Solved Question about Macrium

I just upgraded from Home to Pro and wanted to do a full backup. I had a network hiccup while the backup was being created and it failed. So I went to delete it and do it again and accidentally deleted my original backups, so I'm starting from scratch.

My question is, which would you recommend for the Template used in Macrium. I'm guessing either Diff or Inc would be best, but not sure which one I want to do. These backups are going wireless to a NAS if that matters.


My plan is to do daily backups, but not sure which is best for recovery and overall disk space.

Others will vary, I personally do manual full back ups weekly

CornishRattler said:

Others will vary, I personally do manual full back ups weekly

Click to expand...

This doesnt answer his question. I personally after much research I suggest using Grandfather, Father, Son

imanlien2020 said:

This doesnt answer his question. I personally after much research I suggest using Grandfather, Father, Son

Click to expand...

OK, none of them. I do weekly manual backups. Backup schedules are whatever you think you need, but if daily I would go with incremental. Should you ever need the image to recover from then just choose the most recent increment and it would include all the previous ones plus the original full one

I do a full Macrium image of the OS disc fortnightly before the Microsoft patch Tuesday with documents and data held on Raid 1 discs, therefore only create OS image.

I back my OS partitions daily - keeping 33 at any one time

I do a fresh full backup of my user partitions on 1st of each month, doing differential backups daily - keeping 8 at any one time.

Bearing in mind that space is always at a premium, and simplicity is always best, I use the Incremental Forever setting with frequency settings cut according to the space that you have available, so make sure that stacks up with a little headroom to accommodate the outside extent of available space implicated..

It is elegant and highly efficient. What you get is one full image back up with, say max 7 daily incremental backups, nice and tight. The full back up combines the first Incremental (7 days ago) every day so each subsequent Incremental is absorbed into the first full image, ad-infinitum, so always only maximum 7 days old, but with all of the individual remaining 6 days left to choose from for most recent Incrementals. Incrementals set to daily. Full image is monthly. It works like a dream. Set and forget.

All of the Grandpa's, Great Great furthest removed Uncle's Auntie's Nephew's Son's Daughter's Mother's Great Great Grandfather's Illegitimate Child's confusion is kicked into touch where it belongs and sanity restored.

The same applies to Files and Folders.

So just 2 backup scenarios on the above simple basis, one for Full Image, and one for Files and Folders. Job's a good'n.

I use the paid Home version (4 x bundle of Licences). It works like a dream and is sensibly contained within a reasonable space. I have tested both Image and Files & Folders restores using the above settings and it went like clockwork.

Just my eggs,

Christophe

CMArbres said:

Bearing in mind that space is always at a premium, and simplicity is always best, I use the Incremental Forever setting with frequency settings cut according to the space that you have available, so make sure that stacks up with a little headroom to accommodate the outside extent of available space implicated..

It is elegant and highly efficient. What you get is one full image back up with, say max 7 daily incremental backups, nice and tight. The full back up combines the first Incremental (7 days ago) every day so each subsequent Incremental is absorbed into the first full image, ad-infinitum, so always only maximum 7 days old, but with all of the individual remaining 6 days left to choose from for most recent Incrementals. Incrementals set to daily. Full image is monthly. It works like a dream. Set and forget.

All of the Grandpa's, Great Great furthest removed Uncle's Auntie's Nephew's Son's Daughter's Mother's Great Great Grandfather's Illegitimate Child's confusion is kicked into touch where it belongs and sanity restored.

The same applies to Files and Folders.

So just 2 backup scenarios on the above simple basis, one for Full Image, and one for Files and Folders. Job's a good'n.

I use the paid Home version (4 x bundle of Licences). It works like a dream and is sensibly contained within a reasonable space. I have tested both Image and Files & Folders restores using the above settings and it went like clockwork.

Click to expand...

For redundancy, I have two remote backups and one external local of Files and Folders.

CMArbres said:

Just my eggs,

Christophe

Click to expand...

So I set it to "Incremental Forever" with a 7-day cutoff and I think the explanation convinced me. Thanks for the suggestions and help.

One needs to bear in mind that Macrium backups are weighty files, and that can mitigate against having more frequent backup periods set than daily. So, as far as Macrium is concerned, leave Incrementals as daily,

Now, to get more sensitive to virtually momentary backups, separate from Macrium, but all of which Macrium absorbs once a day, use an wonderful free piece of glorious and extremely elegant software called SyncFolder. Configure that as macro-minimalistically as your heart desires and send those backups wherever you like, even remote, to any type of device., wirelessly, or otherwise, even via FTP.

Now what you have is a very sophisticated and ultra-redundant back up system using both Macrium Reflect and SyncFolder working in seamless partnership. that will backup your most recent file change almost down to the minute it was executed, available for subsequent restore, during the interim of Macrium daily Incrementals.

You also also use SyncFolder intelligently to get remotes like OneDrive and GoogleDrive to play nicely and, in that way, as soon as you save a file, it is instantly mirrored in all backup locations so that when Macrium Reflect eventually kicks in once a day, it also is updated for restore.

SyncFolder actually does way more, by far, than I have pointed towards. I have never found two pieces of software so perfectly complementary that Macrium Reflect and SyncFolder. When you get those two babies playing nicely, you end up with an incredible and highly redundant backup system, though highly sensitive and sophisticated, simplicity itself to save your ass in any circumstances.

Christophe

Archigos said:

So I set it to "Incremental Forever" with a 7-day cutoff and I think the explanation convinced me. Thanks for the suggestions and help.

Click to expand...

You are most welcome indeed.

Kind regards,

Christophe

Yeah, the size of the files doesn't really bother me... the laptop I'm backing up only has a 512GB drive (less than 50% used) and the NAS that is getting the files has 5.8TB of free space left.

That's not necessarily a good thing. Bigger drives than you need cause more problems than they are worth. The golden rule of maximum efficiency is to use the smallest possible drive that you can for the tasks demanded of it leaving 50% headroom (as near as f*** it). So having a 2 TB drive for only 500 GB data is inefficient. I GB would be far better.

If you can, build your NAS with smaller drives cut according to efficiency. Treat it scientifically leaving the headroom for growth that you need, just not too much. In that wat way, you optimise your NAS. Exaggerating for the purposes of illustration, it is far better to have an array of small drives than just one big one. You can fine-tune this according to each type of backup, and that is the most efficient way.

It is far better to have an array of smaller drives based on the above principle. Much faster if restoration time is a significant factor. Just takes some astute management (funding and other considerations permitting) to get the hardware infrastructure optimised.

Christophe

I had smaller drives, but I recently had to add more because I ran out of room, so that's just what's leftover now... it's got 32TB in total.