Image your system with free Macrium

SIW2 said:

Note - differentials are not any quicker than a full image - because obviously it needs to compare everything before deciding what needs to be imaged - they are smaller, of course.

That is NOT true for Macrium.

It took 3 minutes 54 seconds to create a FULL image file of the whole primary HDD.
Image File Size 5.79 GB (6,223,702,084 bytes)

It took 2 minutes 29 Seconds to create a DIFFerential file of the same
Image File Size 808 MB (848,014,078 bytes)

It took 2 minutes 13 Seconds to create a INCRemental file of the same
Image File Size 88.6 MB (92,934,986 bytes)
This included reading the entire FULL image plus 8 subsequent INCR files and comparing with current HDD contents

My Primary Drive is 1 TB
It has the special 100 MB boot + System C:\ + 2 more partitions.
Partition sizes 0.1 + 25 + 10 + 4 GB
Total Space Used 17.6 GB

I would suggest Differentials - much safer.

I suggest no more than an itsy bitsy bit safer.

All I really need is the 5.79 GB FULL backup, which is copied to an external just in case of the unthinkable and unbearable.
I would miss the weekly 800 MB DIFF file if it was corrupted, but fear does not keep me awake.
I totally dismiss the risk that my latest 90 MB INCR is dependant upon, on average, 3 previous daily 90 MB INCR files plus one 800 MB DIFF plus one 6 GB FULL

Regards
Alan

Thank you whs.

I was referring to Paragon.

whs said:

You are talking about incrementals, NOT differentials. Macrium makes incrementals, Paragon does differentials.

Please read my post again and also look at Macrium Reflect's capabilities.

I WAS talking about DIFFERENTIALS.
I was also demonstrating that the risk of 3 off 90 MB INCRementals failing is only 5% of the risk that a 6 GB FULL would fail.

I am perfectly happy to depend upon 6GB Full + 800 MB Differential + up to 6 off 90 MB Incrementals at the end of a weekly series.

Macrium easily creates BOTH Incrementals and DIFFerentials.

Regards
Alan.

I believe the thread is about the free version of macrium.

My post was about an alternative free app. ( Paragon ), which does do differentials.

O.K. I had forgotten the title of this topic,
BUT FrozenThunder was considering the purchase of the full featured Macrium.

I was intent upon showing that the risk of a series of Incrementals is NOT significantly greater than using Differentials,
AND that it only takes half the time to do either Incremental or Differential compared with the time for the Full image.

Regards
Alan

Depends how many you do - if you have 30 images - the risk to any one of those (tho. thankfully still small ) is clearly greater than the risk if you only have a couple.

It just so happens that in your case you only have a few - and you don't seem to mind- as long as you still have the base.

Thanks for the info about the speed with paid macrium.

Does macrium have a clever workaround such that the loss of an incremental does not adversely affect restoring from any subsequent incrementals?

Yes and No ! !

Necessary explanation :-

My last FULL image file has the name

Code:

D4F3BDD38CC36FC5-00-00.mrimg

The name for all DIFF and INCR files based upon this is always of the form

Code:

D4F3BDD38CC36FC5-xx-xx.mrimg

Where the suffix xx is a 2 digit decimal number in the range 01 to 99
I believe that after 99 the suffix progresses to -yy-xx-xx,
but I think after 100 days being afflicted with all the Patch Tuesdays and other Windows Woopsies,
the Differential images will be half the size of the FULL and I would start a fresh series.
The extensions are always mrimg,
and the prefix such as D4F3BDD38CC36FC5 is random for each FULL and its derivatives.

Given that -00-00 is always the FULL,
And if -10-10, -20-20, -30-30 etc are DIFFerentials,
Then all the other suffixes are INCRementals.

On that basis, if the file *-23-23.mrimg becomes corrupt it will have zero effect upon restoration from any file in the range *-00-00 through to *-22-22.mrimg,
and also zero effect upon *-30-30.mrimg and upwards.
After *-23-23.mrimg becomes corrupt I do not believe it will be possible to create any further Incrementals until a subsequent DIFFerential is created,
but if corruption occurs after creating *-27-27.mrimg then all images from *-23-23 to *-27-27 will be defective.

A clever workaround for these defective files is a registry hack which tells Macrium to proceed regardless of checksum errors.
I would have to search for the precise information but I know this allows the image to be Mounted and a drive letter allocated so that Windows Explorer can browse the image and copy all the files. It possibly would also allow restoration to a new Partition.

I can make a 1 GB (up to 2 GB) DIFF image every 10 days, and 15 GB of DIFF + 6 GB FULL = 21 GB is good for 90 days.
By doing an INCRemental on 9 days out of 10, and keeping only the last 30 Incrementals I can go back to any chosen day in the last month at the cost of an extra 3 GB, i.e. grand total for series = 24 GB.

That is the theory.
In Practice I have one 6 GB FULL plus 32 DIFF/INCR totalling an extra 5.6 GB,
so I have high hopes of keeping below 25 GB for 90 days.

The principle desire for daily incrementals is that should Microsoft without notice slip a patch onto my system, when I start up the next morning and it fails to boot I can easily restore back to how it was the day before Microsoft corrupted it, and I will only lose the last day's documents, and not the last 10 days.

(This system was validated by WGA but the evil empire sneaked a WGA update which I believe allows them to download new hack detections. It did not act as they documented - instead Windows ALWAYS STOPPED RESPONDING about 100 Seconds after a Restart, and the ONLY way to restart was to disconnect all power.
As it happened the Macrium Recovery BOOT CD allowed me to create a backup of my trashed system and then Restored my last good image. Then under a working Windows system I used Macrium to mount the image of the trashed system, and BestSync found several thousand files that were different, and I easily deselected all the Windows tweaks and twitches to itself and retained only my latest documents, desktop links, etc, and BestSync then restored all I needed to my resuscitated Windows.)

Regards
Alan