How Long to do System Restore

RichardC · 03 Jun 2019

Every time I go to MR to create a bootable recovery media, MR pulls up PE 1703. I can physically change it to RE 1903 but it's twice the size. When I go to create a new one, MR pulls up PE 1703 again. It does the job and is half the size. What's important is MR has decided I don't need RE 1903 to do the job on my pc.

cereberus · 04 Jun 2019

larrymcg said:

I've been using Macrium Reflect Home Edition V7.2.xxxx for years now. I do incremental images to an external USB connected hard drive twice a week. For some reason I didn't think of restoring the entire disk via MR. A system restore sounded a lot easier - but I know that facility has had its problems over the years.

I created a bootable MR Rescue disk (USB stick) long ago and updated it Aug 5 2018 and verified it would boot.
What I don't know is how often, or under what condidtions, the rescue disk should be updated?
Is there a way to find out if it needs to be updated?

-- Larry

PS: I just noticed that Win Update is installing v1809 - I'm currently on v1803. So all of this info and activity for restoring the system disk is timely (I hope not). I suppose it could reboot and install it tonight!

The Home version of Macrium Reflect uses Rapid Delta Restore i.e. it only restores things that have changed. It is amazingly fast especially with CBT enabled.

Coupled with incremental backups, it is far faster and more reliable than system restores.

Note: One big difference is System Restore does not affect data of you wind back but Macrium Restores will lose data on drives being restored if data is newer than backup. I keep data on a separate drive so that is not an issue. Of course, taking an incremental just before reverting to earlier state will backup new data just in case.

PS - I always update Macrium Rescue USB after each Macrium update. It is not always necessary but it saves having to think if it is an issue and only takes a few minutes.