I tried this with two UFDs one of which being a STORE N GO UFD. Contrary to the Macrium web site, a MBR and partition on the UFD were not necessary.
At least the CD I burnt boots and works, although I haven't actually tried a restore with Macrium yet. Thanks again, Mr. Frog. That is very reassuring to hear.
Got my stick working too now - with going through the whole procedure as per the instructions though my stick did not like the label and is now only called (F - I tried twice very carefully to enter the "Macrium WinPE" but got only illegal label at that point. I guess since it booted fine, I am ok now - the cd also works
Yep. When I by new flash drives, yes I have to do that to make them useful for Recovery Environment work. It's real easy, you just have to be sure you pick the right device And yes if you look at the UFD you will see all the macrium files, but it just won't boot
Peter, Macrium states that the creation of the stick is non invasive, so theoretically you can still have other files and programs like installation files or AV portable on this stick. Is that ok or do you prefer to have the stick reserved to one purpose? I suppose you cannot have two different boot media on the same stick.
Once the stick is initialized yes. But i believe the clean comand wipes the disk. I wouldn't try it with a disk that has valuable data on it.
Diskpart "clean" zeroes sectors in the first and last MiB of the drive. In a MBR disk the boot code and partition table are gone. In a GPT disk the primary and secondary GUID partition tables are gone. The primary GUID partition table contains the Protective MBR, the Primary GPT Header and the partition table. If you mistakenly "clean" a HD instead of the UFD you can recover your partitions but it isn't simple.
Something odd, I wonder if any of you can shed some light. I had to watch a video sent out from Head Office tonight and was not able to because HitMan Pro was blocking the player from running. This even though I had disabled everything I could in HitMan. I decided to uninstall HitMan, watch the training video and then roll the PC back using Macrium Delta Restore. The time to do the restore to the most recent snap was 43 min (usually takes under 3 min) and when the PC rebooted a number of program were acting erratically to not at all. I decided to roll back further in time. I chose to roll back to my snap taken on May 27 since I had been out of town and had minimally used the PC sinc ethat time. This restore took just under 3 min. Almost as soon as the PC had finished rebooting MR notified me that it was about to run a scheduled task, I clicked OK and found that it was creating a new snap shot (creating it at 2:05 AM rather than the normally scheduled 5:30 am). The snap took 15 min to complete. The PC seems to be working properly now. Does anyone have any idea whats going on?
Either that first snap return was totally bad (45-min is a LONG time for a usual snap return) or your system at the time of the snap return had been seriously compromised by something prior to the return. Possibly the system problem started right before your most recent snap and escalated along the way in a big way. Now that you're back, and creating a new timeline with your scheduled snaps, you may want to get rid of the ones that existed after your successful return snap just to eliminate further confusion. The requested new snap immediately after returning to a good one is normal, with the scheduler thinking it has missed one along the way... but it also initiated a new timeline with that successful snap and future ones. What happened originally, I haven't a clue... but that "video player" seems to have played a part in whatever was going on... and it looks like something may have started the problem earlier than when you watched your movie. I would scan that system vary carefully for malware. don't know which video player you used but VLC from VideoLan (Free) is probably the best player on the market (all required CODECs are self-contained). It's a media player (all types, music, videos <incl MOV>, DVDs) but you can make it play just what you want if you like your other players. I've used it for many years and would never go back to anything else for my multimedia needs.
I have VLC but HO videos play on something that is launched by them from HO so I have no idea what it is (its a recorded webinar, maybe that helps). I will get rid of the intervening snaps as you have suggested.
Now that was odd. I deleted the snap from 5:30 am May 29 and the snap that took place at 2:05 am May 30 disappeared as well. I also deleted all snaps between May 6 and the latest one then took a new snap and it ran fine. Completed in under 3 min.
Hello. Looking for some thoughts on a backup schedule. I have set up Macrium Reflect on a few PCs in a small home office. The 4th laptop is a bit tricky. It belongs to a worker who is in and out of the office at various times throughout the day meeting with clients, making a set backup schedule hard to manage. The laptop is taken home with her out of the office at the end of each work day. I thought about setting it up so that it uses the new "Incrementals forever" feature, but I'm worried about disk space on the NAS. I know Reflect combines old incrementals, but I'm not sure about the actual mechanism at work and if this will prevent a runaway and fill up the destination drive. Any thoughts on how to set this up so that the backup duration is kept short and can be run at various times? Thanks. EDIT: Important bits here are backup speed. If it's going to take hours to merge incrementals with fulls then that'll be a problem since the laptop needs to remain ready to go as often as possible.
I'm not sure on what your INC Forever mode would look like, but if there are a lot of INCs involved, once the FULL merging begins, that process can get lengthy (ie, 30-60 INCs <2-mo worth>). What would probably work better would be to use a simple GFS that re-FULLs monthly (I use 4-weeks), DIFFs weekly or so automatically, and keeps 7-days (not # of backups) of automatic daily INCs. The INCs will merge along the way, the DIFFs will automatically disappear (no retention needed) when their parent FULL is disposed of, and if your FULL retention is reasonable... the longest INC merge will be maybe 6-8 minutes and the necessary FULLs (longest time-based images) may be done MANUALLY, if necessary, when you know the laptop will be in house for a bit. The FULLs may be set up to be automatic (every 4-weeks let's say) and if the timing is bad, just do the FULL manually (through a DeskTop ShortCut is convenient). Limit the FULLs to 2 and you'll always have at least 2-mo worth of backups available (last 7-days, last 4-8 weeks of DIFFs and 2-FULLs at all times. If you also set the CPU priority down to minimum in your DEFAULT Settings, the imaging impact will be minimal when it's running. I do something similar (FULL every 4-weeks (retention = 2 images), DIFF weekly (no retention), INC daily (retention = 7-days)... and if it looks like there may be trouble with that FULL schedule, I just take a manual unscheduled one using a DeskTop shortcut when I know the laptop will be available for that full... the GFS automatic scheduling will flow very smoothly even with those manual FULLs along the way... as long as the manual operation uses the same definition reference as the full (very easy to set up). The other criteria that's important, I guess, is the amount of storage necessary for the backup chain. You mentioned using a NAS. On a portable laptop that tells me some of this will be going on over a network of sorts... maybe your controlling speed factor. As far as the NAS filling up, there's a minimal way to control that using a Reflect option to guarantee space prior to executing the imaging operation.
Thanks for that! What happens if the user forgets or is unable to manually run the full backups? Does everything just pick up where it left off the next time they run the full?
If you don't use a scheduled FULL, the DIFFs and INCs will just move along their schedule and when the FULL is performed manually, any set retention will take place. The schedules and retention settings are independent of each other. You can have retention settings and no schedules at all (all manual operations) and all will just mosey along. Also, if you use a scheduled FULL, a manual FULL will just drop in and retention settings will take over accordingly.
Thanks for your help. After speaking with the client, they were happier setting up manual backups with shortcuts on the desktop. With the user's schedule in and out of the office, manual backups seemed easier to manage. I have set up a manual full and a manual incremental.
I just realized I bought a laptop without a dvd-rom, so how am I supposed to run Macrium bootable cd now? By means of a stick? It's going to run W10, so should I install the newest available or work with the old one I have from 2010 I guess - the always reliable 4.2?
You can use USB Rescue media: http://kb.macrium.com/KnowledgebaseArticle50210.aspx Install newest available.
