Image your system with free Macrium

kado897 · 14 Jan 2019

Lady Fitzgerald said:

They also love large paper bags they can get into.

I don't use differential or incremental images (I also don't recommend them) so I can't speak from experience but I suspect you may be correct about them. I do assign names to my images (example: Before Glary, SAS Updates 01-10-2019) to make determining which one I need to use much easier. I never had a problem doing this (but, again, I don't use incremental or differential backups).

Your folder idea sounds like a good one.

You can also add comments to the image which show up in the list.

BuckSkin · 14 Jan 2019

Concerning this VSS business: (this is way over my head)

Whenever AOMEI BackUpper did anything, there would be a host of yellow Event warnings and a few red ones.
I checked one machine after a full backup with MR and there were only two yellow warnings (I have no idea what they mean)
I see that Macrium Reflect had a "Fix VSS Problems" button.
When should one execute that Fix VSS button, immediately before or after or both ?

Thanks for reading and all help is appreciated.

kado897 · 14 Jan 2019

BuckSkin said:

Concerning this VSS business: (this is way over my head)

Whenever AOMEI BackUpper did anything, there would be a host of yellow Event warnings and a few red ones.
I checked one machine after a full backup with MR and there were only two yellow warnings (I have no idea what they mean)
I see that Macrium Reflect had a "Fix VSS Problems" button.
When should one execute that Fix VSS button, immediately before or after or both ?

Thanks for reading and all help is appreciated.

Not an expert on VSS either. Without seeing the error messages I cant really comment. If you are having VSS problems then running the fix VSS button may sort out any problems you have.

essenbe · 14 Jan 2019

kado897 said:

Not an expert on VSS either. Without seeing the error messages I cant really comment. If you are having VSS problems then running the fix VSS button may sort out any problems you have.

I am far from an expert on VSS as well. The extent of my knowledge is knowing what it means. It is Volume Shadow copy Service or called Volume Snapshot service sometimes. It allows snapshot creation even while windows is running and almost all imaging programs use it. I have never used the fix VSS issues. I believe it is there if the image fails due to problems with VSS, which can happen. That is the only time I would think it needs to be used.

BuckSkin · 14 Jan 2019

essenbe said:

I am far from an expert on VSS as well. The extent of my knowledge is knowing what it means. It is Volume Shadow copy Service or called Volume Snapshot service sometimes. It allows snapshot creation even while windows is running and almost all imaging programs use it. I have never used the fix VSS issues. I believe it is there if the image fails due to problems with VSS, which can happen. That is the only time I would think it needs to be used.

Thanks; that is a lot more than I knew.
I did learn last night that VSS is Volume Shadow copy Service.
Anything in that Events log is Chinese arithmetic to me.
If I never looked in there, I would not be aware that there were any problems; so, it must not be too vital to the running of things;however, seeing several of those yellow triangles and a few red ones does look sort of scary.

essenbe · 14 Jan 2019

BuckSkin said:

Thanks; that is a lot more than I knew.
I did learn last night that VSS is Volume Shadow copy Service.
Anything in that Events log is Chinese arithmetic to me.
If I never looked in there, I would not be aware that there were any problems; so, it must not be too vital to the running of things;however, seeing several of those yellow triangles and a few red ones does look sort of scary.

The best, most optimized computer will always have dozens, if not hundreds, of entries in event viewer. That's the way the phone scammers get everyone. They know that. They will always tell you to look in event viewer to 'prove' you have serious problems. They know that all computers have many many entries there. Personally, unless I am having some problem I don't even look. Almost every event that happens has an entry in event viewer.

BuckSkin · 14 Jan 2019

Well, everything was going so good --- and I may have ran into a bit of a snag.
On machine number three, I have went through the process of creating a rescue disc and have gotten past where it downloads the WinPE stuff and then tells me an update is found and I clicked continue and it mounted and unmounted the rescue disc again, selected the DVD burner and such, and the next step is to click Finish.
I clicked finish.
A little window with a pulsing green bar and Please Wait has now been on the screen for what seems a terribly long time, as if it is stuck.
The next thing that usually happens is it kicks open the DVD tray and tells me to insert a disc.

How long should I "Please Wait" and what should I do if it doesn't progress any further ?

essenbe · 14 Jan 2019

Just close it, reopen Macrium and try to create the rescue media again. @kado897 would know better than I would. He's the expert.

BuckSkin · 14 Jan 2019

essenbe said:

Just close it, reopen Macrium and try to create the rescue media again. Kado897 would know better than I would. He's the expert.

I had to end it with Task Manager.
I tried again and hung up at the same place.
Restarted and tried again and still hung up.
That machine has two DVD burners; so, when it got to that point, instead of clicking Finish, I switched back and forth between the two DVD drives and played with some of the other settings, making sure to return everything to the default settings, clicked Finish and then --- the DVD tray kicked open and I was able to complete the task.

Thanks.

essenbe · 14 Jan 2019

Glad you have it working.