Macrium and Ghost.

[88V8]

Downloaded Macrium Home - the paid version.
I want to try an image before I start delving into the computer's innards, just in case.

Set up the backup schedule. Confusingly, it was trying to image my backup HDD, but I managed to persuade it otherwise.

Question: On my backup HDD, there is the weekly Norton Ghost backup. There is space on there for another full backup, but by default Ghost just overwrites the previous version. Will Macrium overwrite the existing backup, and does this matter?

V8

[Infrasonic]

Have a read of this first...https://kb.macrium.com/KnowledgebaseArticle50143.aspx
If you've got a large image size to backup you might want to think about how you structure your Full/Differential/Incremental options.

Under the Scheduled Backup tab you should see your current retention rules.
I have a monthly full backup and a weekly differential, the full only takes about six minutes to do, the differentials about three, so at the moment I'm not bothering with Incrementals.
You can set time (days), number of and data limit rules for retention/overwriting.

As you've got the paid for version you can also set up folder/file backups (instead of/as well as using Windows File History for instance) from the backup menu (Backup Files...).

You can do one off manual full backups too, they don't have to be scheduled. (Useful if you want to try something potentially fatal out... )

[Breelander]

Downloaded Macrium Home - the paid version...

Did you buy it, or download the 30 day trial? If the trial, than at the end of the trial it should revert to the Free version unless you buy a licence. That will mean that you won't be able to make incremental backups or file and folder backups. But full, differential and scheduled backups are included in the free version and it is sufficient for most purposes.

... Will Macrium overwrite the existing backup, and does this matter?

When you set up the backup definition file for your scheduled backups, the items you could set included retention rules. These determine how many previous images are kept. When Macrium runs your backup definition to make a new image it will make a new file alongside the previous one. The first image will have -00 appended to your specified image name. Subsequent ones will be named *-01, *-02, etc. and will only be deleted if the retention rules say so. If you want to keep them all (space permitting) you can edit your backup definition to turn off the retention rules.

Set up the backup schedule. Confusingly, it was trying to image my backup HDD, but I managed to persuade it otherwise.

On the left in the Backup tasks menu is 'Create an image of the partition(s) required to backup and restore Windows'. If you had clicked this it wouldn't have included the other drives.

[88V8]

Thankyou.

I'll have another look at that tutorial. I did set the schedule, but with Full and Incremental at the same time which on reflection is a bit silly. Yes, bought and paid for.

Mmm, the retention rules, I'll need to prevent it from keeping everything. Even though I have a 1Tb backup HDD and only a 150Gb backup, it will eventually run out of space.

All of which does not tell me whether the Macrium image will overwrite the Ghost backup. I suppose not, but I'll just have to see.

If it backs up in six minutes I will be very impressed. Ghost takes, dunno, but it seems more like an hour.

V8