Macrium Reflect

I received the Macrium Reflect 7 upgrade email with an order lookup link, and it seems that I am not even eligible for a 50% discount.

 

That email is for SUPPORT customers only. If you've never had a paid SUPPORT contract along with your license, it does not apply to you.

Be patient...

 

Yep, I reached the same conclusion...

 

Has anyone actually managed to convert a working VHD file with the included "ImgToVHD.exe" ?
Native boot is not working (yes, I do have MBR disk.. Converted GPT --> MBR because of this..) , and I can't get them to boot even in VirtualBox or VMWare Player ...
It's not like if I wouldn't have enuff computer power (got HP Omen 17.3" laptop i7 with Nvidia GTX 1070 8GB DDR5)

 

In past I did convert image to working VirtualBox drive and have had no problems doing it.

 

Hi!

I'm a new user of Macrium Reflect Home.

What's the disadvantage in using "File Write Caching"? It's disabled by default, and only recommended for slow or failed backup process. So, there must be a good reason for disabling it by default.

Also, how does one determine slow or fast backup in Macrium, particularly with regard to HDD? Does a 30-minute full backup of 40GB be considered slow on an HDD?

 

According to your data, that was a slow operation (22.7 MB/s). But speed is relative, and to have useful data you´d have to compare Macrium with other imaging programs, keeping all other things as equal as possible, especially the hardware used.

According to my experience, Macrium is slow to do full backups. When doing other types of operations Macrium can be very fast, search the forum for details.

 

XhenEd, can you tell us what your SOURCE disk is and your TARGET disk (internal <HDD or SSD>, USB <2 or 3>)... these all have an effect on imaging speed.

 

Thanks for the info! Yeah, I really think that it's a slow backup.

Thanks also for the info! It was only the full backup that was, to me, slow. Incremental backup is relatively fast (but given your average time of incremental backup, mine can still be called slow). Mine takes an average of 3-5 minutes incremental backup time.

I tried restore once, because of a failed installation of RollBack Rx (BSOD every boot). I think it took 20-30 minutes restore time. What do you mean by "short term restore"? How do I do that?

Source and Target is the same disk: internal HDD. Mine is a laptop.

The Source (E:) is on a separate partition, but on the same disk, as the Target (C:).

 

If I read you right, you're imaging your C: disk (Source) to your E: disk (Target), yes?

There's a good chance that your laptop HDD is a 5400rpm HDD (common for laptops). If so, this will be one of the slowest images you can make (other than to a USB2 connected disk)... sourcing and targeting the same HDD. These operations fill up the disk operation queue very quickly and take a lot of time due to massive movement of the HDD's positioning mechanism between the blocks being imaged and the blocks being written.

Robin A's suggestion to compare different imagers is a good idea, although I think you'll find them all pretty slow using that particular Source/Target arrangement.

If the laptop supports USB3 and you have such an external USB3 disk, you'll probably find that much faster...

 

Robin A's comments on Macrium being slower than usual is not experienced by all Macrium users. It's a very subjective comment based on individual hardware configurations.

My most recent FULL image (15Feb) of my 63.6gB Windows partition took 6.5-min. This image occurred between an SSD Source partition and a Seagate HDD (7200rpm). As you can see, this is very different than your experience. Even my HDD to HDD (both 7200rpm, not the same disk) is quite a bit quicker than your configuration.

The System's hardware configuration can make a huge difference in imaging speeds.

 

@TheRollbackFrog Yes, you're right! I have 5400rpm HDD. So, this slowness must be really a hardware limitation. Thanks!

So, I should just accept this "slowness". Anyway, it doesn't matter, as long as Macrium Reflect is reliable.

 

So, given this "slowness", does this warrant the enabling of "file write caching"? Should I enable it? What is its disadvantage, given that it's disabled by default?

 

WRITE CACHING offers little to no benefits to large file transfers, especially if the transfers are to the same physical device (like your operation). For small file transfers, it gives the user the appearance of a fast operation but really, in real time, takes the same amount of time to complete.

It first writes file information into blocks of unused RAM (the "cache" in write caching) which is where the appearance of speed is felt. It then must move all that DATA into the real device itself... that can be done no faster than the device can handle it. With INTERNAL disks, having WRITE CACHING on doesn't really do much for normal operation. For external slow disks (USB2) and small files, it seems like the transfer is quite quick... but if you pull that USB2 device too early (before the cache has been emptied into the device), you now have a broken write transfer for that operation and an inconsistent target disk (USB2 device). This is why MicroSloth recommends when using WRITE CACHING for USB2 devices to use the SAFELY REMOVE option in your SystemTray before removing the device... this will insure that the cache transfer is complete before the actual removal.

 

Well, as I mentioned... if your laptop supports USB3, and you can save some coin to buy an external 7200rpm storage device, I'm sure your transfer speeds would increase dramatically.

...and, yes, Macrium Reflect is pretty darn reliable

 

Well I just tried Macrium Free & couldn't find the option to create a differential image from win PE 5 based rescue media. I earlier created a full/base image of system/MS/C drive partitions using rescue media & this time again selected same partitions to image & gave same path to store backup image but it started creating a fresh full image. Is it by design or is this feature missing only in free version?

 

That's not how you do it. Using the RESTORE TAB and steering Reflect to where your latest image is, <click> on the "Other actions" LINK of that selection and SELECT "Create Differential" ("Create Incremental" IS NOT supported in Reflect FREE).

 

Thanks for this info, Froggie! I won't enable it, then.

 

My system config & backup condition seems same as you.

Laptop
5400rpm HDD
C partition 50GB full
D partition backup destination (1 HDD, 2 partition)
6GB RAM

I have tried Macrium Home, Aomei Pro, Todo Workstation, FlashBack V2 & Veeam Endpoint Backup FREE.

I have noticed that all the backup software takes around same amount of time for full backup. All the above mentioned software took around 38-42 mins here.

You see the difference with incremental backup. Hourly incremental backup here -
Todo 20 secs - 2 mins mostly
FlashBack 2-3 mins mostly
Macrium 2-3 mins mostly
Veeam 3-5 mins mostly
Aomei more than 10 mins

On Macrium restore, I have tried once, restored to 3rd incremental backup, completed in 3-5 mins.

I guess, you tried restore to full backup, I have not tried to restore to full backup, dont know how much time Macrium Home take to restore to full backup?

 

If there's an image on the disk and RDR is used during RESTORE (the DEFAULT), it should be pretty quick. If you're restoring the "real" FULL image (no RDR), there's really no reason for it to take much less than the FULL image to begin with (same 2-partition, 1-disk configuration).

 

Ok! So I did that & now facing another issue. After I created a differential image & restored it I got blue recover screen showing msg "a required device isn't connected or can't be accessed Error code:0xc0000225".After booting again with macrium usb I used fix windows boot problems & macrium ran a series of tasks in the newly opened window in the sequence: EFI partition found on disk 1,Removing old BCD, Creating BCD for C:\Windows. After this the system rebooted & started normally. Just to be sure I repeated the same procedure using same differential image & got exact same result & same solution.

Is this normal procedure for Macrium? The only reason I can think of is that by default the option to restore MBR was selected when restoring image which I didn't changed. However my system is win 8.1 on a UEFI/GPT hdd. When I created rescue media I chose iso option. After that I simply extracted the ISO contents to my pen drive which was already "converted to bootable USB" by another imaging software(of course after removing all files by that another imaging software).

 

By default, restoring to FULL image/backup, RDR is enabled/disabled?

And you mean, restore to FULL image/backup with RDR disabled, takes app same time as FULL image/backup creation?

 

When using your Recovery Media, RDR is the DEFAULT for restoration. When it goes to restore, if it figures out you're running an image that is part and parcel of the one it's restoring, it'll use RDR for the restoration. If not, it defaults to a FULL restore. This can be controlled in the "Advanced options" link during the restore.

The FULL restoration (with no Incrementals) needs to perform the same amount of input/output operations (as well as decompression along the way)... the time should be close to the same as a single FULL image. If there's INCs to be processed, the time will be a bit longer.

 

@ TheRollbackFrog ,any suggestions regarding my previous post,hoping for your reply.