Macrium Reflect

When i restore (40GB on SSD) daily differential (image is also on ssd) it take 5min to restore with "Rapid Data Restore."
Changes was only 800meg.
It takes 4 min to look for changes!

 

I'm now finding the same, albeit with incrementals - it used to take 2m, now about 4m30s. Not sure if it's chain length or perhaps chain age that's the issue (could it be something like internal/external fragmentation of the baseline's file table due to merging?)

 

Can you do a fast restore with MR from the recovery media or only full?

 

Interesting. I will try that. What do you mean when you say that to be sure I must restore to a blank storage volume? Why does it have to be a blank storage volume? Are you saying that Macrium doesnt do a full restore? That it looks whats on the disk and restores only the necessary parts?

 

That's the only way you can tell for sure whether an imaging program is capturing Rollback Rx's snapshot data... without that, it's useless for RBrx and its snapshots. If it can pass that test, then you know it'll handle Rollback. To date, the only way to do that successfully is with FULL RAW volume imaging... all the sectors in the protected partition, not just the "used" ones.

That's what I'm saying. That is Macrium v6's DEFAULT mode of restoration... "Rapid Data Restore"... that's why its restoration is so fast. If you want it to do a COLD restore, the RDR feature must be unCHECKed during your visit to the Restore SUMMARY window (Advanced Options).

 

RAPID DATA RESTORE is the DEFAULT for external Recovery Media. My observation has shown that when doing change discovery under LIVE Windows, it is a much faster process than change discovery on the Recovery Media... why, I know not.

 

I'm in the process of creating my backup plan. It will be something like a monthly FULL, weekly DIFF and daily INC.

I'm wondering, what happen in case of conflict. I mean, if all my backups are scheduled to run at 1:00AM, what will happen at the first day of the month when the daily INC will want to run at the same time as the FULL backup?

If I understand the demo video correctly ( http://youtu.be/yE1bDUZlXa0 ), FULL win over DIFF & INC; DIFF win over INC.

 

That's exactly what will happen. If you have a FULL and DIFF using the same backup definition, the FULL will run and the DIF will be deferred. Same thing will happen if you have a DIF and INC scheduled for the same time with the same def... DIF will run. If all three are scheduled, the FULL will run. If you think about it, it makes perfect sense.

 

OK, thanks

As to the full cold if AX64 restore (either hot or cold) fails,,,,thats a shame, I was hoping that a delta restore would do the trick in this case.

 

BG, it really can't 'cause you really don't know the integrity of the file system after a failed or incomplete restore. It's that file system that MRv6 RDR uses to make its decision on what to restore. Without a successful restore, the status between the file system and the data is incomplete.

 

Thanks for the information. Now I understand better.

 

I realize that now but originally thought that my days of full cold restore were behind me. I am grateful for you having pointed it out before I got myself into trouble.

 

I think you need to revisit your judgement concerning COLD restores and MRv6 after you use it for a while... you may never even see an incomplete restore, who knows.

I would say the perfect imager (and hardware, of course) would never require a COLD restore until you need to replace your storage elements... then it would be required.

Are we there yet...?

 

Thank you.
I just wanted to be sure because it become important to know what kind of backup is made before you decide the retentions rules.

 

I'm not sure why (don't know your scheme) but DIFs are based on the latest FULL and INCs are based on the latest DIF or INC depending on what came before the INC being taken.

 

I am doing my hot restores with AX64, I was hoping that if AX64 hot failed I could then use MR 6 to do a quick restore. I get that this is not the case so,,,,,,,,

 

I am surprised to hear this, I have tried to create a manual snap in MR 6 and it was indicated that the incremental snap I wanted to create would take apx 20 min to create. I canceled the process as I did not have 20 min to wait before I wanted to test the program I wanted to test. 20 min is not at all fast in my book as I am used to AX64 doing it in under 2 min. If I want to test a program I would want to do the manual incremental snap, test the program, and restore. I am looking at the time to do the entire process in MR not just the restore. Furthermore, the time to create the incremental snap will be even greater if there are any merging (MR calls this "consolidation") of snaps to be performed.

Or am I doing something wrong here,,,,,,,,,

Also, while I am posting,,,,,, when MR 6 is creating a snap I find that my PC slows to a crawl,,,,,,, and if something else starts,,,,like for instance an hourly AX64 snap or if I am working when the scheduled daily snap is created,,,,,,both processes, the MR snap creation and whatever else is happening on the PC, slow down considerably. So the idea of hourly snaps in MR is not very appealing.

This is not an issue if I am using MR to only do daily backups using the GFC schedule as I have set the time to do these backups at 5:30 am. I generally am not on the PC at this time but the other night I was and the slowdown was quite irritating. Mind you, if I had my backup drive plugged into a USB 3 port instead of a USB 2 port, and if I had a solid state drive, then perhaps this would not be an issue.

Or am I missing something here as well.

 

Barry and others,

I haven't seen anyone describe what sort of files are required to be backed up every hour. If they are really important, is an hourly backup frequent enough?

 

LOL. I actually have the same question.

IMHO, it's a bit intense to do hourly backup.

I have my OS and data partitions separated. I have different backup schemes for different files based on their relative importance. The most important ones are in my dropbox folder for auto backup; less important ones I do daily backup manually (Windows Explorere, LOL) to two external HDDs; then the least important data are backupped manually on a weekly basis to an external HDD.

Hourly backup to an single physical HDD won't really save your data if disaster strikes. So I don't really see any point for an hourly backup for data that are so important as an hourly backup is needed.

 

I was thinking in terms of 5 seconds for those really important files.

 

Only way is to use a cloud solution.
For a locally installed imaging apps, more incremental/differential backups means larger possibility of glitches/errors. Once an error occurs, your data are doomed.
Also, it appears the imaging app takes up a lot of computing resources when doing backup (...slows to a crawl, as Barry mentioned). So I don't think it's practical to do backup every 5 seconds. I don't see such need for any data either.

 

It is easy to do ("When Files Change") and I use it when I'm creating files that I want backed up now, not in a hour. Such as a whole series of scripted Photoshopped images that I don't want to do again.

 

How did you do the backup? To multiple HDDs?
If to a single HDD, I don't see any point doing this.

 

I'm not sure I follow your logic? Having a file on two drives is better than only having it on one drive. Sure, two backups are even better.