Macrium Reflect

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

  1. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    A Copy is a partition clone. Write Changed Sectors Only applies if you are copying (cloning) to a partition that has already been copied to that position. It doesn't work on the first copy. Only subsequent copies.

    I suggest you create a full backup of a partition using the "Faster Changes Only Backups" option. Then create a Changes Only Backup of the same partition. You only need to use the "Faster Changes Only Backups" option with a Changes Only backup if you intend to create subsequent incremental backups. It's not needed if you want to create differential backups. But it is necessary with the Full backup.
     
  2. XIII

    XIII Registered Member

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    It’s not the first copy: I have been cloning these partitions weekly for years (with Reflect).

    Reflect’s Intelligent Sector Copy worked great for this, until Reflect became super slow (very soon after I upgraded from v6 to v7 using their Black Friday 2018 deal).
     
  3. jphughan

    jphughan Registered Member

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    The thread I linked contains a post from user BlackCat dated 1/9 saying that earlier that week, Macrium had emailed him a new CBT driver to resolve his issue, which related to CBT not being available on a BitLocker volume. The Reflect release you're looking at launched 12/21, much earlier than the week of 1/9, and the CBT update it incorporated was meant to resolve BSoD issues. So based on the release notes and timing, I figured that the BitLocker fix still hadn't been incorporated into a production CBT release, but since I'm admittedly not affected by that issue, I can't directly confirm.
     
    Last edited: Feb 9, 2019
  4. jphughan

    jphughan Registered Member

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    I guess you're quite lucky then, because if you search "CBT" on the Reflect V7 release notes page here, you'll find a lot of hits to fixes for various issues. One in particular you may want to watch out for if you're still on the V6 version is the fix that arrived with 7.1.2899. The KB is here, but basically Microsoft changed some driver requirements starting with an Insider build that arrived in December 2017, and it forced Macrium to rewrite their CBT driver, because the current version would cause newer Windows builds to BSoD at boot. I believe that driver requirement made it into the production release of Win10 1803, but I'm not certain about that. Anyhow, just something to be aware of in case you might try to run V6 with CBT on a newer Win10 release.
     
  5. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    OK. I misunderstood.

    "Write Changed Sectors Only" doesn't make the copy any faster. It's mainly used so you are writing less data to a SSD. But you are still only copying sectors in use. Not all sectors.
     
  6. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    XIII,

    I did a copy test from a Win8.1 partition. Size 9 GB. Copying to free space on another drive.

    Initial copy took 20 seconds. I then copied to the new partition using "Write Changed Sectors Only" and it took 28 seconds. So this setting can prolong the copy. Only use it when copying to a SSD and you want to reduce disk writes.
     
  7. Brian K

    Brian K Imaging Specialist

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    The copy was repeated using Image for Linux, IFL. Nvme M.2 to another nvme M.2. It took 6 seconds. That's not bad for 8.3 GB of data.
     
  8. Hadron

    Hadron Registered Member

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    Yes, I found that.
     
  9. Hadron

    Hadron Registered Member

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    OK, so I cloned my old failing SSD onto a new SSD, and as you can see, I succeeded.
    But what option would I have if that SSD had have failed completely and not allowed me to clone?

    I do regular scheduled backups onto a secondary hard drive.
    Could I have used a backup to image it onto a new SSD, and if so, how would I have done that?
     
  10. XIII

    XIII Registered Member

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    On my other PC I don’t using cloning, but imaging. Still the numbers with Reflect are just as bizarre:
    • Full 55 GB image of an SSD (C) to an internal hard drive (B): 16 minutes (OK)
    • 10 GB incremental image of an internal hard drive (D) to the same internal hard drive (B): 2 hours and 32 minutes... (NOK)
    I consolidated all incremental images of D on B before starting the test to make sure that consolidating would not impact the test. This involved 9 incremental images of about 10 GB each. Consolidation was done in a few minutes.

    I don’t understand why imaging takes so extremely long. Drive B: is 2 TB and already contains a 1.2 TB full image of drive D: from some months ago. This means I would have to wipe all my backups to experiment with Image 4 Windows, which I can’t do right now.
     
  11. Minimalist

    Minimalist Registered Member

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    Yes you could restore your image into new SSD. I would insert new SSD next to secondary drive, boot from Macrium boot media (I hope you have created it) and then just restore latest image to new SSD.
     
  12. jphughan

    jphughan Registered Member

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    ^ Correct. Cloning Disk A to Disk B and capturing an image of Disk A and later restoring it onto Disk B achieve the same end result. The only difference is that the latter process involves parking your data in an image file that you store somewhere. In some cases that’s a drawback because it’s a two-step process that takes longer, and in other cases that’s a benefit because it doesn’t require you to have Disk A and Disk B connected simultaneously, and of course the image backups are usable as backups.
     
  13. XIII

    XIII Registered Member

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    Did run some tests on the SSD with I4W and Reflect and noticed something weird:

    To force a 1.5 GB incremental image I put 1.5 GB of additional data on the SSD. The I4W incremental image was indeed about 1.5 GB. However, the Reflect 7 image was 2.5 GB...

    How's that possible?
     
  14. jpcummins

    jpcummins Registered Member

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    One last question I have is this: Why does Macrium Reflect Free keep asking to be included in my Start Up? I can see no reason why it should be included in my Start Up unless I am missing something. I tried to register with the Macrium Reflect Forum hoping I could find the answer there but because I am using the Free version it would not allow me to. Thanks in advance.
     
  15. Kerodo

    Kerodo Registered Member

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    Macrium checks for updates for that's probably why....
     
  16. jphughan

    jphughan Registered Member

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    Posting the path to the EXE it’s trying to start would be helpful, but if it’s RestartManager, you might find this thread informative, particularly Nick’s reply on the second page: https://forum.macrium.com/Topic22396.aspx

    Update checks are handled by a Windows service, not a startup application.
     
  17. Tinstaafl

    Tinstaafl Registered Member

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    Macrium Reflect UI Watcher is the only thing I see added to start-up here. "ReflectUI.exe"
     
  18. XIII

    XIII Registered Member

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    This week was even worse: 9 GB took 3 hours...

    Copying that resulting 9 GB file from D: to B: or B: to D: takes less than 2 minutes, so I think the drives are fine.

    Is there any way I can investigate what is causing Reflect to be so slow?
     
  19. guest

    guest Guest

    I don't have this issue, did a full backup few days ago of my ~30gb system, took around 6mn. Following incrementals around 2mn.
     
  20. jphughan

    jphughan Registered Member

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    Sorry if I’ve already suggested this (I can’t remember since it’s been a while), but have you tried capturing a backup from the Rescue environment to remove your OS and app environment from the equation and leave only Reflect and your hardware? You can capture an Incremental from there if you add your backup folder to the “Folders to search” list and then select a backup and select More Actions > Create Incremental. Note that backups from Rescue will tend to be larger since they don’t use VSS, which means things that get purged from VSS snapshots won’t be, such as the Windows Search index database. On a (probably) completely unrelated note, you're the first person I've seen using the B drive letter for anything other than its original use a 5.25" floppy drive! :p
     
  21. XIII

    XIII Registered Member

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    B for Backup...
     
  22. askmark

    askmark Registered Member

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    9 hours for 3GB! Perhaps Macrium thinks your B Drive is a 5.25" floppy drive :argh:

    In all seriousness, have you considered changing the drive letter to something else?
     
  23. XIII

    XIII Registered Member

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    You make it worse than it was; it was 9 GB in 3 hours - not 3 GB in 9 hours... (still very bad)

    No, I have not considered changing the drive letter yet, as that used to work fine with version 6.
     
  24. askmark

    askmark Registered Member

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    Ah! Sorry my mistake. Though, as you say, still not very good.

    Fair enough if it worked before can't see why version 7 should be any different.

    Hope you get it sorted as it must be very frustrating :(
     
  25. SanyaIV

    SanyaIV Registered Member

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    I recently encrypted my SSD system drive, SSD backup destination drive, HDD backup of backups drive and my general storage HDD with BitLocker. My motherboard doesn't have any TPM module so I choose to encrypt them with a password.

    If I understand correctly the Macrium Reflect Rescue Environment should support BitLocker drives? In that case, can it mount both source and destination drives with BitLocker support? If both are mounted with BitLocker, will the resulting "recovery" be written encrypted or in plain text?
    I found it can mount both encrypted source and destination drives. To mount a drive other than the boot drive it seems to need to be done through the command prompt, in my case "manage-bde -unlock D: -password" worked after which I could read from the drive. I'm still not sure what the resulting write would be from a recovery though as I haven't had time to test that. Since the drive is mounted with BitLocker I would assume it's written encrypted, but then again Reflect might just read it encrypted and then write it unencrypted? Iunno.

    Is the boot environment supposed to also support bitlocker on the system disc? Reason I'm asking is because when I try to boot into it after encrypting the drive, I get an error. Basically it goes like: boot > bitlocker password > select reflect from list > reboot > error.
    Nevermind that, apparently I had to recreate the rescue environment once more, after that it worked.

    I wish encryption support was a bit more mature, for example I'd have preferred to use VeraCrypt but as far as I understand I wouldn't be able to decrypt them in the rescue environment?
     
    Last edited: Feb 19, 2019
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