Solved Macrium Reflect Sequential Backups to different folders

Hi, all.
I'm not sure if I'm going to articulate this correctly, but is there a way in Macrium Reflect (Home edition) to backup drives to different folders with a single command?

In other words, I want to back up my D drive to a folder called "D drive", then back up my E drive to a folder called "E drive", and then back up my G drive to a folder called "Work" all in one swoop without having to go back and run a command for each. I'd like to have Macrium back up the first drive, move to the second, and then move to the third.

Would this be a script? I'm not good at writing scripts, so if it is a script, a dumbed down explanation would be excellent!

Thanks!

jvickers said:

... I want to back up my D drive to a folder called "D drive", then back up my E drive to a folder called "E drive", and then back up my G drive to a folder called "Work" all in one swoop without having to go back and run a command for each. I'd like to have Macrium back up the first drive, move to the second, and then move to the third.

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It's built in to Reflect. All you have to do is set up the three profiles (they can have different settings) and at the final program screen, tick the Save box and give that profile a name, e.g., D Drive Image. It'll save as D Drive Image.xml wherever you want to store the profile. Then set up the E Drive Image.xml file, and finally, the G Drive Image (with target as Work folder).

In the program, set shortcuts for the three profiles.

Now, when you're ready, click the first shortcut, then the second, and then the third. Reflect will run the first and report "Success," then it will show the Backup Started banner (if you've got banners set to show for Reflect) for the second profile, and "Success" at the end of that run, and then it'll launch the third profile.

OK, so that takes a little preparation (once) and then three clicks when you want to run the whole shooting match. No big deal.

Wisewiz said:

It's built in to Reflect. All you have to do is set up the three profiles (they can have different settings) and at the final program screen, tick the Save box and give that profile a name, e.g., D Drive Image. It'll save as D Drive Image.xml wherever you want to store the profile. Then set up the E Drive Image.xml file, and finally, the G Drive Image (with target as Work folder).

In the program, set shortcuts for the three profiles.

Now, when you're ready, click the first shortcut, then the second, and then the third. Reflect will run the first and report "Success," then it will show the Backup Started banner (if you've got banners set to show for Reflect) for the second profile, and "Success" at the end of that run, and then it'll launch the third profile.

OK, so that takes a little preparation (once) and then three clicks when you want to run the whole shooting match. No big deal.

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Thanks, Wisewiz.
I probably left out that I want to run it while I'm asleep, so I'm looking for an automated solution.

I don't know why it would be difficult to set up a batch file with the three shortcuts, then set the batch file shortcut in Task Manager to go off at, say, midnight on Tuesday and Thursday. Hmm?

Wisewiz said:

I don't know why it would be difficult to set up a batch file with the three shortcuts, then set the batch file shortcut in Task Manager to go off at, say, midnight on Tuesday and Thursday. Hmm?

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It's been so long since I worked with batch files that, embarrassingly, I've forgotten how to work with them. I thought that a batch file might be the answer, but I just don't know where to begin.

EDIT: I looked up how to create batch files to refresh my memory. After a little poking around, I believe I found a solution.

Thanks!

Yay! Go, my friend!

Isn't that what Macrium scheduler is for? Basically just create a image save and set the schedule when you want them to run.

iPanda032 said:

Isn't that what Macrium scheduler is for? Basically just create a image save and set the schedule when you want them to run.
View attachment 51517

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I thought of this, but I want them to run the same night one after the other with no lag in time. I'll give it a try.

I guess I’m missing something here. Why does it matter whether there’s a gap, if you’re asleep when it runs?

Wisewiz said:

I guess I’m missing something here. Why does it matter whether there’s a gap, if you’re asleep when it runs?

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It probably doesn't matter. What I'm wanting to do backup all drives each night. That's four drives, and I'm not sure how long it will take to backup each yet. I'm waiting on a new, hopefully faster, external drive doc for my 8TB backup drive. I guess I could start at 1AM for the first, 2AM for the second, and so on. All four drives should be finished backing up by the time I wake around 5AM.

If you're doing a full backup yes you won't know exactly how long that will take. But that only needs to happen once. The differential backup will happen quicker unless you modify and or add lots of large files often enough. And if you pay for full version of Macrium the incremental will run even faster. Typically Differential and or incremental will take less than 30 min unless as I said unless you modified a lot of large files or added a lot of large files between. But if you're just running them over night you just space the full backups one day apart. And since macrium is automating that with the schedule presumably you're setting it to run during the am hours you're asleep it should cover your needs and you won't notice anything. Then once the full backups are there differential and incremental should happen back to back if you schedule them that way. Those types happen relatively quickly in my experience. My back up speeds were around 180mb/s give or take. You could probably calculate the time needed for full back up knowing how full each drive is.

I know this next comment will probably get some reactions, but I do full backups every time I back up. So, it can take a while.

You can also select any backup job (in the paid edition of reflect), right-click, and create a batch file, Powershell script, or VBScript as shown below:




If you do that for multiple different backup jobs, you can simply combine them into a single file. As an alternative, you could create another batch file that calls of these files one by one until they have all been run.

One thing you can try, is schedule each drive 1 minute apart. Macrium will queue them and they should run back to back after each one.

iPanda032 said:

One thing you can try, is schedule each drive 1 minute apart. Macrium will queue them and they should run back to back after each one.

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I can confirm that this is how it behaves. I have several jobs scheduled just one minute apart and each successive job gets queued and run after the previous job is completed.

hsehestedt said:

I can confirm that this is how it behaves. I have several jobs scheduled just one minute apart and each successive job gets queued and run after the previous job is completed.

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I haven't tried that myself, have you ever run into issues where if one of the backups fail for whatever reason, the others won't run?

iPanda032 said:

I haven't tried that myself, have you ever run into issues where if one of the backups fail for whatever reason, the others won't run?

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No, I can't recall that ever happening, although it never really fails for me either

But, since each job is a separate job, I would think it highly unlikely to fail. You could test this, of course. Create two jobs and schedule them. Then do something that will make the first job fail, like make the destination unavailable. Then see if the second job runs.