New Macrium Reflect Updates [2]

clam1952 said:

Be nice if they stopped the update popup appearing for 4952 on the free version, I've turned them off as it's getting annoying.

I have free version and never got the update nor it was offered.

clam1952 said:

Be nice if they stopped the update popup appearing for 4952 on the free version, I've turned them off as it's getting annoying.

All my Free installs say that 4942 is the latest available update. 4952 has only one fix, for the Premium feature Image Guardian, so is completely unnecessary for the Free edition. It should not need to be offered to Free, and it seems Macrium took steps to make sure it wasn't. I asked about this on the Macrium forum and was told...

I can confirm this. The reason is indeed that MIG is a paid feature that is not included in the Free version.

Image Guardian blocking file operation - chinese? - (Page 4)


Was your Free version a true install of Free from the start? Or was it a 30-day trial of Home that reverted to Free when the trial expired? That may possibly account for the difference, some part of it may still think it's Home, not Free?

If so, try uninstalling it, selecting it's option to keep its settings and backup definition files. Then reinstall Free from here.

Macrium Software | Macrium Reflect Free

I can confirm that to this day it still downloads the 4942 installer, while the Trial downloader is now updated to 4952.

Anibor said:

The only way to really "verify" a backup is to restore it and boot, at least virtually.

I see your point, but that would be too long a process. Since using MR, all my backups are scheduled to be verified right after they are done and so far, not once, have they failed me during Restore.

Anibor said:

The only way to really "verify" a backup is to restore it and boot, at least virtually.

There are other ways to verify a file or data integrity, using checksum for instance. I think that's how RM verification works, not bit by bit.

CountMike said:

There are other ways to verify a file or data integrity, using checksum for instance. I think that's how RM verification works, not bit by bit.

It is explained here Understanding Image Verification Failures - KnowledgeBase v7 - Macrium Reflect Knowledgebase - KnowledgeBase v7 - Macrium Reflect Knowledgebase

Anibor said:

"Though they do happen, verification errors are extremely rare. We estimate that less than 1 in 1,000 systems have problems that lead to image file corruption. The vast majority of Macrium Reflect users will never encounter a single verification issue."

Then, why to verify?

The time it takes to restore depends on the hardware used and how things are done. If data is separated from the system, to restore the system should take less than 10 minutes, sometimes less than 5. It can take less, or about the same, than to verify.

I had verification fail once because of disk error and once because of unstable RAM. Those are unpredictable and always possible errors. verification doesn't take much resources, I can even play games at same time. If you are doing just backup, you can set MR to shut computer down after it finishes. Start it at end of day and go to sleep or whatever.

Anibor said:

"Though they do happen, verification errors are extremely rare. We estimate that less than 1 in 1,000 systems have problems that lead to image file corruption. The vast majority of Macrium Reflect users will never encounter a single verification issue."

Then, why to verify?

The time it takes to restore depends on the hardware used and how things are done. If data is separated from the system, to restore the system should take less than 10 minutes, sometimes less than 5. It can take less, or about the same, than to verify.

it's config dependent, of course, but with Rapid Delta Restore (paid version), I can restore a 28-30GB OS compressed to 16-17GB in approx. 3 minutes.

Verify is fine, and a sane thing to do. But the best way (IMO) is multiple backups to different media, detached, and safely stored. Done correctly and religiously, you're never more than 2-3 days away from a working OS, with little to do. If you've made major changes, or time consuming changes, do an off schedule backup to preserve your work. My backup take 3 1/2 minutes, with verify. YMMV of course.

With the good software out there for use (Macrium my choice), and reasonably priced external drives, there's no reason not to do backups scheduled or on demand. No such thing any more as "I don't have time".