CBT isn't the only new feature. There's also viBoot, and then 7.1 added Macrium Image Guardian, which I personally think should have been the banner feature for 7.0 since it's more relevant to more people than either CBT or viBoot. An upcoming release will also add WiFi support for Rescue Media and some improvements around the Rescue Media builder itself. And then there are smaller improvements as well, such as: - Better display DPI scaling support - Warnings about a job that would restore formerly encrypted partitions onto unencrypted targets - The ability to view the progress of a backup job that started while you weren't logged in - Popup notifications that show the name of the job that's about to run for at-a-glance convenience so the user can decide whether they may want to postpone it - The ability to have scheduled jobs run as the SYSTEM account so you no longer have to store admin credentials with Reflect to run scheduled backups. The latter could cause scheduled backups to break if that account's password was ever changed and the user forgot to update the credentials stored with Reflect. - The ability to store credentials for network targets so the user running the backup doesn't have to have write access. This is necessary if you run backups as the SYSTEM account of course, but even if you want to use your own user account for scheduled backups, this allows you to grant your own account just read-only access to your backup share as a ransomware protection measure during your everyday use, while still granting Reflect write access.
Thanks to all for your inputs. Reflect v6.3.1852 is still working well for me on Win10 , so adhering to the the saying "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" I'll stay with it until I (or others here) incur issues.
Perfectly reasonable viewpoint, and I certainly kept clients on V6 for the exact same reason during the early days of V7 even though some had a free upgrade available. I just wanted to list some of the other new features that were available in case any of them appealed to you. I ended up moving one client to V7 after things stabilized because they're running it on an unattended server where the jobs can run 8+ hours, so being able to log in and check the progress of a job that started while nobody was logged in became handy there. And on my own PC, I like the fact that DPI scaling support is better because my laptop panel's resolution is 3200x1800, and on V6 (last I checked, anyway) the activity window wasn't DPI-aware, which meant that text was microscopic.
I have been using v.6 happily for some time now. No problems at all. I am thinking now of upgrading via the program. If I upgrade and decide to revert back to V.6 is this as simple as going back to a previous V.6 image. Are v.6 images compatible with V.7 software? This no doubt has been addressed here. Just can't find it.
When the new Rescue Media Builder is released, I want to start out with an empty USB flash drive. What’s the best way to reuse an existing Macrium rescue flash drive for this purpose? Should I format it or just delete all the Macrium files and folders? I’m not sure if there are any hidden or system files that would be missed if I just did a plain file delete.
You don't even need to do that much. Not only can you use V6 images with Reflect V7, but you can use V7 images with reasonably recent versions of Reflect V6, so if needed, you could simply uninstall V7, reinstall V6, and then you'll still be able to use V6 to work with the backups you created with V7, including building Diffs from Full backups that were created on V7. Someone recently asked in the Macrium forums how old their Rescue Media could be and still work with files created by the latest release of Reflect. Macrium's answer was that Reflect 6.1 added support for Delta Incremental Indexing, so if you're using Incrementals with that option enabled (on by default in V7, off by default in V6), then you'd need at least 6.1 to work with those. If you're NOT using those, then apparently you can go back even farther. Macrium didn't specify just how far, but even 6.1 and the subsequent releases that dealt with bugs related to Delta Incrementals came out over 2.5 years ago, so you should have absolutely no problem going back to V6 and carrying on as if you never even had V7 if necessary. In fact, if you're on a paid version, the most recent few releases of V6 can even activate using V7 keys. Formatting is quick and easy if you don't have any other data you want to keep on your flash drive. Otherwise, as long as you have "Show hidden files" enabled, you'd be able to see everything that the Rescue Media wizard puts on the drive and therefore do a regular file delete. That said, it's completely unnecessary. The new Rescue Media Builder will overwrite any existing files that it needs to, and any files that are left over won't interfere with anything, with the POSSIBLE exception of incompatible drivers that might be left in your Drivers folder if you decide to change the version of WinPE you use, since RMBuilder doesn't actively purge data -- but a WinPE change isn't required by the new RMBuilder. The new RMBuilder doesn't actually change much of anything in terms of what ends up on the flash drive. There's a new RMBuilder.xml file that gets created, but the WiFi and WinRE support only affect the contents of the Boot.wim file that always gets created. The other new aspects of RMBuilder pertain to the application itself, not the types of files that end up on the Rescue Media itself.
Thanks. If I choose the WinRE option instead of WinPE, will all the old WinPE files on the flash drive be overwritten?
Yes. The WinPE/WinRE environment that actually loads is contained entirely in the Boot.wim file. The other files on the root of the flash drive that pertain to the WinPE version are ancillary files like bootloaders and localization files, but the names and locations of those files haven't really changed since the Vista days except to be expanded to support things like UEFI and maybe additional languages. So if older versions of those need to be updated, RMBuilder will overwrite them automatically, and any files that aren't required by the new build won't create any problems by sticking around, nor will they take up a meaningful amount of space. But you can certainly format if it makes you feel comfortable, in fact if you're running Win10 1709 and building your Rescue environment with WinPE/RE 10 1709 or later, you would have the option of creating and using a multi-partition flash drive. This setup would allow you to have a relatively small FAT32 partition for Rescue Media so that you can support UEFI booting, and then a larger NTFS partition where you can store files larger than 4GB, including even Reflect backups.
@jphughan Thank you very much for taking the time for the detailed answer to my question. Much appreciated.
Thank you so much for your advice, I already have started the thread. https://www.wilderssecurity.com/threads/minitool-shadowmaker-2-0-the-backup-software.404329/
Is there any active discount for Reflect Home going on? I have searched but found no active promotions anywhere. I really could use another license but I can keep using the free version until Black Friday.
If you already have one, I think it would make more sense to convert to the 4-pack, since it costs basically the same as 2 full ones, so I believe the upgrade cost from an existing single license is basically the cost of another one.
I contacted their sales department to see if they can upgrade my single license to the 4 pack... I'd rather have extra licenses even if I won't need all of them now...
Looking at the Server editions they offer two options: Server and Server Plus with Server Plus having the added benefit of Exchange Mailbox Restore and SQL continuous backup Full SQL & Exchange Server backup & recovery What exectly are the benefits of the two bullet points? We do use sql on our server but the previous server software did not have this listed nor do I see this listed for Terabyte.
Bullet #1: SQL Databases on many servers get quite large, very very large. This feature will do for SQL Databases alone what the Incremental whole partition/disk feature does for your disk. It can be set up to take point-in-time Incrementals of the Database itself. This allows restoration of SQL Databases in a very short time due to the size of the restored point-in-time and the RDR type of restoration (only the differences between the existing Database and the restored point.... a very quick restore. See HERE for discussion... Bullet #2: Actually, THIS is a good place to start (in their knowledge base) to get the hang of all the Server PLUS features...
If you only back up SQL and Exchange as part of the rest of your system, then your only real recovery options are restoring the entire SQL instance state as a unit by restoring all of the databases together, unless you want to restore to a completely separate system, then extract what you want and bring it back to your production system through some other means. When you have native backup support for SQL and Exchange, you can restore things like individual databases within the instance (SQL) or individual mailboxes/messages (Exchange) without rolling back everything else. If you only have SQL as an engine for some application you use (SQL Express is popular for this), then you can probably pass on this, but if you use SQL for a “real” application that users interact with and where having to roll back everything to your last regular backup just to undo one hapless user’s unintended change would be too costly, then I would absolutely get Server Plus.
Why are the sizes of the Differential backups Win10 v1709 x64 more than the size of the Full backup? In Win10 v1607 x64 everything is fine. MR v7.1.2722, completely identical settings.
@aldist - unless that v1709 System is only about 7-8gB in real size (almost impossible for a full W10 installation), that cannot be a FULL image. your v1607 FULL looks much more reasonable. If you mount that small FULL for browsing, you should have a problem mounting it, I believe.
"Danger, Will Robinson... Danger, DANGER!! I can't think of a better way to start off this post except the above quote from "Lost In Space." Turns out, 3-days ago, Microsoft slipped in, very quietly BTW, a W10 SCU v1803 update from 171331.1 to 17134.137. Unknown to me, my 10pm daily Incremental (followed by a System ShutDown) recorded a 14gB daily Incremental ("Holy Storage, Batman!!") which turns out to be appx. 40% of my normal Full image size... WTF! Well, a quick memory scan (my own head) reminded me that W10 always leaves the old System around in case you wanna go backwards after a failed update... something us Reflect users really don't need at all. Anyway, I cleaned up that mess and made another image which was almost as big (the real disk surface image changes)... thought I was out of the woods. Not so quick, Frog person. That update changed almost all of my W10 tweaks (the most serious being turning back on the FastStartup Power option which screws up my physical dual-BOOTing (separate disk) operation. Other tweaks as well were changed... probably don't know all of them as of yet. Then I find out it completely removed applications I had installed in the System32 folder, very important ones I use in my System/Security setup to protect myself against possible RansomWare. This tells me that the upgrade probably removed the whole previous folder and installed a new one. This will have to make me rethink where these special applications need to live. <SOAPBOX>The bottom line here, at least IMHO, is that Windows 10, ANY VERSION, has become an absolute pariah to anyone who wishes to manage their own System. Activities like this have never happened in the past and MicroSloth doesn't appear to give a crap at all about changes like this and how they affect their users. This is just another nail in the Windows coffin for me and accelerates my move to Linux MINT... I don't have far to go and this makes me want to get there as fast as I can. </SOAPBOX>
The 1709 image is in fact a Full, since its name ends in "00-00", which is unique to Fulls -- but it may not be a Full of everything you want. 1709 may have added a new Recovery partition, which in turn may have caused the partitions included in your backup to change. If your Win10 1607 Full backups were 15GB, it isn't plausible that your 1709 backups would suddenly be significantly smaller unless you've massively changed your work environment -- and if you performed an in-place upgrade, then your 1709 backups should actually be larger because as TheRollbackFrog said above, you'll have your old 1607 installation still cached for a while. I would edit your definition file to make sure that you're still backing up the partitions that you mean to be. But even that wouldn't explain why the Diffs in the same set would be larger. The only way I can think that would even be possible would be if the average compressibility of your data changed somehow between the Full and the Diffs? And I doubt this is relevant to this issue, but 7.1.2722 is several releases behind the current version in case that isn't intended. There have been some reasonably important fixes and nice enhancements since then.
1709: 1 month system, clean installation (not upgrade), system partition HDD 40 GB, 27 GB is occupied. MR v7.1.2963 There are no hidden partitions. Definition file created a new one. Default compression settings. Restoring from images is normal. 1607: 2 years system, clean installation (not upgrade), a lot of software, system partition SSD 120GB. MR v7.1.2722. There are no hidden sections. Default compression settings. Restoring from images is normal.
Ok, well that explains the size difference for the Fulls. I'm surprised that 27GB compressed down to 5.4 GB though! I'm also surprised that neither of your systems has any hidden partitions. At the very least you should have a Recovery partition unless you manually deleted it, which isn't especially recommended because it's required if you ever want to use BitLocker, and Windows 10 upgrades will create one if it doesn't exist anyway. And in a system set up for UEFI booting, you'd need to have EFI and MSR partitions as well. If you meant that you're not including any hidden partitions in your backups, you definitely should. They're small and practically never change, so the impact on the size of your backups will be minimal, but they can make the difference between a successful and failed restore, especially when restoring to an empty disk. They may also need to be in the image if you ever want to use viBoot. As for the size of the Diffs, if this behavior continues, the next test would be to disable compression to see what the true difference is between the amount of data backed up in your Full vs. Diffs. You could also try this option.
