Not only THIRD-party antivirus, but standard window 10 security apparently interferes.

    Here is what I did: I turned off everything I could find in windows security ... all antivirus options, all firewall options ... EVERYTHING I could find. (So, I don't know which setting is the magic bullet) Then I ran macrium , and built a new USB flash boot drive, specifying win PE rather than RE. This time it downloaded PE without a hitch ( and faster too).

    I then booted from this newly made flash usb drive, and macrium can now see both of my adapter cables (even the qicent) . I only loaded image files and ran the verify option, but since it can see the drives, and can do a verify, I'm assuming it would be able to do a restore?

    Last question ... I won't have to download again to make new flash drives, right? I looked for the files macrium downloaded, but don't see any gigabyte size files on the drive G: which is set in macrium to use when building. Do I need to do anything more?

    Thanks everyone for the help!
     
  8. aldist

    aldist Registered Member

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    https://updates.macrium.com/reflect/v7/ReflectDLFull.exe or https://updates.macrium.com/reflect/v7/ReflectDLHF.exe
    or you can manually rename to ReflectDLHF.exe or ReflectDLHT.exe or ReflectDLBF.exe with the same result.
    ScreenShot_273.png
     
    Last edited: Sep 26, 2020
  9. aldist

    aldist Registered Member

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    When downloading, you chose the option to "install", not "save", so your pe10_1709x64.zip was unpacked (installed) into
    C:\ProgramData\Macrium\Reflect\Windows AIK + Windows Kits (if you have v7.2.4539 or lower) or C:\Boot\macrium\Windows AIK + Windows Kits (if you have v7.2.4557 or above). Windows AIK + Windows Kits = 480mB.
    When creating new flash drives, you don't have to download it again.
     
  10. jimminy

    jimminy Registered Member

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    Thanks @aldist, I never found the win PE image file, and don't recall a choice for either install or save. I think the download was 900 some odd MB (probably split into lots of files after download and extraction?). But I was able to make another win PE 10 flash drive with no downloads required, so macrium must have saved those files automatically. Perhaps it realized I'm not too savvy :)

    I have settings to use the G: drive for building the rescue media, and there are lots of macrium created sub directories there, but at least things seem to be working now, though I've not actually tried a restore operation.

    I'm pretty happy to have gotten all this great help here for quickly solving two problems at the same time! Especially valuable to me, since us free version users are not allowed on Macrium's forum, but they are most gracious to provide us with the best backup software I've ever found.

    THANKS to everyone that helped me. I bookmarked this thread so I can read and learn more, but I promise not to be a pest asking too many dummy questions. I'm going back to L&L mode now ...Lurk and learn.

    MANY THANKS !!
     
  11. paulderdash

    paulderdash Registered Member

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    I have one very frustrating problem with scheduled backups on Macrium which I have now encountered on three different laptops, and lived with for some time ... I may be doing something completely daft, but wondering if anyone has encountered same?

    Example: I set up e.g. a differential schedule to run at 02:00 AM (e.g. Full weekly on Saturday at 02:00 AM, Differential every day at 02:00 AM) and the full will run on Friday and Saturday at 02:00! (I have encountered same with GFS schedules).

    I have tried deleting and re-adding the schedule. Also editing to run Full weekly at 02:00 AM on Sat, and Differential weekly on Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri and Sun only at 02:00 AM.

    It is possible that I initially set it up to run Full on Friday at 02:00, then edited it to a Saturday, and there is some residual registry entry?
    But seems unlikely on all machines ... if so, pray tell me how to remove it!

    And equally unlikely it could be a system clock issue on all machines?
     
  12. jphughan

    jphughan Registered Member

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    This is a Windows Task Scheduler bug. I've had the same problem with my monthly Full from the very first time I set up schedules. I first set it to run on the 1st day of every month. My schedule ended up running on that day and ALSO on the last day of the previous month. I switched that schedule to the first Friday of the month. And that schedule ran on that day and also the last Thursday of the preceding month. Every time, Windows Task Scheduler showed the correct recurrence configuration, but if I checked between the unexpected run and the normally scheduled run, the "Last Run Time" showed as that unexpected day that made no sense based on the specified recurrence. This persisted even after completely deleting and recreating schedules, and I ended up having to switch to using a retention policy based on time rather than number of backups because those extra Fulls were causing other backups to be purged early.

    The good news is that Macrium's internal scheduler that I've been beta testing has fixed this for me, so reprieve may be imminent for others as well. :)
     
    Last edited: Oct 9, 2020
  13. lucd

    lucd Registered Member

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    Hi I need a programme to create an image with file and stuff, so to redeploy fully working identical OS from USB if needed
    will Macrium free do that for me or I need the home versions to have files (docs, music, videos and so on)
    any similar free program or buying the macrium home is a good idea?
     
    Last edited: Oct 9, 2020
  14. TheRollbackFrog

    TheRollbackFrog Imaging Specialist

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    Macrium REFLECT FREE does not include the reDeploy feature.
     
  15. jphughan

    jphughan Registered Member

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    If you're referring to Macrium's feature called ReDeploy that is designed to allow restoring an image onto a DIFFERENT system than you originally captured it from, then as TheRollfbackFrog said, that feature is only in the paid versions. However, if you just want to make an image backup of your system to a USB device so that you can restore it onto the SAME system if you ever have a problem, then Reflect Free can do that. Just make image backups, and then if you ever need to restore individual files, you can use the "browse" feature to mount the backup as a virtual drive in order to extract only the files/folders you want to restore instead of restoring the entire image. Reflect Free can do that.
     
  16. aldist

    aldist Registered Member

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    After sad events :)
    it may not be worth spending the money right away. Start with Free, there is plenty of it for the home user. In addition, with Free, I had to restore the image to different hardware more than once, and there were no problems. After recovery, I additionally install several drivers on different hardware.
    Only if the system crashes into a blue screen after restoring on a different hardware at boot, find a way to add a different driver, but this is a rare case.
    ReDeploy is an option for adding drivers to the restored system; it is practically unnecessary for a home user.
     
  17. paulderdash

    paulderdash Registered Member

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    I can't tell you how relieved I am that you have also experienced this, @jphughan (hence all the emoticons :D) - and that I don't have to book myself into a mental institution! :argh:
    It has been driving me nuts, and I wondered if it was a bug somewhere. :eek::cautious: But I thought I must be making some obvious error. :doubt::isay:

    Astounding that MS has not fixed (even detected?) this bug. o_O Hasn't always been there, it was maybe only introduced in the last year or so?
    But it could be due some interaction - the way Macrium uses Task Scheduler, as I haven't experienced this issue with TeraByte IFW.

    I also had to do change retention policy to counter early purges. :rolleyes:

    Looking forward to Macrium's own scheduler! :thumb:
     
    Last edited: Oct 10, 2020
  18. jphughan

    jphughan Registered Member

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    o_O
    Glad you avoided the mental institution, but just imagine what it was like for ME being the first person to see/report it! :p

    I only picked up on this issue because I just happened to look at my backups on the 1st of the month before that day’s backup was going to run and wondered why I didn’t have more backups. Then I checked the Reflect log and saw that last night’s backup was a Full, not even an “Incremental specified but...” type of Full. Then I saw Task Scheduler where my “1st of the month” task had a Last Run Time on the 31st of the month. o_O And then it happened again the next month and AGAIN the following month even after I changed it to “1st Friday”.

    As for Windows Task Scheduler, there seem to be some longstanding bugs, particularly around DST transitions where afterward a task can end up firing at the scheduled time and also an hour before/after, or not fire at all anymore ever! On the one hand, you would think, “How hard can it be to have something run at a certain time?” But on the other hand, I've increasingly realized that human timekeeping practices must be an absolute nightmare to implement programmatically. It's just bizarre when you list them together:
    • Not all months have the same number of days
    • February doesn't have the same number of days each year
    • The determination of whether a given year is a leap year is rather convoluted (every year divisible by 4, except when also divisible by 100, EXCEPT when ALSO divisible by 400)
    • The whole concept of time zones, not all of which are even offset on an hour (e.g. UTC +1:30)
    • DST, with different regions switching on different days in the year, some regions not switching at all, and some regions over the years having changed when they switch or whether they switch at all.
    • Leap seconds (although I'd be surprised if you had to deal with this one, since even Windows ignores them)
    So I’m somewhat sympathetic. Somewhat. :p
     
  19. lucd

    lucd Registered Member

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    :) thankfully restoring a full windows with everything onboard is a question of few hours manually
    about Macrium: so it will restore files on disk? I have this question because I've seen free vs home chart, and home had its file recovery, but on the other hand a restoring software without restoring actual files would be very weird so it must something else..
     
    Last edited: Oct 11, 2020
  20. aldist

    aldist Registered Member

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    Macrium Free works great, will restore your system with programs, files, documents, activation and everything that was in partition C. You don't have to look for another software for this, Macrium Reflect is great, and Macrium Free too. And it won't take hours, but 5-7-10 minutes. Works in Windows 10, 8.1, 7.
     
  21. jphughan

    jphughan Registered Member

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    The “file backup/recovery” item in the paid version charts refers to File & Folder backups. That’s the ability to back up specific folders rather than making image backups of entire partitions/disks. The restore wizard for that type of backup also includes an option to restore any custom NTFS permissions that originally existed, which is useful for scenarios like file servers where custom permissions might be defined throughout a hierarchy. But even the free version allows you to mount an image backup to extract individual files/folders out of it. You just have to back up at least an entire partition in the first place.

    Restoring a partition/disk restores the whole partition/disk. You can’t choose to restore only portions of it. However, to your point about restores normally being a few hours, paid Reflect’s inclusion of Rapid Delta Restore means that restore times in typical scenarios can often be a few minutes instead of a few hours. There’s more info about that feature already available, but it is an absolutely killer feature for people who need to restore often.

    I’d encourage you to just start using Reflect Free, possibly in a VM if you don’t want to experiment with your actual system. Some questions are more quickly and comprehensively answered by first-hand experience. :)
     
  22. lucd

    lucd Registered Member

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    Thanks, I am convinced:)
     
    Last edited: Oct 13, 2020
  23. puff-m-d

    puff-m-d Registered Member

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    Hello,

    A new update has been released, version 7.3.5281.0...
    Homepage - Release Notes
     
  24. Osaban

    Osaban Registered Member

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    Yes, just updated to 7.3.5281 with no problems. Incremental backup + restore + bootable rescue media worked perfectly.
    EDIT: Notwithstanding the good results with the incremental, creating a full backup will produce a bluescreen when ejecting the USB drive on my machine, apparently a CBT driver bug. It's better to wait for a further update correcting this issue.
     
    Last edited: Oct 14, 2020
  25. Buddel

    Buddel Registered Member

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    Thanks. Just got it via internal updater. I had to pause Kaspersky protection to enable the update to be installed.
     
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