Solved Latest Macrium Reflect updates

I purchased a Macrium Reflect Home 4-Pack License on 2022-09-03.
I check for updates daily when I load and use it.
My current version is 8.0.7175.

BrianInEngland said:

The download agent only gives 8.0.7175, both the free and paid downloaders.

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I have just tested that by downloading the Download Agent and running it, I got v8.0.7279_reflect_setup_free_x64.exe

If you download a fresh new free Macrium Reflect, you get version 8.0.7279.

I just now did an update check on my paid Macrium Reflect and there are no updates to my current version 8.0.7175.

What am I missing here?

TraderGary said:

If you download a fresh new free Macrium Reflect, you get version 8.0.7279.

I just now did an update check on my paid Macrium Reflect and there are no updates to my current version 8.0.7175.

What am I missing here?

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The update of the paid version to V8.1 has been pulled to fix some serious problems, An update is expected this week.

TraderGary said:

If you download a fresh new free Macrium Reflect, you get version 8.0.7279.

I just now did an update check on my paid Macrium Reflect and there are no updates to my current version 8.0.7175.

What am I missing here?

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Now that Reflect Free has been retired Reflect Free and Reflect Home are on different update paths. Free will stay on v8.0 and Home will be updated to v8.1. There was an update for Home to v8.1.7280 on 10th Jan. but it was quickly pulled when bugs were found. There was also an update to Free v8.0.7279 on the same day. A revised v8.1 update is expected by the end of this week.

Bree said:

I have just tested that by downloading the Download Agent and running it, I got v8.0.7279_reflect_setup_free_x64.exe

View attachment 50757

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Yes I have it now, I was using an older version of the Download agent which didn't give me the new version.

The new and hopefully fixed v8.1 is not far away.

Using version 8.0.7175 some time now , works very good ( and fast !) .
Cant imagine next update will be better ..........

pietcorus2 said:

Using version 8.0.7175 some time now , works very good ( and fast !) .
Cant imagine next update will be better ..........

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For my setup v8.1 is twice as fast on differentials and incrementals but pretty much the same speed on full images. The speed limitation appears to be disk write on the USB3 attached spinner.

I dont use differentials and incrementals , only complete OS-backups .
Seems to be safer , more accurate, to me..............

pietcorus2 said:

I dont use differentials and incrementals , only complete OS-backups .
Seems to be safer , more accurate, to me..............

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Differentials are safer than incremental because of fewer points of failure. I do weekly full and fill in the other days with differentials and manual incrementals for special occasions.

I do a daily complete image of my 1TB SSD. I back up to a Samsung 2TB Shield Portable SSD. I run the backup in the background, so it doesn't affect my work at all.

I simultaneously run a real-time data mirror to a 1TB cloud OneDrive. I also simultaneously run Microsoft File History. My data and photos are too important to me to put all my trust in only one strategy.

TraderGary said:

I do a daily complete image of my 1TB SSD. I back up to a Samsung 2TB Shield Portable SSD. I run the backup in the background, so it doesn't affect my work at all.

I simultaneously run a real-time data mirror to a 1TB cloud OneDrive. I also simultaneously run Microsoft File History. My data and photos are too important to me to put all my trust in only one strategy.

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Yeah, I back up my data to more than one destination daily. portable drive, NAS, and real time to the Cloud. Imaging is just really a way of avoiding the hassle of a clean install if something goes wrong. Data is much more important.

pietcorus2 said:

I dont use differentials and incrementals , only complete OS-backups .
Seems to be safer , more accurate, to me..............

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Wow, that would never work for me when I'm backing up a drive that has 7 TB of actual data on it

kado897 said:

Differentials are safer than incremental because of fewer points of failure. I do weekly full and fill in the other days with differentials and manual incrementals for special occasions.

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Whilst this is theoretically true, I have never experienced a single failure in a Macrium incremental chain.

Any sensible user would minimise risk by limiting number of incrementals to say 7 e.g. one full plus 6 w\incs, so at worst you only lose 7 days of updates.

Frankly, daily differentials are a waste of space when considering probability of a few incrementals getting corrupted.

I use both differential and incrementals in my backup strategy, but I minimize the risk of a bad backup chain by backing up to two separate locations.

cereberus said:

Whilst this is theoretically true, I have never experienced a single failure in a Macrium incremental chain.

Any sensible user would minimise risk by limiting number of incrementals to say 7 e.g. one full plus 6 w\incs, so at worst you only lose 7 days of updates.

Frankly, daily differentials are a waste of space when considering probability of a few incrementals getting corrupted.

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It's what I'm comfortable with. My differentials rarely get too big.

kado897 said:

It's what I'm comfortable with. My differentials rarely get too big.

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There is no right or wrong answer.

As an aside, the free version of AOMEI backupper now only does incrementals. It seems odd to me they consider differentials to be a premium feature!

cereberus said:

There is no right or wrong answer.

As an aside, the free version of AOMEI backupper now only does incrementals. It seems odd to me they consider differentials to be a premium feature!

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Yes, I noticed that. AOMEI backupper is my second choice, although I don't really use it much.

kado897 said:

Yes, I noticed that. AOMEI backupper is my second choice, although I don't really use it much.

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Yeah - I only use it for fulls every couple of months or so as my main OS does not change that much.

I would only restore these in a disaster scenario where all my reflect backups were failing or mysteriously deleted.

Pragmatic worst case scenario is I have to reinstall a couple of apps and do some updates. Data is backed up separately, so would not be affected. I always test the AOMEI backup by restoring to vhdx file and creating a temporary boot entry.

I cannot really think of a single reason why I would do incrementals with AOMEI, when I have Reflect who have a long experience of handling them reliably.