Backup and Restore with Macrium Reflect  

Judy in Texas said:

1/4/22 I just installed Reflect and nohting on the screen pertaining to rescue media matched this tutorial.

Judy,

There's further guidance in
Macrium USB - TenForums

All the best,
Denis

Judy in Texas said:

1/4/22 I just installed Reflect and nohting on the screen pertaining to rescue media matched this tutorial. I did not get the offer to create rescue media. I clicked the Rescue tab and got a scrolling green bar that went on for quite some time headed Creating WIM file. I have no idea whether this should happen.

- - - Updated - - -

o.k., after a long time and my efforts cancel what was going on, it finally asked if I wanted to use my Data Traveler (which I did) Think I am on track, but it jarred me that what I saw was in no way a match for what the fairly recent tutorial says. What the tutorial shows makes sense to me and gives much more help that I received from the program today.

Just briefly, you are ok and on the right track. I just scanned over the Tut for Backup and Restore using Macrium, and it appears a lot of the images, and hence the wording, are for Version 6. Latest is Version 8. There is a mix of version 6, 7, and 8 instructions and wording, and it can be confusing. Best to ask if in doubt. Once you've done it, maybe 2-3 times (updates), it will become much less confusing. I've used Macrium for years because I believe it is the best there is.

When in doubt, ask. There are many, many members here and Win 11 forum who know a lot about Macrium.

f14tomcat said:

I've used Macrium for years because I believe it is the best there is.

When in doubt, ask. There are many, many members here and Win 11 forum who know a lot about Macrium.

I agree, best there is. I learned about it here, switched from Acronis True Image to MR and haven't looked back. Been a Macrium evangelist ever since.

Lots of help here and in the MR forum.

Judy in Texas said:

I am not taking this computer to W11 but I will continue to use it for video editing and the version of MR I downloaded today (1 4 22) does not at all match the tutorial.

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Thank you F14Tomcat. If you read my posts in the backup forum, you know that I was nervous about undertaking backup anyway and the tutorial was very confusing.

Having someone to ask does not help much if you don't know what to ask. Like being lost and calling someone and they say "Where are you?"

With much fumbling around I got a boot disk made and the backup is tooling along. I'll have to wait and see whether it is being stored in the right place and what it looks like. Along the way I detoured and refreshed my knowledge of the difference between cloning and imaging a disk--talk about confusing computer terminology!

Cloning is when you make a copy of a drive on a second drive - primary intent is that you can swap the drives if first one fails.

Imaging is making a copy of all the files on first drive and storing them in a compressed file on backup drive(basically like zipping files). Primary intent is to put first drive back to a known condition e.g. if files get corrupted or you accidentally deleted files.

However, you have to use recovery software to restore the image (basically like unzipping a zip file).

The latter is more flexible as you can have multiple images at different points in time stored on your backup drive. You can also restore to a second drive if first drive fails (effectively doing a clone but in two stages).

Most users find image backups to be more useful as you can return pc to a known state.

Once one understands what an image is for, one can start to understand advanced concept of differential backups. These are mini backups of the differences since last full backup.

Suppose full backup had 4 files
A, B, C, D, and you had added file E but deleted file B from pc since full backup, the backup would contain E & -B (i.e. instruction to delete B).

Thus the differential is much smaller. When you restore the differential, it restores the full backup and then adds the differential backup
i.e.

(A+B+C+D) + (E-B) = (A+C+D+E).

Differential backups are useful if you recently made a full backup but just want to do a quick backup without backing uo whole drive again.

The paid version also has incremental backups which are mini backups since the previous mini backup. These end up in a chain but are more space efficient. This is not available to free users.

Hope this helps you better understand the various concepts.

cereberus said:

Cloning is when you make a copy of a drive on a second drive - primary intent is that you can swap the drives if first one fails.

Imaging is making a copy of all the files on first drive and storing them in a compressed file on backup drive(basically like zipping files). Primary intent is to put first drive back to a known condition e.g. if files get corrupted or you accidentally deleted files.

However, you have to use recovery software to restore the image (basically like unzipping a zip file).

The latter is more flexible as you can have multiple images at different points in time stored on your backup drive. You can also restore to a second drive if first drive fails (effectively doing a clone but in two stages).

Most users find image backups to be more useful as you can return pc to a known state.

Once one understands what an image is for, one can start to understand advanced concept of differential backups. These are mini backups of the differences since last full backup.

Suppose full backup had 4 files
A, B, C, D, and you had added file E but deleted file B from pc since full backup, the backup would contain E & -B (i.e. instruction to delete B).

Thus the differential is much smaller. When you restore the differential, it restores the full backup and then adds the differential backup
i.e.

(A+B+C+D) + (E-B) = (A+C+D+E).

Differential backups are useful if you recently made a full backup but just want to do a quick backup without backing uo whole drive again.

The paid version also has incremental backups which are mini backups since the previous mini backup. These end up in a chain but are more space efficient. This is not available to free users.

Hope this helps you better understand the various concepts.

Excellent summary. One point of clarification though... the free version does have incremental backups, the paid version offers Incrementals Forever.

Silky said:

Excellent summary. One point of clarification though... the free version does have incremental backups, the paid version offers Incrementals Forever.

No this is not true. Incrementals are not in the free version. If you installed the free trial, you could make them, but that ability goes away if you do not buy a licence at the end of the trial.

cereberus said:

No this is not true. Incrementals are not in the free version. If you installed the free trial, you could make them, but that ability goes away if you do not buy a licence at the end of the trial.

You're right, I'm so sorry - I was able to create an incremental definition successfully, but it wasn't until I enabled incremental in the retention rules that I got the notice about trial/purchase.

I shoulda known better than to second guess you.