Macrium Reflect

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

  1. Hadron

    Hadron Registered Member

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    I just bought 2 8 TB Red Pro drives as I couldn't get Black any larger than 6 TB.
    But I can't complain about the Red Pro for my data drives. They are extremely quiet. Black, depending on the model can sometimes rattle a bit. No that it bothers me.
     
  2. jphughan

    jphughan Registered Member

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    I would probably avoid an SMR drive if I could. Especially if your backups will involve Synthetic Fulls or Incremental consolidation, in which case existing backups will be updated. In that case, the write speed performance penalty imposed by SMR might be quite noticeable if you have large backups. But if your backup strategy won't involve those techniques and therefore you won't ever have to overwrite existing files, then you might not notice the penalty of SMR. But SMR definitely falls into that category of technologies that make me nervous (again, perhaps irrationally), so if I can get a drive of the desired capacity in PMR form, I would, probably even if it came with a cost premium.

    All that said, it seems WD is now being more transparent about which of its drives use SMR: https://www.extremetech.com/computi...-comes-clean-shares-which-hard-drives-use-smr
     
  3. MPSAN

    MPSAN Registered Member

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    Well, the B&H deal seems good but the 4 TB Red is not a pro. They hve not answered me yet re if it is a CMR.
     
  4. MPSAN

    MPSAN Registered Member

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    Amazon is showing a BLUE WD40EZRZ for $89.99. It still shows as CMR, but also is 5400RPM. Should that matter for what I want to use it for? Also Newegg just gave me a $10 off coupon so I thing that I can not go wrong for $79.99. I assume that the AF drive is OK for what I need.
     
    Last edited: Jun 26, 2020
  5. MPSAN

    MPSAN Registered Member

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    OK, for what I need I went ahead and bought it. It has to be worth it for $79.99.
     
  6. Hadron

    Hadron Registered Member

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    You'd have to be unlucky to have a problem with it.
    I think it'll be fine.
     
  7. MPSAN

    MPSAN Registered Member

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    Great, nothing was even close to that price. Now I need to see what the best way to test this for errors before I actually use it. So far WD shows this as a CMR drive. For what I want to use it for I am not even sure that matters. I would think that WD kept CMR, however, for lower capacity drives. Also, since it is AF should I just keep it at the default sector size or specify 512 Bytes?
     
    Last edited: Jun 27, 2020
  8. TheRollbackFrog

    TheRollbackFrog Imaging Specialist

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    See if it's an AF drive that already has its Firmware set for 512E (the label; should tell you).. if so, you won't have a choice (512b it is).
     
  9. MPSAN

    MPSAN Registered Member

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    OK, I believe it is AF so I will confirm when I get it. I guess since I have Windows 10 Pro 64 bit 1909 it actually will not matter. Also, I think that the WD Windlg software will let me test/confirm that the drive is clean. Then I can do a format and be sure it is set to GPT.
     
  10. TheRollbackFrog

    TheRollbackFrog Imaging Specialist

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    If the drive's firmware in not 512E, you will have 4kByte sectors, never smaller. Modern Windows can handle either size, some disk apps still can't handle the larger 4kByte sector of a "pure AFT drive. Even REFLECT had an issue with them in the past but I believe the app has moved beyond that issue.

    The so-called 2tB partition limit issue with MBR-based disks is only due to the fact that sectors were 512bytes. With an MBR-based (rather than GPT-based) pure AFT disks, due to the fact that the sectors are 8-times larger, the partition size limitation on those disks is now 16tB... not bad if for some reason you feel you need to format an AFT "pure" disk as MBR-based.
     
  11. MPSAN

    MPSAN Registered Member

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    Thank You. I believe it just says AF as that is what WD says in their spec sheet for the WD40EZRZ. Not sure just what that implies. Anyway, I plan to make sure it is GPT like my other drives.
     
  12. MPSAN

    MPSAN Registered Member

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    Well, all is great. Not only did I get this 4TB Blue for $79.99 and it is supposed to be 5400rpm instead of my usual Backup drive of 7200RPM but it did not matter. The transfer rate seemed to be the same on a full Image!

    A 4 TB drive took 8 hours in WD Diagnostics and then the next day a Full Format in GPT took another 8 hours!
     
  13. TheRollbackFrog

    TheRollbackFrog Imaging Specialist

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    Exactly why is it that you do a FULL Format (rather than a quick format)?
     
  14. MPSAN

    MPSAN Registered Member

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    Hello Froggie. I ran the full format as I had seen reports that the WD Diags ran fine but Windows format thought otherwise. So, before I used the drive for anything I felt if there was an issue I better do it before I started using this NEW Drive. Anyway, this is ONLY used for Reflect backups and is powered off when I do not do backups. This is just going to be rotated with my original backup drive. I use an ICY Dock on each system so this works well.

    I am surprised that a full image seems to take the same amount of time if I use this new 5400 RPM drive or the older 7200 RPM drive.
     
  15. Spartan

    Spartan Registered Member

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    If it's an SSD, try creating a bootable Gparted USB stick, then boot off it (you must be in AHCI), then do a secure erase (NVMe), that will do a quick secure erase that's designed for SSDs and will restore the performance like it was brand new.
     
  16. TheRollbackFrog

    TheRollbackFrog Imaging Specialist

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    @MPSAN - I have found that large drives (I use an 8tB), if they have large caches (64kB or larger), run at the same "streaming speed" (very little positioner movement... and even faster in many cases) as 7200rpm drives. My 8tB with a 128mB cache outruns all my internal 7200rpm drives... as long as they are doing "sequential" operations (like disk imaging). If they start jumpin' around from track to track, they start to slow down a bit.
     
  17. MPSAN

    MPSAN Registered Member

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    OK, well first it is NOT and SSD!
    Second, it will be only used for Images so the performance seems great. It is the WD40EZRZ which is a CMR drive and has a 64MB Cache.
     
  18. jphughan

    jphughan Registered Member

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  19. aldist

    aldist Registered Member

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    Bug fixes and Improvements v7.2.5098 - 5th August 2020
    • Restore/Clone
      • We've added a new confirmation prompt when extending a partition beyond 2TB on an MBR disk. Extending beyond 2TB will cause the disk layout to be converted to GPT format and will cause MBR system disks to be non-bootable.
        In the rescue media, we've also added a warning to indicate that disks converted to GPT will not be accessible by Windows XP and Server 2003.
      • When copying an MBR 'Active' partition to an existing non 'Active' partition the target partition may not get marked 'Active' after restoring. This has been resolved.
    • Automatic system restore for 32 bit systems
      If initiating a system restore in Windows causes the boot menu to be automatically added then, for 32 bit systems, local NIC and mass storage drivers may not be copied. This has been resolved.
    • Changed Block Tracker
        • Fixed a permission issue that prevented the Encrypted File System (EFS) from encrypting some files on volumes that were formatted while CBT was active.
        • Improved compatibility with Windows 10 build 2004.
    • Various
      Various minor fixes and changes to improve Macrium Reflect.
     
  20. JasonUK

    JasonUK Registered Member

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    Only issue I've noticed is that after applying update patch I no longer have the option to create rescue media with WIndows RE as the Base WIM. Not a particular issue for me as I've always chosen PE10 but may be for others if they experience same issue.
     
  21. jphughan

    jphughan Registered Member

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    What version of Windows are you running? I'm on Win10 2004 and still have WinRE after updating.
     
  22. JasonUK

    JasonUK Registered Member

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    Windows 10 1909 Home Edition (Build 18363.959). RE was an option with last version (4971) of Reflect now it's just the four PE versions.
     
  23. puff-m-d

    puff-m-d Registered Member

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    Hello,

    It appears that Macrium has pulled version 7.2.5098 for now...
     
  24. jphughan

    jphughan Registered Member

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    A few people have reported that Reflect doesn't exit when it completes a backup. The reported cases involve calling Reflect via script, but the behavior might not be limited to that scenario. And if Reflect doesn't close properly after completing a job, then subsequent backup jobs likely wouldn't be able to start.
     
  25. JasonUK

    JasonUK Registered Member

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    Update: It looks like this was down to a corrupted winre.wim file on my computer which has occurred sometime between updating Macrium to v4971 and the latest update rather than anything relating to the latest Macrium update.
     
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