Macrium Reflect backups external or internal drive?

f14tomcat · 13 Dec 2017

reddice said:

Thanks. The only thing I am concerned about is if my computer will see the external drive when running the recovery method. It works fine using the USB recovery stick.

@reddice

Tony,
Macrium will detect your external drives when they are plugged back in. Never had an issue there. :)

(It is safer to keep them disconnected when not in use. Not just from the "bad guys" out there, getting zapped by a machine failure, power surge, goblins or such.)

RolandJS · 13 Dec 2017

+1 on disconnecting or turning off an external backup HD when not actively backing up or restoring. I've done that for years, like the others here :)

essenbe · 13 Dec 2017

f14tomcat said:

@reddice

Tony,
Macrium will detect your external drives when they are plugged back in. Never had an issue there. :)

(It is safer to keep them disconnected when not in use. Not just from the "bad guys" out there, getting zapped by a machine failure, power surge, goblins or such.)

Totally agree. I use 2 external eSATA drives and alternate images between them, then turn them off. I have never had a problem getting Macrium recovery to see the external drives and have used it numerous times.

Bastet · 13 Dec 2017

reddice said:

Thanks. The only thing I am concerned about is if my computer will see the external drive when running the recovery method. It works fine using the USB recovery stick.

I recover using the USB recovery stick & the backup drive is seen within the recovery environment.

cereberus · 13 Dec 2017

Bastet said:

I used to unplug the drive with the free version but since I won a free key I no longer do that due to image guardian which is supposed to prevent problems with ransomeware attacking the drive.

That does not protect against somebody getting remote control of pc. Having an offline backup is last line of defense.

Word Man · 13 Dec 2017

reddice said:

Thanks. The only thing I am concerned about is if my computer will see the external drive when running the recovery method. It works fine using the USB recovery stick.

As well as booting from a USB stick, you can create a small FAT32 partition on that external drive and install the MR rescue media on it, making it bootable. Then it's just a matter of hooking up the external and booting directly into the rescue environment from that single device.

Josey Wales · 13 Dec 2017

Layback Bear said:

Another easy way is Hot Swap bays.
I use it all the time.
Just pop the ssd/hard drive in. Make your Backup/Clone and pop it out.
Done.

Jack

That is how I do the Clone of my external drive.

Josey Wales · 13 Dec 2017

essenbe said:

Totally agree. I use 2 external eSATA drives and alternate images between them, then turn them off. I have never had a problem getting Macrium recovery to see the external drives and have used it numerous times.

That is what I use as well.

reddice · 13 Dec 2017

Thanks I just ordered a 1TB hard drive on Amazon that I will only use for Macrium Reflect backups.

As for disconnecting when I am done I always do that as sometimes I have issues with Windows not booting up if it is connected to a external hard drive.

jimbo45 · 13 Dec 2017

Hi there

even on the FREE bootable version of Macrium you can swap external HDD's -- simply unplug old one and plug in new one and click REFRESH button / icon when scanning for browse for image.

So boot with say program on USB stick --then plug in your external HDD and Bingo --recovery easy.

I always backup Windows clients to two separate pieces of hardware :

1) NAS Server (has around 20 TB of HDD space on it 4 X 5 TB HDD's).

2) external USB HDD -- preferably an SSD if you have one.

Note I tend to back up to the external drive after client backup to the NAS server and run the backup from within the NAS server which runs a Windows W10 VM for taking the extra backups to external USB drives. I prefer this method as you can't rely on a lot of Windows clients to make their own local backups.

I also have a job that when a Windows client logs on to my LAN if a recent backup was not taken or missed a backup (on the NAS server) is run followed again by the backup to external HDD's. My LAN runs quite comfortably at 10 Gb/s although the Windows client connections depend on the quality of their wireless cards / nic's etc.

So : Crontab (Linux Job Scheduler) runs backup from any Windows client still logged on. Then another backup is run to copy the Linux backups to external HDD's.

Anything is good if it works --ANY BACKUP IS BETTER THAN NONE. It's up to you to decide the best workflow in taking backups but you should always have AT LEAST TWO independent copies.

Cheers
jimbo