Imaging with free Macrium

kado897 said:

That looks like a bug if the checkbox was unticked when you created the backup definition. My system defaults are for that box to be ticked.

It is selected by default on my PC too.

I have images dating back to 2009 and I don't want them auto-purged.

lehnerus2000 said:

kado897 said:

That looks like a bug if the checkbox was unticked when you created the backup definition. My system defaults are for that box to be ticked.

It is selected by default on my PC too.

I have images dating back to 2009 and I don't want them auto-purged.

Sorry but according to your screenshot the auto purge would only happen if the selected media has less than 5 GB free space. Isn't the solution simple, select a storage with more free space? I mean, who on earth would start creating a system image on storage with has less than that free?

Just tangentially, Macrium saved my bacon yesterday. I'll skip the sad part of the story and just say that somehow beyond all logic I went into safe mode and the system decided to refresh or reset the machine. Lost my user account. I had no choice but to boot up the WinPE 5.0 based rescue stick.

Incremental backup restore proceeded without a glitch. Took about 28 minutes reading from a USB 3.0 stick. Good thing the last incremental was only 24 hrs old. :)

MilesAhead said:

Just tangentially, Macrium saved my bacon yesterday. I'll skip the sad part of the story and just say that somehow beyond all logic I went into safe mode and the system decided to refresh or reset the machine. Lost my user account. I had no choice but to boot up the WinPE 5.0 based rescue stick.

Incremental backup restore proceeded without a glitch. Took about 28 minutes reading from a USB 3.0 stick. Good thing the last incremental was only 24 hrs old. :)

That is why I make an image of my C: drive or partition (including the System Reserved partition) before I make any changes, such as adding or deleting a program or running updates. I update my data backups daily and whenever I add or change critical data. I don't image my data; I would die of old age (I'm already too close to that now) if I did that, even if I used incremental imaging, making the backups due to the large amounts of data I have now. Using a folder/file syncing program—FreeFileSync—is much faster to update and the backup can be used as is until I get a replacement drive if the original drive should die completely.

Kari said:

lehnerus2000 said:

kado897 said:

That looks like a bug if the checkbox was unticked when you created the backup definition. My system defaults are for that box to be ticked.

It is selected by default on my PC too.

I have images dating back to 2009 and I don't want them auto-purged.

Sorry but according to your screenshot the auto purge would only happen if the selected media has less than 5 GB free space. Isn't the solution simple, select a storage with more free space? I mean, who on earth would start creating a system image on storage with has less than that free?

It should not do anything at all, as the option is not selected.
What is the point of deselecting an option, if the "option" still applies?

I just imaged my system prior to applying this months updates.
It came to a total of 196 GB.
The previous month's updates came to 168 GB.

If I had seen that I "only" had 190 GB left on my HDD, I would have created my backup images and I could've potentially lost a backup.

Granted that it may only apply to MR v6 images, but at 200 GB a pop it will take less than 5 months to fill up a new 1 TB HDD.

Apparently only people who have paid for Macrium can report (possible) bugs.

lehnerus2000 said:

It should not do anything at all, as the option is not selected.
What is the point of deselecting an option, if the "option" still applies?

My point is that even it it ticks the box you have unselected and keeps "a safe limit" of 5 GB there, that shouldn't be a problem. A Windows system image is always bigger than 5 GB so that is simply just plain theoretical issue, you will never select a storage location with so little free space.

As I get this, the whole issue could be described like this:

"A deal breaker issue, I think I cannot use this software anymore because it does not let me use a storage location with less than 5GB available space without purging my older images. Of course I know that my images will always be bigger than 5 GB so this automatically selected item will never really purge my images because when I notice there's less than 5 GB free in selected storage media and I want to keep all previous images, there simply is not enough space for my image and I have to of course select a new storage location."

DavidE said:

Are you using the latest V6 version, Build No. 708 ?

I'm using Build 708 and don't see the "Delete oldest Backup sets..." message.
I'm sure i saw that message before (when i used the initial V6 free build).
Maybe they tweaked this in Build 708 ???

There was a bug where the default flag was not copied into the backup definition but that was supposedly fixed in a previous version (The first free edition). There doesn't seem to be any fixes in 708 in that area.

DavidE said:

Are you using the latest V6 version, Build No. 708 ?

Yes according to the "About" dialogue window.

Kari said:

My point is that even it it ticks the box you have unselected and keeps "a safe limit" of 5 GB there, that shouldn't be a problem. A Windows system image is always bigger than 5 GB so that is simply just plain theoretical issue, you will never select a storage location with so little free space.

If I try to write 100 GB to a 5 GB space, it would be my fault if it failed. :)

There was no point in me selecting/deselecting that option, as the software ignored my choice and treated it as chosen/selected.

If that purge option is not chosen/selected, it should not delete my backup images, regardless of how much space is or isn't available on a HDD.

Hypothetical:

190 GB - HDD available space
5 GB - Macrium Reflect default purge value

168 GB - Previous backup size

170 GB - Estimated space required for this month's backup (based on past trends)
20 GB - Estimated available space after this backup (190 - 170 = 20)

196 GB - Actual space required for this month's backup
-6 GB - Actual available space after this backup

Since -6 GB < 5 GB, a previous backup will now be deleted.
The 5 GB default value is irrelevant (any value would trigger the deletion of a previous backup).

In that scenario I would rather have the new backup fail (with an error message) than an old backup deleted.
Since MR supports split backup files, it could even ask (in the error message) for a new location to finish the backup.

Maybe MR does bring up a message and an option dialogue window, but I don't want to risk a known good backup to try it out.