If you select the base Full image to restore, then you will restore just that base image. If you select the Differential then you will restore the base image plus the changes recorded in that differential.
Note that when restoring a differential you only need the base image plus that one differential. If you were to pay for Macrium so you could use Incrementals, then you need the base image plus all the incrementals up to and including the one for the date you choose to restore.
If when you follow the prompts, a rule is established which e.g.
a. defines where your backup image is (path)
b. defines how your set of backup image files is to be maintained (how and when to delete them, how many to keep)
c. with a 3 or so clicks from launching Macrium R, lets you start a differential image (free version) or choice of that or incremental image (commercial version). (These are changes from the base/base + last incrementals - so smaller and faster). The paid version has more options.
There's a huge amount of help and a ful manual available- just look at the help file from your M Reflect.
Thus you might have a base image for 1809, a rule set up for that, and a set of differential images.
And likewise for 1903
And a trick to make sure your USB back-up disk is always allocated the same drive letter (so MR's rule matches): Assign it a drive letter e.g. R - late in the alphabet- using disk management.
Hi folks
these days with the speed of SSD's - I'm really not sure what benefits - if any - you'd get by taking differentials of the OS -- why not just image the whole OS regularly. On an average size windows install imaging to an externally attached SSD won't in general take more than around 10 mins on even quite a modest machine.
Seems to me that restoring base backup and then hunting around for all the differentials and running those as well the chance of something going wrong is far more likely than by just using a simple image restore.
For data - there's all sorts of strategies here -- I only use Macrium to backup my Windows OS system(s) -- for backing up and archiving data I do that on a NAS automatically via a decent job scheduler.
User data doesn't change humungously so one does need a different strategy to just saving the OS.
Cheers
jimbo
A differential is all the changes since the base Full image, so that's just two image files involved.
And you don't restore the base then hunt for the differentials. You simply restore the Differential and it automatically restores the relevant base Full image first, then applies the Differential. Here it is in action.....
Starting Restore - 08 April 2019 06:42
...
Image File: \\tosh-l750\macriumimagebackup\TOSH-L750_17763-379_2019-03-12-04-04.mrimg Image ID: 1B4B6A575207D657 Date: 06 April 2019 Time: 00:54 Image Type:
Differential
Looking for changes Processing:
TOSH-L750_17763-379_2019-03-12-00-00.mrimg Processing: TOSH-L750_17763-379_2019-03-12-04-04.mrimg Writing partition table Replacing MBR and track 0 from the backup Writing Master Boot Record (MBR) Restore completed successfully
To Bree and all who have responded. My question has been clearly answered. Much appreciation!
Mark
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