Change Macrium Reflect rescue media download location.

[kol12]

I have installed Macrium Reflect and upon opening it it asks to download the rescue media files but I don't want to download them to my OS drive. There doesn't seem to be an option to change the download path. Can I download them from somewhere else to my data drive? or download through the app and then move them to my data drive?

 

[USAFRet]

Oh right ok. Something else that doesn't make sense is the retention rule for full images is set to retain them for 26 weeks yet my backup plan is set to do a full image once a week. This would mean having 26 full disk images stored all the time which would be a lot of drive space! I've realised though this is probably my mistake and that I can change the amount of weeks to retain the full images but what is the purpose of retaining them if in my case I'm creating new ones each week?

The Free version relies on their default retention settings. You need to change this before creating a scheduled backup

Other Tasks
Defaults
Retention Rules
Change it to what you wish, and then make a schedule.

 

[kol12]

Oh right ok. Something else that doesn't make sense is the retention rule for full images is set to retain them for 26 weeks yet my backup plan is set to do a full image once a week. This would mean having 26 full disk images stored all the time which would be a lot of drive space! I've realised though this is probably my mistake and that I can change the amount of weeks to retain the full images but what is the purpose of retaining them if in my case I'm creating new ones each week?

The Free version relies on their default retention settings. You need to change this before creating a scheduled backup

Other Tasks
Defaults
Retention Rules
Change it to what you wish, and then make a schedule.

I'm referring to the retention rules of the backup plan which you can edit as shown in the pic below.

What is the idea behind keeping the full and differential backups? Are they like a fall back in case an image doesn't work? If I have my schedule set to create a new full image every week and to keep full images for two weeks does that mean it keeps the oldest two images every two weeks?

 

[USAFRet]

Multiple backups, because I may not know exactly when BadThing(tm) happened.

I can go back to whichever image works.

Full + Differential: Full is Monday, Differentials are whatever happened on Tuesday, Wednesday, etc, etc.
To reconstitute, you need the Full, and whichever days Differential you want.

'New Every Week' and 'Keep two weeks' means you have 2 Fulls, and whatever Differentials have happened in the interim. It deletes the previous (oldest) Full

Today is Tuesday. You make a Full on Mondays, and Differentials every day.
If you want to go back to the way the system was last Wednesday, you need the Monday before that, and the following Wednesday of that same week.

 

[kol12]

Multiple backups, because I may not know exactly when BadThing(tm) happened.

I can go back to whichever image works.

Full + Differential: Full is Monday, Differentials are whatever happened on Tuesday, Wednesday, etc, etc.
To reconstitute, you need the Full, and whichever days Differential you want.

'New Every Week' and 'Keep two weeks' means you have 2 Fulls, and whatever Differentials have happened in the interim. It deletes the previous (oldest) Full

Today is Tuesday. You make a Full on Mondays, and Differentials every day.
If you want to go back to the way the system was last Wednesday, you need the Monday before that, and the following Wednesday of that same week.

Ok I get it. Would it be best to to retain differentials for the same amount of time as the fulls though? I'm set to keep fulls for two weeks but differentials for 30 days. I mean there's not much point in keeping the differentials for the fulls that have been deleted is there?

 

[USAFRet]

Multiple backups, because I may not know exactly when BadThing(tm) happened.

I can go back to whichever image works.

Full + Differential: Full is Monday, Differentials are whatever happened on Tuesday, Wednesday, etc, etc.
To reconstitute, you need the Full, and whichever days Differential you want.

'New Every Week' and 'Keep two weeks' means you have 2 Fulls, and whatever Differentials have happened in the interim. It deletes the previous (oldest) Full

Today is Tuesday. You make a Full on Mondays, and Differentials every day.
If you want to go back to the way the system was last Wednesday, you need the Monday before that, and the following Wednesday of that same week.

Ok I get it. Would it be best to to retain differentials for the same amount of time as the fulls though? I'm set to keep fulls for two weeks but differentials for 30 days. I mean there's not much point in keeping the differentials for the fulls that have been deleted is there?

Correct. A Differential with no previous Full is useless.

 

[kol12]

Multiple backups, because I may not know exactly when BadThing(tm) happened.

I can go back to whichever image works.

Full + Differential: Full is Monday, Differentials are whatever happened on Tuesday, Wednesday, etc, etc.
To reconstitute, you need the Full, and whichever days Differential you want.

'New Every Week' and 'Keep two weeks' means you have 2 Fulls, and whatever Differentials have happened in the interim. It deletes the previous (oldest) Full

Today is Tuesday. You make a Full on Mondays, and Differentials every day.
If you want to go back to the way the system was last Wednesday, you need the Monday before that, and the following Wednesday of that same week.

Ok I get it. Would it be best to to retain differentials for the same amount of time as the fulls though? I'm set to keep fulls for two weeks but differentials for 30 days. I mean there's not much point in keeping the differentials for the fulls that have been deleted is there?

Correct. A Differential with no previous Full is useless.

Ok. Is there any reason why the differential images are quite large? I've only done one differential so far but it is 6GB with rather minimal system changes as far as I know.

 

[USAFRet]

Ok. Is there any reason why the differential images are quite large? I've only done one differential so far but it is 6GB with rather minimal system changes as far as I know.

All depends on what your system did during that time.

 

[kol12]

Ok. Is there any reason why the differential images are quite large? I've only done one differential so far but it is 6GB with rather minimal system changes as far as I know.

All depends on what your system did during that time.

Ok, I think I'm getting the hang of things. I may have more questions but not at this stage. Thanks for your help.

 

[kol12]

Hi again,

I've found that I don't have enough space on my external drive to maintain the backup schedule I've created. What does retain full images for two weeks actually mean? In my case I now have two full images with the most recent being created this Monday gone. I'm scheduled to create a full image every Monday with differentials on Wed,Fri,and Sun and to retain full images for 2 weeks and differentials for 14 days.

What would be a good way to reduce this until I'm able to get a bigger/dedicated drive for backing up? Would it best to retain two full images and have less differentials or just have one full image with differentials per week?

 

[USAFRet]

Hi again,

I've found that I don't have enough space on my external drive to maintain the backup schedule I've created. What does retain full images for two weeks actually mean? In my case I now have two full images with the most recent being created this Monday gone. I'm scheduled to create a full image every Monday with differentials on Wed,Fri,and Sun and to retain full images for 2 weeks and differentials for 14 days.

What would be a good way to reduce this until I'm able to get a bigger/dedicated drive for backing up? Would it best to retain two full images and have less differentials or just have one full image with differentials per week?

The differentials don't take up that much space, you wouldn't be saving much.

I would think just 1 Full, and then the differentials would work.

 

[kol12]

Hi again,

I've found that I don't have enough space on my external drive to maintain the backup schedule I've created. What does retain full images for two weeks actually mean? In my case I now have two full images with the most recent being created this Monday gone. I'm scheduled to create a full image every Monday with differentials on Wed,Fri,and Sun and to retain full images for 2 weeks and differentials for 14 days.

What would be a good way to reduce this until I'm able to get a bigger/dedicated drive for backing up? Would it best to retain two full images and have less differentials or just have one full image with differentials per week?

The differentials don't take up that much space, you wouldn't be saving much.

I would think just 1 Full, and then the differentials would work.

Ok, sooner I get a dedicated drive the better. Is there a risk not having 1 or 2 fulls to fall back on?

 

[USAFRet]

Ok, sooner I get a dedicated drive the better. Is there a risk not having 1 or 2 fulls to fall back on?

All depends on your comfort zone.
You're already way ahead of the pack in doing any backup.

 

[kol12]

Ok, sooner I get a dedicated drive the better. Is there a risk not having 1 or 2 fulls to fall back on?

All depends on your comfort zone.
You're already way ahead of the pack in doing any backup.

Yeah, I never used to take backing up too seriously, well I did but I only ever backed up documents manually which wasn't very reliable anyway. Just about every major system problem I've had (dead hdd's etc) would have been rectified far more easily with a system image. I feel quite satisfied that I've taken the time to understand how to do image backups and I have a bit more peace of mind knowing it's backed up regularly.