Macrium Reflect

Yes MR can recognize EXT4 file system since v5, but it could not read the correct amount of space used in the EXT4 partition. As a result, the imaging of EXT4 with it is not reliable IMO. This is worse than not recognizing EXT4 at all, in that it gave us a false sense of safety assuming MR will do the job. IFL, Acronis, Paragon, and even clonezilla will do the job of imaging EXT4 perfectly.
Not sure about V6 though, I never tried v6. Maybe it approved and can actually image EXT4 now.

 

Right - I agree with all that - seems to be the same issue that AX64 has. I might have to rethink how I've got it set up - currently 3 different incremental backups - weekly, daily, hourly. Perhaps I'll use a couple of GFS backups instead.

 

That's what I was thinking - and automating it with a GFS.

 

Taotoo, I'm not sure how long of a timeline you're interested in having access to, but my GFS uses all the image categories... FULL, DIFF and INC. FULLs are set to no more than 2 (allows me access to from 1-2 mo. worth), DIFFs are set to 6 (allows guaranteed weekly access to 1-2 mo worth), and INCs set to 7 which crawl along that baseline without any Synthetic management (wouldn't work anyway under this setup).

This allows daily access to the most recent 7-days making restorations to any of those points very quick. Anything earlier than that is fast as it only requires DIFF and FULL access. The schema works very well for permanent access to from 1-2-mo worth of data... not every day, of course.

I do manual snapshots under a separate schema.

 

Ideally I want something like that, but additionally hourly backups too. So I'd have one or two fulls as per your example, then another backup with something like a full every three days (keep one), a daily diff (keep two), and hourly incrementals (keep six).

So that would leave me with probably 3 fulls, which is what I have now with the three different incremental schemes I'm using. Just doesn't feel very efficient.

What I really want is:
1. (Dare I say it) Rollback Rx taking hourly snapshots of my system drive, and deleting them after 2 days or so (to stop the SSD getting full).
2. Imaging software backing up both system and data drives, and covering a few weeks or months with a GFS or something (will probably rarely need to actually restore anything, so the details of this aren't so important)
3. Some sort of file versioning system for my data drive (but every system I've tried is more trouble than it's worth IMO).

I suspect I'll never actually get there...

 

Panagiotis, Macrium states that RDR and RDC support the NTFS file system only.

Incremental and Differential images have no file system dependencies. You can even create Diff/Inc images of unformatted partitions (good way to catch those hidden RootKits )

Imaging clusters in use and changed clusters (intelligent copy) is limited to FAT16, FAT32, NTFS and Ext 2,3,4.

 

Thank you froggie and oliverjia.
You saved me a lot of time on tests. I guess I'll leave ext4 to IFL for the time being.

Panagiotis

 

I just did my first MR6 restore (from within the PC) and am very pleased to say it was much faster than I expected. The restore to 5:30 am yesterday (it is now 1:43 am) took all of 2 min. This with my storage drive plugged into a USB 2 port rather than a USB 3 port. Peter, I have to agree with you, WOW.

 

Hi

I`ve read in the thread that some have had some minor issues with restore in Macrium and Macrium also have had a update for the program regarding the restore function . For me its restore function has been disasterous . Following is my letter to their support ;
Hi


Your programs restore function has **possibly offensive words removed** and severly damaged my pc twice now !!!


I have used the free version over the years and found it to be very good but a little pricey and at the slow side so i havent bought it . When the rapid restore function came and people at Wilders security forum was thrilled i decided to test v.6 out and i liked what i saw . So i bought it . When i had used it for a while and done some testing with the functions , especially the restore , one day recovery boot meny option did not work because it was missing ??!! So , i of course did a reinstall and immediately tested the restore funtion again and the pc frooze while restarting after done restore and gave a blue screen . Restarted it and after several try outs it did so . But everything that had with boot to do was extreeemly slow , the inbuilt functions from HP like going to bios e.t.c and usual boot .
I tested a new restore and this time it **possibly offensive words removed** severly and did not work at all . Nothing worked . Always bluescreen . I used hours to try to restore it all the different ways possible but nothing functioned as it should work and now tapping the buttons for going to bios e.t.c toke minutes to respond instead of seconds before . It did not read anything well so it was impossible to reinstall by DVD or USB . I left it to repair and got it back 2 weeks later in working order . Since i was not shure what caused it , Macrium or hardware , but suspected Macrium to be behind it i decided to try out the recovery function again . THE SAME SCENARIO HAPPENED AGAIN !!! but this time the pc accepted the W8 installation disk but first after 5 hours of trying to reinstall/recover in all ways possible , i of course used the sudden
option in a hurry . During the time of trouble all things boot toke about 5 minutes , instead of the usual 40sec but this time it actually booted in to the Os which worked pretty fine . After the reinstall and formating and partitioning of the pc the most severe problems was gone but all things boot , as the first time , was and is very slow so there the problems still exists . I am just wondering for myself how that is possible after reinstallation and my answer is that it damaged the hardware in some way but anyhow , i hope you have som tool that can fix this otherwise you will have to pay for repair .


Demanding a fast reply !!!

END of letter .

Now i wonder , is anyone else here on Wilders having real issues or is it just me

For thoose who wonders if they have potential issues i say , test the restore function extensively and you will get an answer and hopefully it will be a good one .

 

I don't think that this would be attributable to Reflect, it sounds more like a hardware issue. I'm assuming that you're referring to pressing a key at POST time to enter BIOS.

 

PB1, your problem description didn't spell this out, but when you first did your Macrium restore (after the reINSTALL following your BOOT menu item dissappearing) and it failed, the very next step would have been to use an external MACRIUM RECOVERY MEDIUM, change its DEFAULT setting to NO RAPID DATA RESTORE, then attempt the restoration.

The Recovery Media DEFAULT is set to RDR, which is NOT what you want to use when there are issues with the current system (BOOT options dissappearing for no reason). That function is great if you're returning to a previous time point in your backup chain, but possibly risky when trying to RDR a flakey system. Personally, I would NEVER use RDR to restore what appears to be a flakey system.

A FULL (non-RDR) restore should be the only attempt at that point... try it again, it should work just fine.

 

Hi guys

Hardware problem ?... i dont think so because of the fact that it worked fine before when i used a Macrium disc to restore but when i changed to boot recovery it failed after 4 or 5 times . Both before and after the repair at the repair shop . They of course look at eventual disc issues amongst other things when they repair and go through a pc so , hardware problem no . But i do not rule it out totally . It is just 6 months old by the way .

The suggestion of how to handle a RDR restore when trouble has occured was a good one that i will remember for an eventual future but it do not help me now . I did the restore from Usb 3.0 as i always do .

I am just wondering what it did since my boot time has gotten from 40sec to 1min 40 for all boots , bios , hardwarecheck environment , recovery , everything . The rest works fine but is a little bit slower then before . The first time it happened i had a HDD disk and now after the repair i had switched to a Samsung 850evo SSD . Brand new . I have also tried Aomei and Ax64 before while having the HDD without this type of problems .

My joy over a fast flawless functioning pc after the repair and switch to SSD was a short one . The fact that it happened in the exact same way both times is a big lead but how to interpretet that i do not know .

Thank you for showing interest , if anyone have any suggestion please tell . I am talking to Nick at Macrium by E-mail now so hopefully he has some wizardlike suggestions how to fix this .

Remember this , they did an update regarding the restore function recently .

 

Well, for me the WOW was premature. I just completed a 2nd RDR restore and this time went back 2 incrementals (the first restore posted about above was back 1 incremental) and this time the restore took 39 min while the 1st on took 2 min. BTW the parameters for the restore were the same for both. Most of the time the app was searching for changes, all other steps went as hoped/expected.

 

@pb1

so it did work for 3-4 times after switching to boot recovery? What else happened after the 3rd or 4th time? Did you change anything? Was it an update to Reflect and if so, from what version to what version?

There was a big clue when using RDR with a new disk, it ends in a few seconds, which should be recognized as meaning that it did absolutely nothing and can't be used. Run the Restore again, UNtick the RDR option and it should take (about) 10-20 minutes (depends on the size of the image and compression of the image and the real size of the final restored OS (+data?).

Did you go backwards in versions, assuming it was Reflect and not the OS which you re-installed? Your story is a bit confusing.

 

Hi

I did not do any changes to the pc exept updating their program after the first event so it should not be that .

I re-installed the Os with a W8.1 installation disc .

But an interesting question is ; how could the WinPE environment vanish ?...and how could that have a bad effect at the pc`s hardware when reinstalled witch caused the crasch after a new restore attempt .

 

I guess that I'm looking for a brief point-by-point, non-prose explanation.
Example:
1) I tried Reflect V6, liked it and bought it and installed version 6.0.xxx on Win 8.1.
2) I had 3-4 successful restores
3) I updated Reflect to 6.0.yyy
4) I no longer had the boot menu
5) I tried to restore an image created with 6.0.xxx with the option RDR ticked and got a blue screen
6) I tried to.......... and so on
I realize that you're Swedish and English isn't your native language so this format will be easier for us to follow when there are spelling or grammatical errors.
The example above isn't an attempt by me to recount what you said but merely to show how best to describe what happened. When you use prose, simply stringing everything together along with spelling and grammatical errors it's hard to understand and you may be missing something as well. Provide as much real information as you can.

 

The only interesting in this story is the questions i posed before , the rest is just bla bla .

And the questions are ;
How could the WinPE environment vanish ?
When reinstalling that environment how could it cause a crasch when trying a new restore ?
How could that crasch have the effect it has on the hardware ?

The rest is as i said just bla bla . Maybe the fact that i used to restore with a Macrium disc for weeks and no problem before turning to boot recovery menu option is also interesting but that is it .

 

Without more info there are no answers, just guesses, and so your questions become bla-bla-bla. Sorry, but that's the way it is. People will give up trying to help you if you don't help them understand by providing enough information.

 

I am not looking for the solution here on Wilders because i do not think anyone else then Macrium can do that i just want to discuss how it could happen and why it affected the hardware and how a potential solution could be . How to look for it , what to look for . Thoose questions i posed above in my former post are the key questions to an understanding of it . And all this in a technical sense without being technical , if you know what i mean .

And of course as i wrote in my first post i wonder if anyone else has experienced similar issues sometime , anytime . The fact that an installed WinPE environment can just vanish according to the Macrium program is an interesting fact alone . For thoose who are interested .

 

pb1, though I do not fully understand what happened in your case, but the answer to your question "how could the WinPE vanish" is very simple. Someone deleted the Macrium Recovery Wim file from your boot drive. If you do that then WinPE will vanish from your system. Maybe you have another software that restored the original bootloader and removed the references to the Macrium Wim file and this is why it failed to load. As per my understanding you were able to restore using an external Macrium Recovery media, so there is nothing wrong with Macrium. Something else is going on here.

 

Peter have you noticed disk fragmentation with multiple RDR enabled restores? The way the RDR process is supposed to work should cause massive disk fragmentation if you restore often.