Macrium Reflect

Got it! Thanks.

 

Yes, thanks as well.

 

Thanks pandlouk - quality advice and suggestions. Appreciate your feedback. That helps.

 

Thanks "Frog" - you know much more than I about this - I respect your opinion and your comments. I appreciate the attitude of you and others in this forum.

 

Well things just get more interesting, I did PC maintenance last night because since installing MR V6 one of my programs is opening very slowly (my music player Media Monkey). Part of the regime is disk defrag so I expected todays snap to be a big one, it was not. What is interesting is that the read portion of the snap was considerably slower than the write (as you can see from the attached, highlighted area). My snaps are scheduled to run at 5:30 am,,,,I wonder if times may be off because AX64 might be doing a merge at this time.

BTW Media Monkey is still taking a long time to launch.

 

I did the upgrade over the top, and remembering the boot option, tried it and it worked.

 

I read somewhere a long time ago to always buy more than you think you'll ever need when it comes to computer related things. Eventually you'll need it.

 

But that would be... easy!

 

Could someone please discuss the pros/cons of using the boot menu vs. a rescue CD/DVD vs. a rescue flash drive? I'm old school (and old) and still only use a rescue CD/DVD. But, I also don't do very many restores. If I ever want/need to do a restore, I just pop in my CD/DVD. What is the benefit of either the boot menu or using a rescue flash drive?

 

You are welcome.

Panagiotis

 

Alex, the only thing offered by the BOOT menu/local HD(SS)D is some convenience (the running WinPE image is system-based) and some speed (to load the environment, not in doing the restore itself). If you don't already use a BOOT menu, the LOCAL BOOT install will now offer you a slightly inconvenient BOOT menu you'll need to wait for to get to your OS... some people don't like that.

If, as you say, you don't restore very much, an external UFD with the Macrium ISO on it (faster) or just the normal CD/DVD ISO will suffice just fine. Even if you fire off an automatic SYSTEM-based restoration from your Windows-based Macrium, BOOTing from an external WinPE (UFD or CD/DVD) works just fine... and as expected (in an automatic way).

 

Convenience. You can initiate the restore from within the OS, macrium will issue a reboot, boot to recovery, restore and boot again in the restored environment.
http://knowledgebase.macrium.com/display/KNOW/Restoring a system image
Pros: speed and no need to add another booting device.
Cons: none (except from the rare occasion were the macrium boot entry or winpe container is corrupted; then you'll have to use a bootable media to restore).

Panagiotis

 

I have a problem with the boot menu on Windows 8.1 I set it to start automatically after 5 sec, the count goes down to zero but nothing happens unless I click
on the the Win 8.1 Icon. Tried it at 10 and 30 sec but same result. Anyone else have this problem?
Thanks

 

Hi John! To echo Panagiotis and many others on this forum which seem hell bent on helping users (if we can) ... you are very welcome!

 

Maybe the default operating system is not set and the loader waits for user input.
Check here http://www.eightforums.com/tutorial...hoose-default-os-run-startup-windows-8-a.html on how to fix it.

Panagiotis

 

Hi BG... sorry I'm late with this. The timings involved with your ATTO testing seems pretty normal for the devices involved, although your internal HDD looks as though it's from an older generation of HDDs (I don't know how old your system is).

As far as commenting on what you're observing in your backups, I'm a little at a loss to completely explain what's happening, especially as it relates to USB3 use... and most of what I have to say will only be supposition (a guess as we say out here in TechieLand ). The way Macrium works when doing an incremental is it needs to see the current FileSystem on your internal HDD and the FileSystem last recorded in the previous Incremental/Full image. Since that image was on a USB2 device, the comparison of the two file systems in order to determine what's needed to be backed up will take some time to do at those slower USB2 speeds (they MAX out, if you're lucky, at about 32+gB/sec). Then following that comparison, the new 2gB image needs to be written to that same slower USB2 device which will also take quite a it of time. And it looks like your not using the VERIFY option for the snapshot, which would really add some extensive time to this process.

I've never done this with a USB2 device but if I have some time I'll crank up a few options and see what I experience locally for a similar configuration. Wish I could add more insight to what's really going on there... sorry.

 

Thanks for the tip Panagiotis. I checked and the operating system is set correctly,so this is not the problem...

 

Here are some short notes that might be useful to new Macrium Reflect (MR) users.

1. Backups are said to "match" if they have exactly the same partitions or exactly the same File and Folder selection criteria.

2. Partitions are identified using the unique Disk ID stored in sector 0 of the disk and the Partition sector offset.

3. One Full and zero or more Differential and Incremental backups constitutes a backup Set. Only matching backups can be in the same Set.

4. A user creates a "Backup Definition File" through a single wizard that can be initiated in different ways. One way is by clicking "Image selected disks on this computer" under the Backup tab on the main screen.

5. A Backup Definition File (maybe better called a Backup Job) is one of MR's basic concepts. Once a Job is created, the user can then create a backup by executing the Job with a single parameter (Full, Differential, or Incremental) in one of three ways:

a) having the Job run itself at times and with parameters defined in the Job (scheduling). (The Job must be saved at the end of the creation wizard.)

b) executing the Job immediately at the end of the creation wizard

c) saving the Job at the end of the creation wizard and later executing it with a parameter (Full, Differential, or Incremental) whenever and as many times as he wishes.​

6. Specifying schedules and Retention rules are optional and you would do neither if you wanted to simply create and execute a one-time backup at the end of the creation wizard.

7. The flexibility and precision with which a Job can schedule itself seems complete. A helpful hint is to create complex schemes that can't be defined with one schedule with several schedules. For instance, create a Full on the first Monday of each month and a Differential on each subsequent Monday of each month (four) by creating five schedules.

8. A Job's Retention (consolation) rules seem to permit the user to specify which old backups to delete in virtually any way he could want. The consolidation is part of the Job definition and is executed immediately before or after the backup, as specified in the Job.

9. "Create a Synthetic Full if possible" means that when purging Incremental backups, if the backup set only contains a Full backup followed by Incremental backups; then this option causes the Full backup to be "rolled forward" to create a Synthetic Full backup.

10. A new Differential is automatically linked to the most recent matching Full backup, when one exists. A new Incremental is linked to the most recent matching Full, Differential, or Incremental, when one exists. When no matching Full backup exists, a new Full is created instead of the Differential or Incremental.

11. Unless you change a Job's specified partitions or File and Folder selection criteria, a Job will always create matching backups.

12. A backup's identity containing in part the backup's set identity is stored in its file and not just in its default file name.

13. Disk backups are directly supported in contrast to some other products which back up disks by backing up the disk's partitions separately in different files. One file is more cohesive in regards to restores, and also usually requires fewer expensive Blu Ray disks (for long-term durability).

14. Use one folder for all of your MR 6 backups. Putting everything in one folder enables MR 6 to leverage existing backups and optimize execution time and disk space probably better than you can. Exceptions may apply.

15. Use the 'Restore' tab in MR to view your images to mount and/or restore rather than Windows File Explorer.

16. A backup set Type is either "Disk Image" or "File and Folder".

17. When a Differential is deleted, all Incremental backups dependent on it are also deleted.

18. When one or more Incremental backups are deleted and leave dependent Incrementals, the deleted Incrementals are merged with oldest dependent incremental to create a new incremental backup to maintain the integrity of the backup set.

 

Thanks Mr Frog,,,,just to clarify,,,,its a USB 3 device thats plugged into a USB 2 port. This is the same port and device that AX64 uses.

 

You are welcome.
Can you post a screenshot of your msconfig/boot and bcdedit?
You could also try to disable "fast startup" under power options/system settings.
http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/6320-fast-startup-turn-off-windows-8-a.html

Panagiotis

 

Thank you so much Panagiotis, disabling the fast start up solved my problem.

 

Peter--could you please elaborate on "it makes the restores from windows automatic"?

I think what you are saying is that if I have the boot menu enabled/installed, I can do a restore from within windows and the system will reboot automatically and do the restore with no real input from me and then boot back into windows? If so, that sounds like what I've been able to do with AX64; is that correct?

P.S. From the link Pandlouk posted (http://knowledgebase.macrium.com/display/KNOW/Restoring a system image) I see that is exactly what you can do. Reminds me again of what I have been doing with AX64....

 

correct i have actually already seen this happen. only once though but in the end it still worked very well. where ax64 would have failed and left me with no choice but to try to go back to an older snapshot / image.