Hi, Jean. Normally I would say that a good place to start with that error would be to open Macrium Reflect and go to Other Tasks > Fix VSS Problems. But if it's happening on all four machines, then it's most likely something you're doing.
Hello! A friend of mine has an external HDD, full of photos, and when he attached it to his router (which is probably based on linux), via USB port, the HDD becaue unreadable (his words, I haven't seen the HDD yet). He is using a mac (with mac OS) and says that the drive is visible when attached, but it shows no data. He's not sure how the drive was formatted (which file system). Probably mac OS' APFS (I'm not familiar with macs). I don't know how to read the an APFS drive with Windows, it will be difficult probably. Anyway, I would like to help him restore the data, he bought another external HDD of the same size (2 TB) and we'd like to make an exact clone and then mess around on the new drive (and leave the old one intact not to mess it up more). I have Windows OS and am using Reflect free, how should I go about this? I was thinking about connecting both drives via USB ports, running Reflect and doing a clone. Will Reflect even see the mac (APFS?) drive? If yes, should I check the forensic copy option or not? Should I check the ignore bad sectors or not? I suppose it's not a HW issue with the drive, but who knows. Are there more chances to succeed it we try to do it with Reflect PE, or is it the same if we do it in Windows? Should we rather use a linux based tool, would that help? Guess not, cause of the mac FS... And advice would be greatly appreciated!
Thou ask and thou shall be given. thanks for your come back. This what I see : and further or is it before as I click on rescue, it says that GPT is verbotten. I was sure that all my Formats were MBR. Light my candle, please. JP.
What I want to achieve is that after 20 Inc., Macrium should start a new backup set, i.e., create a full backup, and delete the previous backup set. For example, do a full backup and 20 Inc., then a full backup (removing the previous full and 20 Inc.), continue until 20 Inc., and so on. Can I achieve it with Macrium 8 Home? Is there an official link to download the latest version of Macrium 8 Home? Aomei Backupper Pro and EaseUS Workstation both keep the latest and the previous backup set.
After some tinkering, I believe the following settings should achieve what I want: With these settings, after a backup completes, the details state that "full backups will be retained for 1 day, and linked differential or incremental backups will also be deleted." For testing, I have set the retention rules for full backups to 1 day. After a day, if a new backup set is started and the previous backup set is deleted, that is what I want.
You can download the Home version using the official Download Aden ( https://updates.macrium.com/reflect/v8/ReflectDLFull.exe )or through direct links x32 ( https://updates.macrium.com/Reflect/v8/getmsi.asp?edition=0&type=0&arch=0&redirect=Y )and x64 ( https://updates.macrium.com/Reflect/v8/getmsi.asp?edition=0&type=0&arch=1&redirect=Y )
For snapshot errors, post the VSS log, ideally in a code block with a spoiler tag since it will be long. But if you’re seeing it on multiple PCs, the commonality is probably either some sort of application that installed its own snapshot provider or else something meddlesome like third-party AV. Just fyi, VSS is a Windows technology that Reflect and many other applications rely on. It’s not a Macrium technology. So Reflect is just being affected by an underlying problem here. Rescue Media Builder does not build to GPT targets since currently Macrium’s compatibility choices are BIOS or BIOS+UEFI, and GPT would be UEFI-only. But if you want Rescue Media on a GPT device, create a FAT32 partition manually, then generate a Rescue Media ISO and copy its contents to that partition. But make sure your PC will boot from it. Some PCs for example won’t boot from USB fixed disk class devices (HDD/SSD) and will only do removable storage class (flash drives). I also came across a laptop that would only boot from Partition 1 of a GPT device even though it would boot from other partitions when that same device was MBR. Bottom line: Always test, especially with stuff like Rescue Media.
You’d likely be forced into forensic cloning anyway since Reflect doesn’t support APFS, and intelligent copy is only possible when the file system is readable and supported. Or it may not work at all. I’ve never tested that scenario. I don’t know of any tools to read APFS on Windows, though I also haven’t had a reason to look. (But I sure wish NTFS could do some of the stuff APFS can these days….) But if it was set up on a Mac, I would suggest using a Mac-based clone application like Carbon Copy Cloner. If that isn’t possible because the disk isn’t readable on the Mac, I’m not sure you’ll have any more success from Windows. And a forensic clone of one disk that’s unreadable is likely to produce a second disk that’s unreadable in the same way. But knowing the file system of the partition would certainly be a useful data point. The Disk Utility app on a Mac should show that.
Reflect doesn’t allow you to set a schedule to generate a Full based on how many Incrementals currently exist in the set. I think I remember reading that Veeam can do this because it basically merges a schedule and retention policy engine, but that setup makes it impossible to achieve certain strategies that are possible in Reflect, such as a monthly Full with daily Incrementals but only retaining 7 Incrementals (i.e. NOT generating a new full every 7 Incrementals). The closest you can get with Reflect would be to schedule a Full to occur however often it would generally take you to accumulate 20 Incrementals — unless you wanted to get fancy with custom scripting. I personally would discourage a 1-day Full retention policy. I see that you disabled “Run purge before backup”, which is good, but that still means you’ll only ever have one Full at any given time unless you make them more often than daily. Unless you’re using a disk rotation so you have one Full per destination and therefore multiple Fulls in aggregate, keep in mind that any corruption or even disk readability problems that might affect your single Full would render all of your backups useless. Is that an acceptable risk?
@jphughan I understand the risk with my backup plan. What I want is for Macrium to create a new backup set and delete the old one every 30 days. 1st day - Full 29 days - Inc. 31st day - Full (delete the previous backup set) 29 days - Inc. 61st day - Full (delete the previous backup set) 29 days - Inc. And so on... Can I achieve it with Macrium and how?
Tell your friend never to connect any fairly modern/large capacity hdd to usb port of router or non-externally powered usb hubs irrespective of whether this helps or not with the current issue. Reason being, all fairly recent hdd with more than 1TB capacity are power hungry & one can't depend on such measly power output devices like routers or simple usb hubs with no external power connector for dedicated power. PC/laptop usb ports directly connected are a different matter altogether with them itself being running on anywhere from 45w to 900w of power input so providing a few watts via usb ports is never an issue.
Hi, thank you for replying. I do want to do the forensic cloning. I hope the new 2TB disk the guy bought is the exact or bigger size than the old 2 TB drive. We'd like to clone it to the 2nd disk so the 1st disk stays intact in case we can't salvage data from the 2nd one, we will try everything so it will be messy. I think I will first try to use the Raw Disk Copy tool from HDDGuru site and it that won'd do it, Clonezilla. I've read afterwards of some paid tools for Windows that can read APFS, there's a trial version too so we'll try that. And if the new drive is not big enough, then he'll have to get another one. Hi, thank you for the reply. That was a very interesting read. His old 2TB disk is a 3,5 inch one, with external power, so I don't think that's the problem. But even if that was the case, could simply connecting a drive to router's USB mess it up like that? I'm using a 1TB drive for backups myself and it works flawlessly when I connect it to my desktop's USB port (I have never connected it to a router's USB port as I never had the need to).
If you can switch your goal from every 30 days to either every 4 weeks or once per month, then set a Full schedule of either every 4 weeks or once per month. In terms of retention policy, the best choice will depend on how you want to handle aberrant conditions. For example, some Windows feature release updates alter your partition map, which can cause you to get an unexpected Full in the middle of the month. If that were to happen, would you want to have two sets for a while to keep the original Full for an entire month, or would you be fine having it purged early because you have a newer one? If the former, set the Full retention to 28 days, regardless of whether you create them every 4 weeks or once per month. That way the Full is guaranteed to last as long as desired. In longer months, Reflect will automatically exempt the latest Full from purging when adding a Differential/Incremental to it even if the Full is “expired”. If the latter, set your retention to 1 Full backup.
I think the router USB port “prohibition” is an overgeneralization. The USB 3.x spec only requires 4.5W (900 mA), and 2.0 backward compatibility without supplemental power would require working with only 2.5W (500 mA). The output of the power supply isn’t nearly as much of a factor as the quality of the board and how much power it was designed to allow providing. And on PCs, if there’s a power shortfall, CPU performance is typically the first thing to be sacrificed, specifically to maintain stability of devices like peripherals. (Some laptops have 45W power supplies but can power USB-C devices that can consume 15W. Something has to give in a scenario like that.) A 3.5” HDD wouldn’t be USB powered because it requires more power and also often requires 12V power, whereas USB only provides 5V, which is what 2.5” HDDs use. But yes, unexpected disconnects can definitely cause file system issues on OSes not designed to tolerate quick removal. Linux and macOS to my knowledge both always require that storage devices be unmounted before they are disconnected.
As they killed the free version it had to be coming. The cost of doing business is the cost of doing business. I need to figure out how to raise my price...
Although they been a reliable backup vendor actually supplementing Drive Snapshot, they've since fallen out of favor for me (maybe for good) for Aomei Backupper and Hasleo Backup Suite. Also IFW waiting in the wings
Just in case anyone has issues with Macrium suddenly not working. (although I know most here don't use Optimizers) https://community.ccleaner.com/topi...ger-subkeys-into-the-registry/#comment-340353
