Macrium Reflect

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

  1. aldist

    aldist Registered Member

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    Got it, thanks. Replaced the old taskbar.exe v7.1 in boot.wim with the new taskbar.exe v7.2, the "Make Screenshot" button appeared and works.
     
  2. newbino

    newbino Registered Member

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    I have never really used viBoot (Win 10 x64, Macrium Home 7.3), can those who do share what they use it for?
    I don't seem to be able to come up with a good user case, save for testing Macrium's images
     
  3. jphughan

    jphughan Registered Member

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    If you capture an image of a PC you're retiring and later realize you need to get some data out of it that's more complex than pulling a file, such as data that has to be exported from an app installed on that system, then you can boot that image in viBoot to get the job done.

    You could also use it as a way to test something new on "your" system without having to do it on your literal system. That way if things go sideways, you can just scrap the VM rather than having to deal with the hassle of restoring your real system to get back to normal.

    But the main use case described on Macrium's site is as a temporary disaster recovery or business continuity solution for enterprises. If you've got Reflect backups of physical servers and one of them goes down, you can start up that server's image as a VM somewhere else to have that server back online until you can actually bring up the original server again, which depending on circumstances might take a few days if replacement parts aren't readily available. And then when the original server is ready to come back into service, you can make a new Reflect image based on the viBoot VM you've been running in the meantime and restore that onto the server.
     
    Last edited: Jan 5, 2021
  4. technorama

    technorama Registered Member

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    Does a Macrium Reflect Home license survive if my boot disk crashes oder even my complete PC? Obviously in these cases it is to late to deregister the software on the old Disk/PC in order to reinstall it on the new disk/PC. What defines the one PC that a license is bound to?
     
  5. jphughan

    jphughan Registered Member

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    It’s one physical PC or VM at a time. I’m not sure how PCs that have dual boot using multiple Windows OSes are handled. But in your scenario you’d just contact Macrium and they can deactivate your original license on their end.

    Rescue Media created by paid versions is only supposed to be used on PCs that have a license for that edition or better assigned to them, except for special licenses such as Technicians Kit and Deployment Kit. And there’s a temporary exception for cases where you’re using Rescue Media on a new PC for the purpose of restoring another PC’s image as part of a permanent migration from that previous PC to the new one.
     
  6. technorama

    technorama Registered Member

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    Yes, I know this answer. But what is "one PC"? In my case I changed from a boot partition on a 1TB SSD with another data partition to a two drive system: one smaller 500GB boot drive and the former two partition SSD now only as a data drive. Is this still "one PC" or more exact the same PC?
    My backup PC only has one SSD. When this crashes and I give the PC a new SSD is it a different PC or still the old one?
     
  7. TheRollbackFrog

    TheRollbackFrog Imaging Specialist

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    Disk configurations (multiples/types) usually do not change the license "fingerprint" of the System. Mainboards, massive network changes, new OS, etc. usually do change the System fingerprint.
     
  8. jphughan

    jphughan Registered Member

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    I’m not sure which specific hardware changes might cause Reflect to fall out of activation, but falling out of activation and violating the actual license policy are not the same thing. Reflect isn’t permanently licensed to one specific PC. You can move it to another one was long as you remove it from the one that currently has the license — and therefore any types of hardware changes you might make within your current PC would still mean you’d be entitled to keep using Reflect on that PC, because you’re still only using it on one PC at a time.

    If you’re asking when you should proactively remove your Reflect license before making a certain type of change, I’m not sure. But my suggestion would be never to remove the license unless you’ll be setting up a brand new PC from scratch, meaning WITHOUT restoring an image that contains your paid Reflect installation onto it. The reason I say that is that I’m pretty sure that even if you restore an image captured on one PC onto a completely different one, the Reflect license stays active — but I’m not 100% sure. But whatever you do, if you ever encounter an issue with activation as a result of the changes, then just reach out to Macrium Support and they’ll help you. As long as you don’t have multiple Reflect installations you’re trying to keep simultaneously, you’ll be fine.
     
  9. paulderdash

    paulderdash Registered Member

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    FWIW I have 3 Windows 10 instances on one laptop, and two on another (booted separately via TeraByte BootIt-UEFI).
    One license per machine.
    Macrium Reflect Home (paid) working on each instance on both PCs.
     
    Last edited: Jan 11, 2021
  10. technorama

    technorama Registered Member

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    "Reflect isn’t permanently licensed to one specific PC. You can move it to another one was long as you remove it from the one that currently has the license"
    The question is, whether I "can" technically or whether I am entitled to do so. In case of Hasleo for instance the "specific PC" is the SSD where I first installed th program. If this is gone the license is gone too. And even cannot be retrieved by Hasleo because of the built in machine coding.
    "Proactive removal" is not the main problem. This is of course possible with a lot of software. But in case of a crash this obviously this is never possible. I have software with several licenses where I simply can log in to my account and cancle any or all of my bought licenses and start activating anew.
     
  11. technorama

    technorama Registered Member

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    "Macrium Reflect Home (paid) working on each instance on both PCs."
    This is what would have expected too: All different bootable instances reside on the same physical hardware, a big drive in a single PC, therefore Macrium works on all. But if change the boot drive, then it is not the same PC anymore. At least this is one of the possible definitions of one PC.
     
  12. aldist

    aldist Registered Member

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    Technically, a WinPE stick will work on any computer, but legally you are not allowed to do so.
     
  13. technorama

    technorama Registered Member

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    I have several WinPE sticks (an live Linux distros too). But what I want is a bootable complete Windows installation. Traditionally you have that only, when you attach a cloned system drive internally because Microsoft does not support external boots (with the exemption for a few To-Go-Sticks) whereas macOS always did.
     
  14. jphughan

    jphughan Registered Member

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    You are entitled to do so, and in most cases you can technically accomplish this yourself. If you end up in a situation where you CANNOT accomplish this yourself, then contact Macrium Support and they will be able to help you get your license activated on the new PC. There have been multiple confirmations on the Macrium forum from users who went through the exact scenario you described where their PC unexpectedly failed and they couldn’t initially get the Reflect license they already owned activated on the replacement PC. After working with Macrium Support, they were good to go.

    I would argue that an application that has a license agreement saying its users are entitled to move their license to another PC but that also allows its users to end up a situation where that cannot be achieved is not living up to their end of their own license agreement, unless their license agreement specifically says, “Licenses that are not properly deactivated before a system failure or theft that you couldn’t have anticipated are forfeited, because we think that’s a reasonable position to take.” If you say that the license isn’t transferable at all, then fair enough. But if the agreement says that the license IS transferable, then it should be possible to transfer it. And I have not heard of a single case of someone being unable to transfer a license after working with Macrium Support. Being able to log into a license management portal and do it yourself would be nice, but that isn’t available today.
     
    Last edited: Jan 11, 2021
  15. technorama

    technorama Registered Member

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    I will probably give Macrium a try now. I do not like its layout, its selections even their naming schema for backups. But is is reliable, has a wonderful Rescue Media and it seems to be the only software to do a reliable delta cloning. Thanks for your thorough informations.
     
  16. jphughan

    jphughan Registered Member

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    At least some of those things will be changing when V8 is released. But I really don’t recommend relying on file names for backups. I advise people to create separate folders/subfolders for each definition file (rather than having multiple definition file send their backups to a common folder), and at that point you shouldn’t have to worry about the file names much because you can just use the folder name. If you want the date of the backup in the file name, that isn’t feasible because all backups in a given set share a common name with the only difference being the numbers at the end. V8 will add support for having a date in the name, but even that will just be the date that the Full was created.
     
  17. technorama

    technorama Registered Member

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    This is a good advice and most backup programs that I use do it exactly that way anyway.
     
  18. Acadia

    Acadia Registered Member

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    I am not having a problem with Macrium but I have a simple (I hope) usage question.

    Within the program I know how to delete an old backup. But when creating a new backup, when I am choosing the Destination, the name of the old backup remains in the list marked Folder; I cannot figure out how to delete old names in that Folder list to backups that no longer exist.

    Thanks, Acadia
     
  19. aldist

    aldist Registered Member

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    If I understood the question correctly, then so
    mr.png
     
  20. jphughan

    jphughan Registered Member

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    The "Folders to search" list that Aldist showed controls the folders that Reflect searches for backups in order to populate the list of backups under its Restore tab. If you're referring to the contents of the Folder dropdown list in the Destination section of the wizard, that's called an MRU (Most Recently Used) list, rather like the dropdown in the Windows "Run" dialog or even the "Recent Files" lists in various applications. There may be a way to purge items from that by editing Reflect's registry entries, but I haven't looked into it. But that dropdown list is purely for convenience. They would NOT be used as an actual destination for your job unless you select them either in the Destination field or add them to the "Alternative destinations" list for that job. But the Folder dropdown only shows folder paths, not names of specific backup files.

    If you're referring to the NAME field showing the name of the previous backup, that field is populated by the last value you entered the last time you used the wizard. So if you don't want to use the default Image ID naming, then you'll have to change that each time or else accept Reflect's default collision avoidance naming pattern. But I'd recommend just sticking with Image ID-based naming. You also don't have to step through that wizard each time you want a new backup at all. Step through the wizard once, choose to save the job as an XML file, and run subsequent backups by calling that definition file from the Backup Definition Files tab.
     
    Last edited: Jan 13, 2021
  21. Acadia

    Acadia Registered Member

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    Thanks. With the info you two gave me I was able to figure it out.
    Acadia
     
  22. guest

    guest Guest

    Macrium Reflect v7.3.5550 Released (January 18, 2021)
    Download
    Changelog
    Bug fixes and Improvements v7.3.5550 - 18th January 2021
    • Macrium Task Scheduler
      • Under Edit Defaults > Scheduler, we've added a checkbox to prevent the system from sleeping while scheduled scripts are running. Sleep is always prevented while the backup itself is being taken, but this checkbox will also prevent sleep while the rest of the script is running.
      • When waking the computer from sleep, or booting up when Windows Fast Boot is enabled, missed scheduled backups would start running immediately without giving the user time to log in and view the Postpone Backup pop-up message. This has been resolved.
      • On some desktops, the 'Start the task only if the computer is on AC power' option would prevent scheduled backups from running even though no battery was present. This has been resolved.
    • Rescue Media
      If the ProgramData folder and the Reflect installation folder were on different drives, then Reflect would be unable to download Windows PE. This has been resolved.
    • Backup_running
      A failed backup, due to power failure or removing the target drive, could cause the next backup to fail by detecting, but not deleting, the 'backup_running' mutex file. This has been resolved.
    • viBoot
      viBoot can now handle images of system disk with 4K sectors.
    • Retention Purge
      "Run purge before backup" could cause the current set Full backup to be purged when running a Diff or Inc. This has been resolved.
    • MIG - Server Plus
      SQL backups to MIG protected network shares is now supported.
    • Various
      Various minor fixes and changes to improve Macrium Reflect.
     
  23. Osaban

    Osaban Registered Member

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    Thanks Mood, updated to version 7.3.5550 and new bootable rescue media. Backup and restore worked with no issues :thumb:
     
  24. jimminy

    jimminy Registered Member

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    Will I be OK if I don't re-create my old rescue media? They were made with v7.3.5321.
     
  25. aldist

    aldist Registered Member

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    Everything will be fine, WinPE does not need to be recreated.
     
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