Macruim Reflect performance...

I have two systems where I regularly use Reflect 4.2 freeware version. On both machines, it performs well; however, the performance differences are more than substantial.

The difference between the machines is i5 vs. i5-2500K CPU, Crucial C300 vs. Vertex 3; however, other aspects of the systems, such as OS, memory size, etc., are the same.

Here are the properties for the Crucial C300 and the backed up image (i5 CPU):



And this is the time it takes for Macrium to backup the image:



And these are the properties of the OCZ Vertex 3 and the backed up image (i5-2500K CPU)



And this is how long it takes Macrium to backup the image:



Certainly the i5-2500K with its Sandy Bridge motherboard is faster and the OCZ Vertex 3 has about 200 MB/s speed advantage; however, not as much as the backup times indicates (2:46 for OCZ vs 7:49 for Crucial).

The major difference is between the generated backup image sizes, 8.8 GBs for the OCZ vs. 21 GBs for the Crucial. That certainly explains most of the time differences between the two backups, despite the fact the OCZ drive has about 20% more utilization than the Crucial.

It does not explain why the system generates backups with so much difference in sizes? Obviously, the level of compression differences could easily answer this question, but....

Both system has this configuration for compression:



Now, I am totally lost as to what causes the i5-2500K to generate a presumably highly compressed backup image with the same version of Macrium Reflect? Again, it is the 64-bit freeware version of 4.2, Built 3141.
Does anyone have some suggestion?
TIA...

Is this behavior consistent or a one time thing?

Have you experimented with deliberately changing the compression settings or the intelligent/exact setting??

Do both drives have the same cluster size?

Do you know or merely hope that either image will restore properly?

It is peculiar.


I have to add:

I'm a little less confident in Macrium than I was 2 weeks ago. I just installed an SSD and reinstalled Windows. I could not make a working Linux restore CD with Macrium. I tried standard, compatibility, and debug settings. The last 2 booted, but I could not then navigate through the restoration process. They both eventually stalled. All the more reason not to rely on images working.

It is consistent for all backups, even Windows backup shows similar ratio in size differences. The reason for the differences falls under the category of "duh!".

My machine has Steam, Black Ops, Modern Warfare 2 with their already compressed video and sound files in addition to Adobe Web Premium CS5 that also have videos, images, etc. These files cannot be compressed and Macrium has no choice, but to back it up with the ratio of close to 1 to 1. The other machine is an office PC with easily compressible files.

As for restore, I've never needed to restore an image; if it comes to that, I'll cross my fingers that either of the Macrium or the Windows backup will work. Most certainly, your point about the image may not be reliable is valid...

With the help of SIW2 and others, I've created a Windows 7 boot disk for Macrium free version. It is described in this thread. Maybe you should try creating one that may help you restoring the image at the next time. I do hope that you'll never need it

From about page 14 onwards System Imaging Tool W7