Yeah, OK. I don't keep old images so can't compare an old image with a current image. Thanks anyway..
Check the storage section in the Device Manager. (I’m reading the forum on an iPad right now, so I can’t check the exact location/terminology)
Then your PC probably has a different storage controller (or is using the Windows built-in driver). So Intel RST is likely not the cause of your performance loss (I don’t know yet whether it is for me).
So after all those posts asking about what could have happened between your two backups, and how you could tell where the extra 20 GB in the newer backup came from, and precisely how to perform the steps required to do that….you don’t even have the backups anymore to actually perform those steps to answer that question?? Just purely out of curiosity, in that case exactly what did you expect would happen here? Somebody would just theorize what had happened on your system that would account for those differences, and their answer would be so blindingly correct that you’d just know that had to be right even without any ability to confirm it?
I'm sorry I don't have old images dating back to July 2021 but before now I've never needed images that old.
So when you said this: Those faster Full backups were created back in July 2021? You don't have any other Full backups between July 2021 and whenever you created these newer Fulls where you noticed the longer run time and extra 20 GB of storage consumption that surprised you? In that case, first I would argue that on a Windows partition, an extra 20 GB of storage consumption over 6 months may not be completely unreasonable given how much caching some applications perform these days. And second, you might want to make Full backups more frequently than every 6 months. What if your most recent Full turned out to be corrupt or partially unreadable, potentially due to an issue with a specific area of the underlying storage device where some of its data resided? In that case, your newest USABLE backup would be several months old, especially if you don't retain Diff/Inc backups of older Fulls for very long. Are you sure that outcome would be acceptable to you? And actually if you don't retain ANY previous Full backups, then a problem with your only Full would mean you'd have no usable backups at all.
You are reading far too much into this. I never said that I only do full backups every six months. I have two scheduled weekly and in fact may run them more often as needed. I'm done here. Thank you for your time.
Pretty sure the problem isn't that I'm reading too much, but that you're writing too little. You started this discussion asking why some newer Fulls took longer than previous Fulls. Then you said you didn't have your old Fulls to compare contents anymore. And then YOU brought up July 2021. So that led me to figure that the July 2021 timeframe was somehow relevant to the discussion, perhaps being the time of the previous Fulls that you were concerned about but no longer had available for comparison. If was incorrect on my part and would be considered "reading too much into this", then I'm not sure why you bothered to share that date. But whatever the case there, as a general tip for any future needs, the more information you can provide in a clear, easily comprehensible form, the more likely you'll get useful responses rather than misunderstandings from "reading too much into" something.
Today I made backups using the included Windows 11 Intel RAID driver (instead of RST) and speeds were back to what I was used to with Windows 10…
Performed Windows 11 Pro upgrade and this time Macrium 8 Home successfully kept the license status. Just a little info for those interested.
After that I changed from RAID to AHCI. Today I made another weekly backup. Again finished in minutes, instead of hours. Seems like I solved my speed issue by not using the Intel RST drivers...
Macrium Reflect 8.0.6560 Released (February 7, 2022) Website Latest Release Notes => https://updates.macrium.com/reflect/v8/v8.0.6560/details8.0.6560.htm Spoiler: Changes 8.0.6560 Bug fixes and Improvements v8.0.6560 - 7th February 2022 Localization We've added Korean, Italian and Turkish localizations. German, French and Japanese translations have been improved and now have much better coverage of the UI text and more accurate translations. We would like to thank our localization contributors for their outstanding help with the Macrium Reflect localization project. For credits, please take the 'Help' > 'About' menu option and click 'Localization Contributors' Rescue Media We've added font and language pack support for PE 10/11. The language pack files for Japanese, Korean, Russian and Ukrainian will be added automatically during the build process. Fonts for Japanese and Korean will also be included. The Rescue Media Builder now has an option to copy IP and DNS settings from the host PC into the rescue media. For each device on the Advanced Options Drivers tab, there is now an option to not copy drivers from the host machine, even if there are no corresponding drivers already available in the WinPE/WinRE wim. On the Advanced Options Drivers tab, selecting the Use Host Driver drop-down option would not always change the driver status. This has been resolved. When creating USB-based Windows PE 3 rescue media, the Multi-boot (MBR/UEFI) option could sometimes be selected, even though PE 3 does not support multi-boot. This has been resolved. A recent Windows update on some Windows 10 or 11 systems caused WinRE based Rescue Media ISO files/Optical media to fail to UEFI boot if created after the update. This has been resolved. Please re-create ISO files/Optical rescue media if this affects you. On-board AMD RAID devices were not being correctly detected/handled when creating rescue media. This has been resolved. Imaging We've added support for Hardware/Self Encrypting Drives (SED). Volumes on a SED will be treated the same as software BitLocker encrypted volumes, with the same backup and restore outcomes. Change Block Tracker – Minor performance improvements. Volume Access Driver – Minor performance improvements. File and Folder The File and Folder backup wizard would select both Folder and CD radio options at the same time. This has been resolved. The Add Folder dialog was not showing volume mount points. This has been resolved. The search controls in the File and Folder backup view could disappear when changing source folders. This has been resolved. Image Guardian Blocked file operations originating in the System process now generate a stack back trace event. This helps to troubleshoot the cause of blocked file write access. For more information on this functionality please see here Server Plus The first page of the Exchange Mailbox Restore wizard will now show the backup definition name for each Exchange backup. In rare situations, a scheduled Exchange backups running as SYSTEM could falsely report "The specified module could not be found". This has been resolved. General When shutting down after a backup, the notification pop-up now has the option to postpone the shutdown. This new option is also available for rebooting, hibernating or suspending after a backup. We've added a new toolbar button in the Existing Backups View to create and amend backup/image comments. We've added a new toolbar button in the Existing Backups View to automatically size all columns to fit the data. The Log View now retains all custom column widths. When viewing a specific backup, the Log View would also open the most recent backup log. This has been resolved. Backup logs from v7 could occasionally not be found when viewing specific backup log. This has been resolved. Verification, Browse and Restore functions were unavailable for images/backups spanning multiple locations, such as those created with multiple optical media discs. This has been resolved. A rare FAT32 detection issue was reported with a mis configured FAT32 volumes. This has been resolved. A program exception could occur when performing the Analyze File System operation from the Drive Partition view. This has been resolved. We've resolved a random crash when sending backup failure emails. Macrium Reflect could hang for many seconds at startup if a Windows network share was mapped to a drive letter in the context of an elevated Admin user. This has been resolved. . Scheduler Postponed scheduled backups will now minimize to the system tray, with new options to postpone the backup further or to run immediately. If a scheduled backup is configured to send an email on backup failure, then the Macrium Task Scheduler will now attempt to send the email itself if Reflect failed to launch. Various Various minor fixes and changes to improve Macrium Reflect.
Is the File and Folder backup and restore process as reliable as the System Image backup and restore process? I don’t see much discussion about it, good or bad. Just want to make sure I can rely on it like I do the system image capability.
It has always worked well for me and I exclude some items and directory's and save the settings for next time.
Reliable? Sure. It uses VSS snapshots for backing up data just like image backups do. It's probably not discussed as much because it's not available in Reflect Free like image backups, but it's important to understand what it's useful for and what it's NOT useful for. The main perk is of course if you want to back up specific files and folders, i.e. a data set less than an entire partition. It can also be useful if you want to be able to restore files in a way that preserves custom NTFS permissions that you may have defined. With an image backup, if you just mount it for browsing and copy files out, the custom permissions won't carry over. You'd have to use command line tools to copy in a way that carries those over. Reflect's F&F restore wizard can bring those back. But this is admittedly something you're more likely to find on a corporate file server than a home user's PC. However, if you'll be backing up an entire partition anyway, it's generally better to back that up via image rather than F&F, unless you specifically want that wizard-based restore of custom NTFS permissions. The reason is that image backups will typically be much faster because they don't incur per-file overhead like F&F backups do. Additionally, prior to Reflect V8, an F&F backup mounted for browsing emulated a FAT32 file system, which meant that files in the backup that were larger than 4 GB appeared as multiple parts, which didn't allow them to be restored properly via copy/paste. You had to use the Restore wizard. Reflect V8 introduced a new emulation mechanism that no longer has this limitation, and it works even for F&F backups created prior to V8. Also be aware that the options for restoring into the original source folder may be somewhat limiting. For example, you can't restore an F&F backup such that it only restores files that are currently missing, without disrupting any other files. You also can't have it DELETE files that currently exist in the original folder but did NOT exist at the time of the backup. So if you want to roll back a source folder to exactly the way it was at the time of the backup you're restoring from, it might be better to restore to a separate folder (or wipe out the original folder before starting the restore). And lastly, you should not use an F&F backup for your entire Windows partition / C drive. That should always be backed up as an image, because restoring a Windows partition via F&F backup is unlikely to return your system to its proper working state given that the Windows folder employs some file system techniques that would not be captured by an F&F backup and therefore likely would not restore properly. I would encourage you to experiment with it a bit using a test folder containing some random test files to get a sense of how it works.
Thanks for the detailed explanation. I only use F&F to back up my documents. I assumed a full restore was a complete replacement just like the system image restore. I was not aware of the limitations you described. I have a couple of questions. What happens to documents that are in different locations in the backup? In other words, they exist in both the source and target but were moved. What happens to renamed documents?
Moved and/or renamed files would be considered new files, so if you were to run a restore, you'd end up with the restored file using its original name and path, as well as the "new" version of that file. Again, I'd encourage you to run some experiments using a test folder and dummy files to test out some scenarios.
Thanks. I have one more question about something I would rather not test on my system. If I delete the original document directories to avoid these issues and then do the restore, will it work or do the original directories need to be there, at least at the top level.
Directories will be created. But this is something you can easily test safely on your system. As I said, create a test directory and put some COPIES of your actual data into that folder, or just create some basic text files or something. That way you can move, rename, delete, and test restore to your heart's content, and it will all be fast, easy, and no-risk because you'll be working with small files that are copies or dummy data.
After a small release like v8.0.6584, is it necessary to update your rescue media (boot menu or flash drive)?
