Some coaching for a Macrium Reflect newcomer, please

Regarding the Raid IRST issue, I can confirm that it's not just a Dell issue. I have both Dell and HP Intel units and both require the Intel IRST driver installed on the Windows Media Creation Tool USB or no drives are shown when installing Windows. Both PC's are set up in Raid mode although there is only 1 drive in each and no Optane. Raid, so I'm told, is only needed if there is more than 1 drive. When I questioned Dell Support about why the units are configured this way, it was just the way they are sent out of the factory. All Dell AMD processor units are configured in AHCI so no problem. Dell's advice to me is to change from Raid to AHCI then clean install Windows. I agree, the IRST driver should be included in the WM Tool, but it's now a couple of years (I believe) since this issue surfaced and it's probably unlikely they will address it now.

Scott said:

In fact, I can't find any mention of IRST in my BIOS.

View attachment 54127

Sorry for hijacking the thread.

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lots of bios screenshots here for your asus z590;


on this gigabyte b365 mobo, setting rst results in bsod inaccessible boot device

TraderGary said:

I learn new things on this forum all the time. This is the first time I've ever heard of IRST and I've been using a new computer for a year that has an 11th Generation Core i9 CPU that apparently requires IRST being turned on in BIOS. As @glasskuter said, "I'm fat, dumb, and happy". I've never had any drive problems. I'm using two Samsung 2TB T7 Shield Portable SSD drives that I updated firmware on when I got them but I've never added F6 drivers. I've always tried to be up to date on technology. Since I didn't even know what IRST was, is IRST then something that I even need to be concerned with?

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It is not just CPU type - IRST is related to NVME drives. If drives are conventional SATA SSDs, IRST is irrelevant.

SIW2 said:

lots of bios screenshots here for your asus z590;

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www.techpowerup.com

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Thanks for the link. That article shows bios version 0820, I'm on the latest which is 1801. I couldn't find it last time I looked, but I'll go back in and dig around.


EDIT: Found it. It's set to AHCI.

Scott said:

It's set to AHCI

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There's your answer. The OS is using the basic MS storage controller driver.

Mitch said:

a couple of years (I believe) since this issue surfaced

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Way longer than that for some systems. For 20 years(long before the innovation of NvMe drives), for my personal use as well as a lot of rebuilds, I've used nothing but Optiplex and Precision PC computers which are considered to be enterprise grade systems. They have always come from the factory with IRST enabled even when equipped with a single sata drive. IMO Dell (and HP) did this to allow enterprise to more easily set up raid after the sale. In rebuilding, I would either have to insert IRST during Windows install, OR, change to AHCI in bios.

On the other hand, most consumer grade Dells I've seen over the years have been optioned for AHCI so during a windows install no drivers had to be inserted. These days, with NvMe drives, it seems Dell is enabling IRST from the factory in more Intel systems than they used to (both laptops and PCs, consumer or enterprise grade) rather than using the native Windows NvMe driver since IRST is supposed to improve the performance, power consumption, and longevity of such drives. Whether HP or other OEMs are following suit, I do not know.

Back to the premise of my OP. Some folks take a full image daily. At the other extreme, I've seen "3 or 4 times a year when I feel like it". Right now, I'm set for a full once a month (about 30 minutes to a HDD) and incremental daily at the end of the day. Retention is 3 months. Full and incremental triggered by Macrium scheduler. Weekly, manually copying all the retained full and incremental to an offsite drive. Quarterly, I'm going to manually archive the soon-to-be-deleted three month old full and keep it for a year, both locally and on the offsite drive. For context, I'm using Macrium as insurance against fire, tornado, earthquake, theft, malware - i.e. tragic events. I have data backups going all day with FreeFileSync, saved both locally and in the cloud.

Knowing all that and accounting for personal preferences and so on, can anyone see holes in this plan that aren't obvious to a beginner? Specifically, does a restore with a full and 20 or 30 added incrementals work correctly?

Buddy said:

...can anyone see holes in this plan that aren't obvious to a beginner? Specifically, does a restore with a full and 20 or 30 added incrementals work correctly?

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Seems a sound plan. Me, I don't use the Scheduler. I prefer to manually make a Full after each month's Patch Tuesday CU, then an Incremental if/when there's another optional CU during the month.

There should be no problem restoring a backup that includes multiple Incrementals. But did you know you can set up the schedule to regularly consolidate them into a new 'Synthetic Full'?

Synthetic Full / Incrementals forever​

Incrementals forever optimises backup space and time by only ever creating a single full backup. After this, incremental backups are created forever and, once the specified number of incremental backups is reached, Macrium Reflect consolidates the incremental backup into a new 'synthetic' full backup. This is also known as a Synthetic Full backup.

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@Buddy

You realize that by the time you decide HOW to use Macrium... you'll be too old to... compute.


Just kidding. Nothing wrong with planning ahead.

Buddy said:

Back to the premise of my OP. Some folks take a full image daily. At the other extreme, I've seen "3 or 4 times a year when I feel like it". Right now, I'm set for a full once a month (about 30 minutes to a HDD) and incremental daily at the end of the day. Retention is 3 months. Full and incremental triggered by Macrium scheduler. Weekly, manually copying all the retained full and incremental to an offsite drive. Quarterly, I'm going to manually archive the soon-to-be-deleted three month old full and keep it for a year, both locally and on the offsite drive. For context, I'm using Macrium as insurance against fire, tornado, earthquake, theft - i.e. tragic events. I have data backups going all day with FreeFileSync, saved both locally and in the cloud.

Knowing all that and accounting for personal preferences and so on, can anyone see holes in this plan that aren't obvious to a beginner? Specifically, does a restore with a full and 20 or 30 added incrementals work correctly?

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I've never done that many incrementals but unless one of them becomes corrupted I see no reason why it won't work. You might like to think about slotting in weekly differentials to break up that chain.

Bree said:

Seems a sound plan. Me, I don't use the Scheduler. I prefer to manually make a Full after each month's Patch Tuesday CU, then an Incremental if/when there's another optional CU during the month.

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I forgot to say - the monthly full is scheduled for the Sunday immediately prior to Patch Tuesday.

Ghot said:

@Buddy

You realize that by the time you decide HOW to use Macrium... you'll be too old to... compute.


Just kidding. Nothing wrong with planning ahead.

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Kinda make sense since MR isn't free any longer unless you prefer the pay versions

Snooker said:

Kinda make sense since MR isn't free any longer unless you prefer the pay versions

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I like the paid version. Image Guardian protects my backups.