Poll on Backup software

TraderGary · Sep 6, 2022

One of the first things Macrium wants me to do is create Rescue Media. I purchased a SanDisk Ultra 64GB USB type C for that and it was delivered today. I chose to create Rescue Media and it tilted after it completely filled the 64GB USB drive. Good grief, how big of a USB drive do I need to buy?

kado897 · Sep 6, 2022

TraderGary said:
One of the first things Macrium wants me to do is create Rescue Media. I purchased a SanDisk Ultra 64GB USB type C for that and it was delivered today. I chose to create Rescue Media and it tilted after it completely filled the 64GB USB drive. Good grief, how big of a USB drive do I need to buy?

The rescue media is less than 1 GB in size. This is my rescue media, just over 600MB of a 4GB thumb drive.

Have you been trying to store the image on the rescue media?

man00 · Sep 6, 2022

RD Mercer · Sep 6, 2022

kado897 said:
Have you been trying to store the image on the rescue media?

This must be the case.

TraderGary · Sep 6, 2022

Something is screwed up here. Since the USB C drive is brand new, I decided to format it. The darn thing is hotter than hell and looks like it will take about an hour to do a complete, non-quick, format. Then I'll try this again.

TraderGary · Sep 6, 2022

Can you create Rescue Media and make a media image at the same time? If so, that's what I did. But not on purpose.

Bree · Sep 6, 2022

TraderGary said:
...I chose to create Rescue Media and it tilted after it completely filled the 64GB USB drive.

kado897 said:
The rescue media is less than 1 GB in size......
Have you been trying to store the image on the rescue media?

One of my rescue media USB's is even smaller than that, It's for a little Acer AOD270 netbook of mine with 32-bit W10 that also natively boots a .vhdx of W11. The 32-bit boot files are smaller, just 226MB needed. So a 16GB usb does have room for a system image as well, but I've just switched to a 32GB one so that I can also save a zip file of the W11 .vhdx as well.

TraderGary · Sep 6, 2022

I've made two images so far and saved them to the SSD I use for backups. They are 275GB in size.

Bree · Sep 6, 2022

TraderGary said:
The darn thing is hotter than hell and looks like it will take about an hour to do a complete, non-quick, format

I always quick format a usb.

RD Mercer · Sep 6, 2022

TraderGary said:
I've made two images so far and saved them to the SSD I use for backups. They are 275GB in size.

I don't use Macrium, I use Acronis, but 275 GB? that's huge.

kado897 · Sep 6, 2022

TraderGary said:
Can you create Rescue Media and make a media image at the same time? If so, that's what I did. But not on purpose.

You make the rescue media and then you make an image to an external disk. The rescue media should only contain the Windows PE or RE Macrium code to perform a restore. Any backup images need to be on a separate external drive. You may wish to look through the knowledgebase Macrium Reflect KnowledgeBase - Knowledgebase 8.0 - Macrium Reflect Knowledgebase

kado897 · Sep 6, 2022

Bree said:
One of my rescue media USB's is even smaller than that, It's for a little Acer AOD270 netbook of mine with 32-bit W10 that also natively boots a .vhdx of W11. The 32-bit boot files are smaller, just 226MB needed. So a 16GB usb does have room for a system image as well, but I've just switched to a 32GB one so that I can also save a zip file of the W11 .vhdx as well.

View attachment 38553

Also Windows PE is much smaller than Windows RE. Mine is RE.

TraderGary · Sep 6, 2022

I've been slowly reading through the knowledgebase and trying to do as they suggest.

I've also subscribed to the Macrium site on YouTube where they illustrate things with monkey-do videos. I think I may need to watch a few of those.

kado897 · Sep 6, 2022

TraderGary said:
I've been slowly reading through the knowledgebase and trying to do as they suggest.

I've also subscribed to the Macrium site on YouTube where they illustrate things with monkey-do videos. I think I may need to watch a few of those.

Once you get the hang of it it's quite straightforward. I have had a situation in the past when creating the Rescue media didn't format the thumb drive so I do a quick format first.

Bree · Sep 6, 2022

kado897 said:
Also Windows PE is much smaller than Windows RE. Mine is RE.

Mine above is the 32 bit WinRE rescue media.

TraderGary · Sep 6, 2022

What the Bleep is going on here? I bought a 64GB USB C Drive. I just formatted it. The Macrium Media Creation told me it needed to be formatted again! So I put a check mark in the box to permit it. However, the tool went immediately to creating the drive and here is what I have.

How is that taking up half of a 64GB drive? And why is it now saying that I have a 2GB drive instead of a 64GB drive? Is that what Macrium does to a large drive when making a rescue drive?

Bree · Sep 6, 2022

TraderGary said:
How is that taking up half of a 64GB drive? And why is it now saying that I have a 2GB drive instead of a 64GB drive? Is that what Macrium does to a large drive when making a rescue drive?

Macrium requires a bootable Fat32 partition. Any usb up to 32GB will do for that, but a larger USB will require reformatting as Fat32 has a maximum 32GB partition size.

If you let Macrium reformat the drive for you it creates a bootable Fat32 partition just big enough to hold the recovery files. The rest of any large USB is left unallocated. You are now free to create any partition you like there, use ExFat or NTFS if it's larger than 32GB. Any files you put in the new partition will be safely well kept away from the Macrium Reflect partition, should you even need to delete or reformat that one.

TraderGary · Sep 6, 2022

Bree said:
Macrium requires a bootable Fat32 partition. Any usb up to 32GB will do for that, but a larger USB will require reformatting as Fat32 has a maximun 32GB partition size.

If you let Macrium reformat the drive for you it created a bootable Fat32 partition just big enough to hold the recovery files. The rest of any large USB is left unallocated. You are now free to create any partition you like there, keeping an files you put there safely well away from the Macrium Reflect partition, should you even need to delete or reformat that one.

OK. That makes sense. My Macrium image backup is about 320GB, so I might as well just leave the drive as it is. All is good. I certainly could have spent less for the drive.

TM21 · Sep 6, 2022

Ghot said:
I've used Norton Ghost 2003, Acronis and Macrium.
I've tested a few others.

IMO, Norton Ghost 2003 was the best, but it won't run on anything past Windows XP.
Then comes Macrium, which if it has ANY faults, it's just that it's getting too complex.

For my money, backup software should have three things only.
1. Can make full backups.
2. Can restore full backups, even if Windows won't boot.
3. Can make bootable Rescue Media.

True, Ghost 2003 did not speak NTFS, but Symantec bought it and upgraded it to work with NTFS drives, and after that they stopped updating the DOS versions with Ghost 11.5. In 2022 I still use the 11.5 DOS version. Finally Symantec abandoned it and they no longer sell or support it.
That was OK by me, because "Ghost 11.5" works on every OS I've ever owned, and the program is just SO Simple and easy to use, whether I'm backing up my C: drive or doing a full drive CLONE.
It boots up to DOS, from any bootable media (depends on your PC). I have it on CD's, Flash Drives, and even an SD Memory Card.
It just doesn't care, what OS is on the HD, or if there is no OS at all, just data....it will copy it.

While poking around on the internet one day, I found an ISO to a Ghost 11.5 boot disk. Just for grins, I downloaded that ISO and burned it to a CD and BEHOLD' it booted up my PC to Ghost 11.5 exactly like what I already have.

Yes, I've tried, Macrium, and at least a half dozen other so called Backup programs, over the years and I always found them wanting.
So, on the poll, I voted for "Other" and "Ghost 11.5" is my "Other".

To do a quick backup on just my data files, I wrote a Batch file, using XCOPY, to backup all my data to an external HD or FD.
It's a DOS batch file, but it runs very nicely in Windows.

TM

Bree · Sep 6, 2022

TraderGary said:
All is good. I certainly could have spent less for the drive.

I often use my oldest USBs for my reflect rescue media. It's about the only real use I have for my 2GB or 4GB ones these days :wink:

Poll on Backup software

Which imaging program do you use for backups?

Macrium

EaseUS todo

Aomei

Windows 7 system imaging in Windows 10 or 11

Acronis

Ashampoo

Paragon

Cloud based

Other (please post to explain)

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