Tell me about Macrium and other backup software when you don't have an optical drive.

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

I've only really used a crippled version Acronis that requires a CD as the Rescue Disk. You create that and store it. You load that into the second PC to begin the recovery which then looks for the backup image to use.

How does that work with newer machines that do not have optical drives?

 

[balloonshark]

I believe you can make a usb recovery drive with Macrium. I see the old free versions and would have installed it but a community member on virustotal has flagged the download. Virustotal scanners and malwarebytes says the files are clean though. I need to do more research after dinner.

Edit: I've downloaded Reflect free x64 and I was able to make a Windows RE recovery usb drive. I did not try using it though.

 

[mindless1]

I have a full version of Acronis (and not even a recent version of it, but do research acronis version vs Windows OS version support) so I haven't really investigated what the limitations are for the versions that come with hardware like SSDs, but generalizing...

The full version lets you make a recovery loader on your OS boot drive with a boot menu (defaulting to loading windows if you don't...) hit a key during boot to load it, to recover from the drives it sees, including HDD, SSD, optical, USB, etc, whatever the bios presents as a storage volume.

It also lets you make a bootable USB flash drive so you don't "need" that, which you could put the restoration image files on, or once the recovery program loads off the flash drive, browse to where it is stored, again based on what the bios presents as storage volumes.

In a minimalist configuration for a windows client, I'd partition the single SSD into two partitions, make a backup of the OS and apps partition onto the 2nd partition, and then in case the SSD failed, use acronis to make a bootable USB flash drive (and of course, test that the target system can BOOT from it to load acronis or else that is pointless), and copy the partition backup files that Acronis wrote to the 2nd partition, to the USB flash drive. The 2nd SSD partition is not necessary, Acronis could just save the partition image backup files straight to a USB flash drive or a network shared volume instead, or external USB HDD, etc.

In cases where the systems need a FAT32 formatted USB flash drive to boot from it, I have acronis make the partition backups broken into multiple 3.9GB files to overcome the fat32 4GB file size limit.

I suppose I went off on this acronis tangent because if your optical discs have the backup file formats I'm used to seeing, like filenames of *.tib, and then if broken into smaller files for fat32, subsequent files in the same backup would be *(n).tib format, those could be copied off a CD rescue disk onto a USB bootable Acronis restoration flash drive if you have a version capable of making the USB bootable flash drives... in case your prior backups have some value and you want another way to restore them besides an optical drive... but you still need an optical drive to get them off the disc and moved elsewhere.

 

[manly]

I believe you can make a usb recovery drive with Macrium. I see the old free versions and would have installed it but a community member on virustotal has flagged the download. Virustotal scanners and malwarebytes says the files are clean though. I need to do more research after dinner.

Edit: I've downloaded Reflect free x64 and I was able to make a Windows RE recovery usb drive. I did not try using it though.

I've kept the last version of Reflect Free, as it's a very popular solution. The version number is 8.0.7279

If you still need the SHA256 hash of the .exe installer file, let me know.

And yes, restoring by USB recovery works just fine.

 

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

What am I reading here? Macrium no longer has a fully free version?

What is this hash thing? What does it do and why would I need it?

What about Acronis? Fully free version or no?

(Yeah, I'm cheap!!)

Paying something one time for a full version is one thing. I will NOT pay a recurring subscription.

 

[mindless1]

^ The only free version of Acronis is if it comes with an SSD. Seems that in recent years, they have moved towards a subscription model so I don't know where the best deal is on lifetime licenses for it, which are available at least for 2019 and older.

 

[mindless1]

I've kept the last version of Reflect Free, as it's a very popular solution. The version number is 8.0.7279

If you still need the SHA256 hash of the .exe installer file, let me know.

And yes, restoring by USB recovery works just fine.

On the release notes for every recent free version, they seem to have stated it was being retired, but AFAIK the last free version was this 8.0.7783?

Download Macrium Reflect FREE Edition - MajorGeeks

With Macrium Reflect Free Edition you'll be able to easily make an accurate and reliable image of your HDD or individual partitions. Using this image you can restore the entire disk, partition or...

www.majorgeeks.com

 

[balloonshark]

Just for reference I also downloaded the old Reflect free from majorgeeks. I believe it is the last free version.

Checking the file hash is checking the file to make sure it doesn't have any errors or to make sure the file is genuine. I use a little program called hashmyfiles. In the details on Virustotal it would also show the hash or hashes MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256, etc.

A file hash is a unique signature for data that helps to identify it in a verifiable way. A file hash can be used for various purposes, including protecting the integrity of files, software, and data (i.e., proving that no one has tampered with the data) and deduping (de-duplicating) data.

 

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

OK, so I grabbed both the 32Bit and 64Bit.

Now do I need this Hash thing?

 

[balloonshark]

OK, so I grabbed both the 32Bit and 64Bit.

Now do I need this Hash thing?

Not unless you want to check if your download is corrupt or genuine. You would need to check your hash against one on macrium's site if it can be found. Most people don't bother.

I installed Reflect 64 bit if that helps.

 

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

I've kept the last version of Reflect Free, as it's a very popular solution. The version number is 8.0.7279

If you still need the SHA256 hash of the .exe installer file, let me know.

And yes, restoring by USB recovery works just fine.

Version on the Geek is 8.0.7783

 

[manly]

Version on the Geek is 8.0.7783

Thanks, guys. Mine is from Jan 2023 so I guess it wasn't the last build. The only reason I brought up file hashing is the comment about VirusTotal being weird. Although it's never a bad idea to check your download is a known safe file, even if you grabbed it from a reputable source.

What happened with Macrium Reflect is they no longer support the Free version. So in theory, if there's a security vulnerability or tricky little bug, we're just stuck with it.

Or you can use CloneZilla or RescueZilla. There are some other freemium options out there for disk cloning.

 

[Jimminy]

What am I reading here? Macrium no longer has a fully free version?

They got real greedy in the last year or two. It's now subscription only (pretty expensive too), and no free version. I'm still using their last free version.

You could check into Hasleo. It's free and has all the capabilities of macrum reflect (if you don't mind chinese or russian software).

Here's a forum thread at wilders devoted to hasleo:

Hasleo Backup Suite

By then, I'm not sure what will be left out of the product for casual/typical users... what else can they add other than a Macrium MIG type of feature...

www.wilderssecurity.com