How often do you do a full back-up

in my main's one per week, in my other 2 once a month. Full image method. I distrust the incremental method.

I do a complete image every day. It takes lest than 4 minutes.

I just did a win 11 backup on a spare blank drive. Looks like room left for another hundred or so Do I have to make an image disk too??

Macrium images for me are pretty rare. Reason being, I don't keep much actual data on my machines. Email is in Google, games are all online profiles these days. Bookmarks are in my Google account. Files are stored mostly in OneDrive, so they are in 2 places. I haven't had a need to restore a single machine at home (other than my little testing beelink machine..which I intentionally change up frequently) in over 3 years.

For me, Macrium Images are done daily. The reason I do that is that I have my OneDrive option "Files On Demand" set to OFF. That causes OneDrive to mirror everything I have on cloud OneDrive locally on my computer in real-time. The Macrium Drive Image then makes an exact copy of everything on my computer, including all my data and photos.

I have a nice, brisk Internet connection and a reasonably fast computer. My Macrium Reflect Images take just a little over 5 minutes to make. My Macrium backups are made on a dedicated portable 2TB Samsung T7 Shield SSD.

Using Reflect I schedule a monthly full backup and weekly differential backup since the system files don't change that often. I also schedule an hourly incremental backup of user files and also use File History. My user files are stored on a separate drive to the system files.

For my PC and laptop - never as I have nothing on them worth keeping.

For the servers - twice a day.

What's the easiest way to start an incremental with MR. It eludes me.

Three times a week (Mon, Wed and Fri), Full System images with MR 8.1

kelper said:

What's the easiest way to start an incremental with MR. It eludes me.

Click to expand...

It's easy if you schedule your backups. But if, like me, you start all your backup manually when you feel it's time then it's less obvious. First make sure you have set up your back up and saved it as a backup definition. Then whenever you want to start a backup you can select the backup definition file and click the Run icon, you'll have a choice of backup type.

I found another way. Right-click on the latest full backup and select Run Backup, then Create Differential.
But on my computer, a full backup takes ten minutes and an incremental only two days later takes eight, so
hardly worth it!

kelper said:

...on my computer, a full backup takes ten minutes and an incremental only two days later takes eight, so hardly worth it!

Click to expand...

If you have an HDD then you should turn off scheduled optimisation. Deragmentation makes lots of changes that have to be included in the incremental.

Bree said:

If you have an HDD then you should turn off scheduled optimisation. Deragmentation makes lots of changes that have to be included in the incremental.

Click to expand...

Thanks. I've turned it off as suggested. I'll do a full backup today and a differential in two days.

I have real time file backup, so I do 2 Macrium backups each weekend. I keep 4 sets (8) and delete the oldest 2 after I make new ones

A Guy

Never because i dont need em

Every night before shutdown. If anything goes wrong the next day, restoring to the night-before version is a snap, and fast. Unlike many here, I have no massive files like movies and videos, and I think I have a total of 4 photos on my computers.
I have two disks (NVMe), one for local storage (that's where my images and backup copies go) and my two-partition main disk, which has the OS and hardly anything else on C:, and all of my programs (2 "installed,"; 38 portable/standalone) on D:. The installed ones on D: are Macrium and Malwarebytes.

The painless nature of my full main disk imaging is clear from the shot below.

@Wisewiz Wow! A total of 4 photos! I have just a tad more than that!

My Pictures folder has a total of 56,289 photos.
My Documents folder has a total of 6,645 files.



I'm imaging a 1TB C: drive to a 2TB Portable Samsung T7 Shield SSD using a Thunderbolt 4 port.
My Macrium backup file size is 264,846,195 KB.

My cloud OneDrive has 202 GB used of 1.08 TB.

Well I have 5 Photos, it is a choice of any user to have whatever they want in The Pictures folder or any other for that matter. I have zero Videos in my Videos Folder and only one in Documents.

@Josey Wales

I like that. Lean, mean, and just carrying what I need from day to day.
Everything else is in the small pile of external SSD drives and thumb drives lying around on my office shelves. If I want 'em, I've got 'em.

From what I've read here, I'm starting to believe that there are a lot of folks who just don't understand what a full backup is. Eh?

I'm pretty sure that some folks have a main hard drive that is all ONE partition. So a full backup would be a bit for bit copy of that entire drive, with the resultant Image File written to another drive.

In my own case, when I install Windows 11, the installer will create one large partition for Windows, and either one or two smaller partitions for it's own use. That leaves me with a C: partition that is way larger than required for my everyday use. So, I use a Hard Drive partitioning program to split that large partition into TWO partitions...one for the OS and one for my data files and quick backups of the C: partition.
My backup program, Ghost, will take about 15 minutes, give or take a few minutes, to create a Backup Image File of my C: partition, using FAST Compression. I will keep several backups of C: on my Backup Storage drive.

Using Ghost, run from a bootable USB Flash Drive, it will back up every tiny bit of info from the C: partition on my SSD. And, I mean Everything!
That includes the boot sector, MBR, and every bit of the ones and zeros that make up Windows and all my software.
This is important, because if my main SSD dies, like the first SSD I ever had, I can restore my latest Backup Image File to a brand new drive, and be back in business, with absolutely NO loss.

It bothers me, that so many people don't seem to fully understand the mechanics of doing backups. And this is such a poor place for "Backups 101"
I'm still using "Ghost" which I first met in 1997. It's been updated a few times since then, but I'm still running the last of the DOS based versions. (Ghost 11.5) It will backup a partition, or an entire disk. No separate file backups and no Incrementals. This version of Ghost will not run from within Windows, but only from a DOS boot disk. No problem, , , I have many of those.

I developed my own way to do a Clean Install of Windows 11/Pro/64, to another PC.
I can do a Disk to Disk clone, off of my main PC, and then put the clone into another PC. Windows, when first booted up, will ask me to wait, install a few drivers, and then come up like it was originally installed on that PC, but with all my favorite programs already in place. I've used this technique twice lately, to install Windows 11/Pro/64 to two very old Dell laptops. It beats the heck out of doing the install from a Flash Drive, and then having to install a dozen or more programs, tweaks, tune up tips, etc.

The PC I'm on now, was originally a CLONE of my Main PC, in another room. The only thing that the two PC's have in common, is their AMD processors. However, at least one of my recent transplants has been between My Main PC, with an AMD cpu, and a laptop with an Intel cpu.
Windows 11 is very versatile!

Cheers Mates!
TM