Macrium Reflect

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

  1. Peter2150

    Peter2150 Global Moderator

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    An incremental after a reboot normally takes 2-3 minutes which in itself is good, but a cbt hourly incremental normally takes 40-50 seconds. This is on a drive with 184gb on it. For me that is significant
     
  2. silver0066

    silver0066 Registered Member

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    Is Macrium aware of the CBT caused BSOD? I got it again using 7.2.4440.....very irritating.
     
  3. test

    test Registered Member

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    yes, and a new driver that at least partially fixes this issue is available since 4 September (see also https://forum.macrium.com/Topic30878-1.aspx)
    expected
     
  4. TheRollbackFrog

    TheRollbackFrog Imaging Specialist

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    Once the hopefully corrected CBT driver has passed all its regression tests and has been OKd by those that have reported issues through their SUPPORT channels, I'm sure you'll see the appropriate update issued. That's not something that happens overnight...

    @silver0066 - if you've reported your problem through their SUPPORT channels, you may already have a fix to try from their developers. The more cases they have to work work, the better the problem detection becomes.
     
  5. TheRollbackFrog

    TheRollbackFrog Imaging Specialist

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    That's may be true only for users who have officially reported their problem through their SUPPORT channel, others must wait until an update is issued.
     
  6. Osaban

    Osaban Registered Member

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    I contacted Macrium support reporting the problem on September 2, they replied they are working on it. I've had no other emails since. I am not in hurry though, version 7.2.4325 works as advertised...
     
  7. Hadron

    Hadron Registered Member

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    And I would stick with Reflect v6.
    No need to upgrade. I wish I had have stuck with it.
    Unfortunately, I think once you upgrade with your license key, v6 no longer works with it.
    I can't remember exactly the problem I had, but I couldn't do it, for some reason.

    Reflect 7 is a good example of an application that's taken 1 step forward, and 2 steps back.
     
    Last edited: Sep 18, 2019
  8. TheRollbackFrog

    TheRollbackFrog Imaging Specialist

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    I've used my v7 key with the v6 installer without issue (same version <Home, Workstation, etc> and same machine)
     
  9. jphughan

    jphughan Registered Member

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    Reflect V6 has supported being activated with V7 keys since V6.3.1745, which was released Feb 24, 2017. That was added to facilitate in-place upgrades. Actually getting the V6 installer might be a bit trickier though, since providing the download agent a V7 key will cause it to download the current V7 installer, and V6 trial installers aren't available anymore. However, if you can get an installer for any version of the edition of V6 you have a license for, you can install that and then perform an in-place update to the current release if needed. If you choose to obtain the installer from a third-party site, follow this KB to confirm that the installer is genuine.
     
  10. pb1

    pb1 Registered Member

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    Why is it that so many likes v.6 better than v.7, is it better in any way?
    Is there a question about bugs or what?
     
  11. TheRollbackFrog

    TheRollbackFrog Imaging Specialist

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    @pb1 - v6 had two really good years of solid attention to any bugs that may have popped up along the way so that its final issue was pretty darn solid. v7 introduced some new features, mainly viBOOT, Changed Block Tracking (CBT) and Macrium Image Guardian (MIG). MIG was a problem early in the v7 timeline but seems to have stabilized as of late. viBOOT is useful to some extent but not so much for the casual user. CBT has been an issue on and off since v7's release in February of 2017. Some of the issues I'm sure were minor design errors but many have been related to Windows 10 architectural changes as it has moved on. CBT has had issues which have actually affected the integrity of taken images which is not a good thing at all. It can be turned off and will run, basically, exactly like v6 used to run.

    So in summary... I'd say most of the v7 issues have been either CBT or Windows 10 architectural issues, IMHO anyway.
     
  12. jphughan

    jphughan Registered Member

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    The major reason is that V7 introduced two new components that run persistently in the background at a low level of the system, namely CBT (Changed Block Tracker) and MIG (Macrium Image Guardian). Given how different everyone's PCs are in terms of other background applications that might interact badly with your components, and the fact that bugs in low-level background components can have an impact on system stability, introducing those types of components increases the potential for issues compared to previous Reflect versions where Reflect never had any background components. And indeed, both of those components, especially CBT, have had issues either due to bugs or adverse interactions with other applications. A quick check over the Reflect V7 release notes will reveal how many builds have had fixes to those components. Some users are using CBT with Reflect V6 because CBT was released as a beta back then, and the people here who are running it seem to be happy campers. I personally suspect the reason for that is that the sample size of V6 CBT users is much smaller than V7 CBT users, and that problem reports with CBT would have surfaced on V6 if it had been more widely deployed then. It doesn't seem plausible to me that Macrium would have created a perfect version of CBT in the beta phase with V6 and then broken it for V7 and still be having problems with it now, over 2 years after V7 launched.

    I personally don't use CBT because I prefer to minimize the amount of low-level background stuff on my system, and I decided that CBT didn't offer enough value to my use cases to justify installing it, a decision that may have allowed me to dodge quite a few bullets by now. I do use MIG though, because although the clients I support have an offline disk rotation to make sure backups are always recoverable, they also do enough business in a day that it's worth protecting the most recent backups on the "online" disk as well -- and I have not had any problems with MIG.

    If you install V7 without CBT or MIG, then you've got something much closer to V6 in terms of "architecture", and your likelihood of having problems would likely decrease. Although in fairness, if you already have a paid version of V6 and would run V7 that way, then upgrading to V7 is a weaker value proposition because those are two of its "banner features". There are still a number of smaller enhancements in V7 that I really like and find worth the upgrade price (ReflectMonitor and "warning" job outcomes, to name two), but that won't be true for everyone.

    That said, even if V7 doesn't offer a lot of new features you'd use, keep in mind that V6's days may be numbered anyway, at least for people on the ever-evolving Windows 10. In the Windows Insider builds that became Windows 10 1903, Reflect was unable to capture image backups. Macrium's KB here claimed the underlying cause was either a bug or an undocumented change in Windows. They issued a fix for V7 during the Insider phase, but that issue ended up making it into the production release of Windows 10 1903. Macrium at that point issued an update to V6, backporting the fix they had previously created for V7, but that happened over a year after V6's official "end of support" date (February 2018, a year after V7's release). Macrium did it as a customer goodwill gesture, but that presumably won't continue forever if similar issues arise with future Windows releases.
     
    Last edited: Sep 18, 2019
  13. paulderdash

    paulderdash Registered Member

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    I have been nervous of trying MIG on my one machine, but if you haven't had any problems jp ... :doubt::isay:

    Oops, just realised v7 on that machine is the free version. So no MIG ... unless I buy another license.
     
  14. test

    test Registered Member

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    That's exactly the point:
    given the delicacy of this issue, i would have found more logical to provide the fix to everyone as soon as possible...
     
  15. pb1

    pb1 Registered Member

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    So mainly a bug question. Then i am fortunate to have experienced almost no bugs, not any serious anyway. I thought it maybe was that v.6 was faster or better in some other way so that i should downgrade to get that.

    Beside the point, the program is absolutely reliable which makes jumping between images and experimenting a hassle free experience. Best money spent on a computer program.
     
  16. Spartan

    Spartan Registered Member

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    That is exactly why I stopped installing Macrium Reflect, it causes high CPU usage and I feel it even on my beast of a laptop. I just burn the Macrium Reflect Rescue Disk to a USB Flash disk and perform backups and restore through that without having anything installed.
     
  17. TheRollbackFrog

    TheRollbackFrog Imaging Specialist

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    @test - I agree with you but only if a FIX has been established. You cannot establish a fix by testing a possible solution on one case of error. There have been many cases of error with this release and CBT. The so called FIX needs not only to be tested on all reported cases of error, but also against the baseline of the existing product to insure that the FIX doesn't break something that currently exists... that's what Regression Testing is all about.

    This doesn't occur overnight and takes time. Even during this process, additional errors are being reported and additional testing is required. Delicacy has nothing to do with it... assured testing and determination does.

    I'm sure they're doing their best... please be patient.
     
  18. Osaban

    Osaban Registered Member

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    I couldn't agree more, moving from one version to the other is absolutely no brainer, one is never left helpless with Macrium, and I feel people should try it on their system to see how good it is...
     
  19. TheRollbackFrog

    TheRollbackFrog Imaging Specialist

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    There is a setting available in REFLECT that controls the CPU priority of its processing, which does have a considerable affect on its compression/decompression functions during its imaging/restoration operations. The larger affect may be its use of Input/Output operations associated with both SOURCE and TARGET disks.

    You might wanna try that setting... I use the lowest priority all the time and notice little affect on my System. Of course the System is i7-based with the OS volume being SSD-based... this may make things a lot less noticeable for me.
     
  20. Peter2150

    Peter2150 Global Moderator

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    I still use v6 and win 7. I suspect a lot of the problems are win 10 related. My one wish is that all the imaging companies would get out of the security business. That's not there expertise. There are other better solutions to protect images from ransomware.
     
  21. xxJackxx

    xxJackxx Registered Member

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    I wish they would get out of the anything but imaging and backup business. They should do one thing well. I don't need them to do anything else. Anyone worried about ransomware and their backups should create an account just for the backups and deny access to all others. Effective free solution, no software required.
     
  22. jphughan

    jphughan Registered Member

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    Well given that even production releases have sometimes included CBT updates that fixed one problem only to introduce another, I'm not sure rushing a new release out the door is a great idea. It would also cause an update prompt to appear for all Reflect users even if the majority of them weren't affected. I see merit in the strategy of making a fix available to those who need it and request it, especially in cases like this where CBT can simply be removed as a temporary workaround.

    Do you mean high CPU usage even when you're NOT performing a backup or restore? If so, I haven't seen that even on the systems where I've tested CBT and MIG, nor have I seen reports of that on the Macrium forums. What background process is showing high CPU usage? I wonder if it might be some sort of conflict with something else you're running?

    If you're referring to high CPU usage during a backup or restore, then as TheRollbackFrog says, CPU priority can be adjusted during image operations, but even if that weren't the case, I don't really see how rebooting into Rescue every time you want to do something is more convenient than remaining in Windows to perform those tasks even if you see high CPU utilization.
     
  23. jphughan

    jphughan Registered Member

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    Free indeed, but I'm not so sure about effective. It would be effective against malware that doesn't have admin rights, but not so much against malware that can leverage a privilege escalation vulnerability, because at that point it would be able to use the NTFS take ownership privilege to change the access control list of the folder you had locked down to a single account. I grant that if malware has admin privileges, then it could do something like format the drive entirely (though that would remove the opportunity to demand a ransom) and in theory could circumvent MIG, but given that there's no such thing as perfect security, the game is about degrees of difficulty, and I think malware would be less likely to know how to circumvent MIG than change NTFS permissions on a folder. The truly effective solution is to always have offline backups, but that isn't completely free because it requires more storage.

    The question of whether backup software vendors should be designing security solutions is a separate though completely valid question. I like the fact that MIG is optional. It's free with the Reflect license you already purchased, and people get some extra protection without having to do a bunch of research on more general purpose solutions that will almost inevitably be harder to use than a focused, purpose-built solution like MIG -- but people who want something else that might be more effective can choose not to install MIG. I also like that MIG is focused entirely on Macrium files; it's not like they've gotten into the general purpose anti-malware business. And while I normally prefer to have individual tools that are optimal for each job rather than a multi-purpose tool that's mediocre at everything, I personally think in the specific case of backups, where people are frequently putting all of their digital eggs into that one backup file basket, offering some additional protection for that crucial basket makes sense. Most users are bad about security and would be unlikely to look into additional ransomware protection -- but they'll use it if it's provided to them with something they were already buying anyway.
     
  24. xxJackxx

    xxJackxx Registered Member

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    I mostly agree but the shares I back up to are on a network. Unless I am missing something I don't believe the NTFS permission situation applies on a Linux based dedicated backup server. It's too easy for me to assume that others know what I am doing. It's likely that someone skilled enough could still get to it, but I am thinking it would have to be a very specifically targeted attack.
     
  25. jphughan

    jphughan Registered Member

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    NTFS permissions can be layered on top of some Linux-based shares, but if that's not the case with your setup and there's no way for a Windows account on your system to modify the permissions of the share, then yes I would think your backups are safe if the share is writable only by a specific account other than the one you use regularly.
     
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