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Macrium Reflect

Seek assistance with all types of tech. - computer, phone, TV, heating controls etc.
Infrasonic
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Macrium Reflect

#261266

Postby Infrasonic » October 31st, 2019, 12:12 pm

There's currently a 20% discount offer on untill the 7th of November if you are interested in upgrading to the paid for option.
https://www.macrium.com/products/home?u ... 3S-R8L-JL1

Usual caveats, no connection, just a happy user et al.

88V8
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Re: Macrium Reflect

#261729

Postby 88V8 » November 2nd, 2019, 7:45 pm

If I want to backup before switching to W10, do I need the paid version or will the Free do the job?
Currently using Norton Ghost as a weekly backup to a HDD, and over the years have twice restored from it after a crash.

V8

Breelander
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Re: Macrium Reflect

#261741

Postby Breelander » November 2nd, 2019, 8:53 pm

88V8 wrote:If I want to backup before switching to W10, do I need the paid version or will the Free do the job?


The free version will do everything you need to perform a full backup and restore of your system.

A comparison table of the features in each version can be seen here. The paid-for extras are useful additions, but not essential if all you want is a full backup of your system.

https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree

Infrasonic
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Re: Macrium Reflect

#265500

Postby Infrasonic » November 19th, 2019, 4:41 pm

They're now doing a Black Friday 50% off deal (£23.98) valid until the 2nd of December...https://www.macrium.com/products/home?u ... Y8-6P7-FQL

Breelander
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Re: Macrium Reflect

#265519

Postby Breelander » November 19th, 2019, 5:18 pm

Infrasonic wrote:They're now doing a Black Friday 50% off deal (£23.98)...


...or £47.48 for a four-pack.

As I have been relying on the Free edition for years, I thought it was about time I showed my appreciation by actually paying for it :D

yorkshirelad1
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Re: Macrium Reflect

#265712

Postby yorkshirelad1 » November 20th, 2019, 10:32 am

Breelander wrote:
Infrasonic wrote:They're now doing a Black Friday 50% off deal (£23.98)...


...or £47.48 for a four-pack.

As I have been relying on the Free edition for years, I thought it was about time I showed my appreciation by actually paying for it :D


+1

(Mind you, I wish I'd waited for the 50% Black Friday offer, I purchased on the 7th Nov 20% offer :D )

Infrasonic
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Re: Macrium Reflect

#268471

Postby Infrasonic » December 2nd, 2019, 10:22 am

Quick question for those that have taken the plunge and upgraded to the paid for version from free, what settings does MR change automatically?
I haven't got time at the moment to go through all the advanced settings, generally the MR defaults are pretty much spot on, but I would like to take advantage of the Deltacopy/restore option as it is faster(?). (I noticed it turned Image Guardian on by default.)

TIA

I

Breelander
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Re: Macrium Reflect

#268552

Postby Breelander » December 2nd, 2019, 4:23 pm

Infrasonic wrote:...upgraded to the paid for version from free, what settings does MR change automatically?
...I would like to take advantage of the Deltacopy/restore option as it is faster(?). (I noticed it turned Image Guardian on by default.)


Upgrading from Free to Home preserved all my settings for those features that are not Premium features (ie. most of them). For the Premium features, as I recall Rapid Delta Restore was enabled by default, along with Image Guardian as you note.

As it happens, I've already seen rapid delta restore in action. There was a beneficial 'bug' in v.7.2.4063 where delta restore was accidentally left enabled in Free, so I can confirm that it can be a very fast restore. This is particularly true if there are few differences between the image and the destination. To ensure that differences are kept to a minimum, don't defrag the HDD after it has been imaged. Turn off automatic defrag and only defrag before the next Full image.

There is an equivalent 'speed up' option for creating incremental/differential images called Changed Block Tracker. It can be enabled/disabled individually for each ntfs partition, select a partition and you'll find it in the Actions drop-down menu. It should be enabled by default in Home.

https://knowledgebase.macrium.com/displ ... ck+Tracker

Infrasonic
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Re: Macrium Reflect

#268558

Postby Infrasonic » December 2nd, 2019, 4:43 pm

^^ Thanks Bree, very helpful as ever! (And the defrag advice is well aimed in my case as I'm a bit of HDD defrag and SSD 'optimise' addict...).

Breelander
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Re: Macrium Reflect

#268563

Postby Breelander » December 2nd, 2019, 4:55 pm

Infrasonic wrote:... the defrag advice is well aimed in my case as I'm a bit of HDD defrag and SSD 'optimise' addict...


Defrag on an HDD counts as a 'change' for Macrium because even though the files are unchanged they may be moved to a different sector. This doesn't matter for a Full image, but if defrag is used after the Full it will increase the size required for the next Differential or Incremental. I don't think an SSD Trim will have any such effect.

Infrasonic
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Re: Macrium Reflect

#268579

Postby Infrasonic » December 2nd, 2019, 5:26 pm

Breelander wrote:
Infrasonic wrote:... the defrag advice is well aimed in my case as I'm a bit of HDD defrag and SSD 'optimise' addict...


Defrag on an HDD counts as a 'change' for Macrium because even though the files are unchanged they may be moved to a different sector. This doesn't matter for a Full image, but if defrag is used after the Full it will increase the size required for the next Differential or Incremental. I don't think an SSD Trim will have any such effect.


Thinking about it I'd agree with you, as it's marking cells rather than 'moving' anything.
I've got a recent Samsung T5 USB SSD, so I'll run some experiments at some point on the MR / Trim front and report back if it's an issue.

Breelander
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Re: Macrium Reflect

#268601

Postby Breelander » December 2nd, 2019, 6:51 pm

Infrasonic wrote:..I'll run some experiments at some point on the MR / Trim front and report back if it's an issue.


It shouldn't be an issue. Internally SSDs will move blocks of data around for wear levelling purposes. But externally that is not an issue as the LBA will be unchanged, being remapped internally to wherever the data happens to be at the moment.

neversay
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Re: Macrium Reflect

#269199

Postby neversay » December 5th, 2019, 9:02 am

Infrasonic wrote:They're now doing a Black Friday 50% off deal (£23.98) valid until the 2nd of December...https://www.macrium.com/products/home?u ... Y8-6P7-FQL


Just to note that the 50% off deal is still valid as of today Dec 5th.

Thanks for the tip @Infrasonic and others here for the useful advice/reminders on backups.

doug2500
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Re: Macrium Reflect

#269566

Postby doug2500 » December 6th, 2019, 12:02 pm

Apologies if this isn't the best place to ask but...

Using Macrium reflect to make a back up in case upgrading to W10 from W7 goes very wrong , should I image or clone?

If I continue to use it in future in case of crashes is an image or clone better?

I also read windows can't boot from a USB, so would I be better making a disk rather than using a mobile ssd?

And finally, Macrium wants me to make a rescue media. Would an image (or clone) supersede this, or do I need both?

I get the gist of what I'm doing but not the detail and I'm a bit lost.

Thanks very much for any help.

Breelander
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Re: Macrium Reflect

#269700

Postby Breelander » December 6th, 2019, 7:00 pm

doug2500 wrote:Apologies if this isn't the best place to ask but...

Using Macrium reflect to make a back up in case upgrading to W10 from W7 goes very wrong , should I image or clone?


Create an image of the partition(s) required to backup and restore Windows. If you install Macrium on the W7 machine there will be an option to do just this on the left in the Backup tab.

If I continue to use it in future in case of crashes is an image or clone better?


An image.

I also read windows can't boot from a USB, so would I be better making a disk rather than using a mobile ssd?
And finally, Macrium wants me to make a rescue media. Would an image (or clone) supersede this, or do I need both?


It's only the Windows OS itself which cannot be installed and run from an external USB. You can boot from any other type of bootable USB, eg. Windows install media or the Macrium rescue USB.

You should make your Macrium images to an external HDD, and create the Macrium rescue USB. To restore an image, boot from the Macrium USB and connect the external HDD. You can then browse for and restore any image you have made. You do not need to make new rescue media each time you make an image, it only needs to be made again after a significant update to your installed Macrium. Minor updates are not (generally) significant, but a major update (eg v7 to v8 if/when that happens) is a major update. For peace of mind, update your rescue media whenever you update Macrium.

quelquod
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Re: Macrium Reflect

#269780

Postby quelquod » December 7th, 2019, 10:34 am

If you clone a disk rather than store images can it not then be restored (by cloning it back again) or is it only practical to swap it into the machine to use it later? I realise of course that this isn’t selective for just a Windows partition.
Cloning is a little more convenient sometimes rather than bothering to size several partitions on the backup disk to suit images of the partitions on the one being backed up if that’s how it’s set up.

Infrasonic
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Re: Macrium Reflect

#269785

Postby Infrasonic » December 7th, 2019, 11:08 am

quelquod wrote:If you clone a disk rather than store images can it not then be restored (by cloning it back again) or is it only practical to swap it into the machine to use it later? I realise of course that this isn’t selective for just a Windows partition.
Cloning is a little more convenient sometimes rather than bothering to size several partitions on the backup disk to suit images of the partitions on the one being backed up if that’s how it’s set up.



Horses for courses really.
I use both backups on a schedule and clones (I have W10 + Linux multi boot options on desktops as a default so I can continue as is even after a disk failure).
There are quite a few variables, including if you have the free or paid for MR (free won't do folders and files for instance, paid will. W10 'File History' is one local option for the former as well as the cloud variables with 'versioning' for offsite).
I don't clone on a regular basis though, it's more of an occasional thing to get a bootable system disk in case of armageddon. (It's happened once so far after an SSD C drive complete failure, I just booted to the cloned W10 HDD and carried on.)
I'd familiarise yourself with both.

Infrasonic
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Re: Macrium Reflect

#269799

Postby Infrasonic » December 7th, 2019, 11:36 am

Just to add I use EasyBCD to sort out multiboot. It's basically bcdedit (command line) but as a GUI app. Free, it works, but on a (U)EFI system you'll get a warning about many of the extended functions not working (they'll be greyed out). It could do with an update really... For basic multibooting it will still work without issue.
If you're a command line wiz then 'bcdedit' will do it all as well. (I keep meaning to learn it properly...).

mc2fool
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Re: Macrium Reflect

#269817

Postby mc2fool » December 7th, 2019, 1:02 pm

quelquod wrote:Cloning is a little more convenient sometimes rather than bothering to size several partitions on the backup disk to suit images of the partitions on the one being backed up if that’s how it’s set up.

No, that isn't. An image, which is just one file, contains the backup of as many partitions as you want (all of them usually), and there's no need to partition the backup disk at all, other than, obviously, having one big enough to fit as many images as you want to keep.

doug2500
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Re: Macrium Reflect

#269840

Postby doug2500 » December 7th, 2019, 3:22 pm

Thanks everyone, especially Breelander.

That's 2 laptops updated successfully thanks to various threads here on lemonfool.

2 interesting things have occurred:

Using macrium reflect on the 1st pc it showed 3 partitions (I think) but when I clicked on 'create an image to backup and restore windows' it only wanted to image the 2nd and 3rd partition. What might be on the 1st and would I miss it?

Using macrium reflect again on the 2nd pc it seemed to show a second hard drive. The top line showed 3 partitions on a hitachi disk but there was a second line showing a sandisk ssd. It's a 2013 computer and I doubt a ssd would be common at that time and the laptop has never been modified AFAIK and I can't find it under 'my computer' What's this all about?

Thanks


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