Macrium Reflect - Faster way of backing up?

pete_agreatguy · 21 Jun 2019 at 18:49

Hi all,

Current Situation:

I currently use Macrium Reflect to create a Full Image backup of my 2TB data drive every month.

It takes around 45+ minutes to create the backup, inc. verification.

Query

I want to decrease the time it takes to produce a backup of this data drive; however in the predicament of a hard drive failure, I don't want it to be too complex to restore the drive to a replacement.

Q) From now on do I use "Differential" or "Incremental" image?

I am struggling to decide which of these to choose.

Many thanks in advance for aid in deciding

EDIT: My 2TB drive is currently 1.56TB of 1.81TB free.

Armageus · 21 Jun 2019 at 19:00

Incremental builds on other backups, so

e.g. if you backed up daily starting with a full back up on a Sunday, then to restore wednesdays backup, you would start with the full Sunday backup, and then need to restore Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

Differential should just need the full backup and the current differential file. So in the example above you would restore the full and then straight to wednesday.

Only you can decide how frequently you need to backup - at least doing a full backup once a month is more than most people manage

andshrew · 21 Jun 2019 at 19:00

Have a read of the FAQ https://kb.macrium.com/KnowledgebaseArticle50143.aspx

I would say the differential option sounds easier to manage.

APM · 21 Jun 2019 at 19:15

How do you use the drive?

Create a new folder every month and only back that up.

bledd · 23 Jun 2019 at 09:58

Could set it to do 6 monty full and weekly or daily incremental.

pete_agreatguy · 23 Jun 2019 at 11:36

Hi all,

Apologies on the late reply. Differential does sound like an option.

I've also contemplated continuing to do the backup as a full option but doing it prior to going to bed selecting the option to shutdown after finishing - if this is still feasible?

APM - The data drive is only written to on a weekly basis. Daily if doing game modding - currently I am doing the latter for ETS2.

Disco_P · 24 Jun 2019 at 01:03

If it's not an OS drive then I'd just use a file level backup. I use VEEAM to create daily backup images of my OS to D: and then freefilesync to copy everything from My Documents, D: E: & G: to a single external HDD. Freefilesync scans the folders/files for changes then copies only things that have changed. The old/deleted things go to the recycling bin. It should be faster and won't require faffing around with image files in the event you need only to restore a couple files and folders. Disadvantage is that it won't have any version history beyond the last backup, you'll have to scour the recycle bin.

pete_agreatguy · 24 Jun 2019 at 10:02

I wanted a compressed image on this drive.

However I do use AllwaySync to backup the following:

8TB media drive to 8TB media backup drive
Documents and Downloads folders to 2TB data backup drive
- I use to just move the folders across to my data drive but I do not do that anymore

I might have to check out FreeFileSync as I've heard a lot of people using it. I've never had issues with Allwaysync though. Plus I love the easy to use GUI.