Backup and Restore with Macrium Reflect  

Okay. I'll check.

When I create a new folder for the latest backup I always see that I am presented with a dropdown list of all that has gone before.

Where is this info located and is it possible to clear the list ?

This is from my 32 bit laptop, my main PC has a much larger list.

kado897 said:

I suggest you try booting the rescue disk and see if it can find the image on the flash drive. You can do that much without any damage to the existing installation.

I booted my rescue disk which I though didn't work at first since trackpads seem not to be working on Windows PE environment.
Anyway I successfully booted my Macrium's rescue disk and my backups on my flash driver showed up

I assume I'm all good for restoring my laptop in case of crash now.

f14tomcat said:

External USB drives are getting very affordable. A good 1TB 3.0 external HDD runs around $50. It is the safest and most secure method. It can be detached from the PC/Laptop so nothing can touch it. A separate partition on your SSD (easy to make) will work, but does not protect you from a hardware failure....detachable external drive would. Give it some thought.

Right I think I'll pass on the partition method even though it sure is convenient for differential backups and planned backups.
For now I'll just store my backups on my desktop PC with 2,5To of storage which I used for storing files and as an HTPC. Risks of crashes are really limited given my very light use on this PC.

Mooly said:

I would recommend that you initially make a FULL disk image (which means including all partitions of your drive) and keep that for the time being as a 'recovery image' if things should go wrong or you get stuck.

Next make sure you have created the Macrium bootable media on either a USB flash drive or a CDR. That's the get out of jail card... OK, even if you don't have that and totally trash the system you can still recover things but it gets more time consuming. For example if your system is trashed then you can always clean install W10 and then install Macrium and recover your old image. Always ways and means.

Next make sure you have enabled the Macrium option to run restores from within Windows by using the 'Add Boot Menu option' .


When all that is done you could if you wish look at repartitioning your drive to create an area for 'running backups' as I call them. You need around 70% of the space that Windows occupies per full backup. Look at mine. 25Gb used on the C partition and 20Gb currently used on Y partition.

These show my disk structure and partitions, how they look in file explorer and how to create the Macrium options.

Last image shows how the backups appear on Y.

Attachment 112727

Attachment 112728

Attachment 112729

Attachment 112730

Thanks for illustrating this for me. I get the picture but I'll stick with external storage for now.
I'll consider it for my next windows install

Thanks to all of you guys for your useful help. I'm really glad I found this tuto, with my system backed up I feel safe now

Hi,

Mooly said:

When I create a new folder for the latest backup I always see that I am presented with a dropdown list of all that has gone before.

Where is this info located and is it possible to clear the list ?

This is from my 32 bit laptop, my main PC has a much larger list.

Those are the .html files found in "C:\ProgramData\Macrium\Reflect"

Cheers,

P.S. : Also on diyaudio.com ?

kado897 said:

Yes you should be OK to recover your laptop. I would recommend that for future images you invest in a USB attached external drive as I'm not sure how reliable a flash drive is as a backup medium.

I hear you it's a legitimate concern.
Though this is a USB 3.1 flash drive with up to 120MB/S in writing mode but I will eventually consider launching the restore process from an external drive if it comes down to it.

fdegrove said:

Hi,
Those are the .html files found in "C:\ProgramData\Macrium\Reflect"

Cheers,
P.S. : Also on diyaudio.com ?

Yup :) Moderator over at that place

The program data location looks to be the place where that dropdown data will be located. Loads and loads of files in there (as you can see by the scale of the slider at the right). The user Macrium folder in documents is empty apart from the current backup title as I normally the old .xml file (via the Macrium user interface option) before creating a new task.