Hard Drive management, defragging etc advice.

[kol12]

I was just wondering how much benefit there is to defragging your data/game hdd and how often? Obviously the more often it's done the shorter it takes...

Do you prefer to have your document, download and picture folders location moved to your storage drive rather than the OS drive? I tend to think the files would load faster from the ssd but in the event of OS malfunction they may have been better on the hdd...

I'm concerned about the reliability of the data/game hdd for storage. I suppose anything critical on this drive should be regularly backed up... I suppose the point is, is that my data hdd being a game drive also gets a fair bit of use along with regular defragging so I am concerned as to anything critical being stored on this drive also...

 

[The Paladin]

But yeah these things are always crawling over my monitor, is there some sort of attraction to electronics for these things?

if ants they are called raspberry ants, electronic wiring attracts them... they are quite destructive...
https://www.doyourownpestcontrol.com/crazy-ants.html

 

[kol12]

But yeah these things are always crawling over my monitor, is there some sort of attraction to electronics for these things?

if ants they are called raspberry ants, electronic wiring attracts them... they are quite destructive...
https://www.doyourownpestcontrol.com/crazy-ants.html

No mine are tiny light brown termite type...

 

[USAFRet]

Well I'm lucky enough to have not had that happen, never know though I see them a lot. Is he the only one that managed to get that far in?

Only one I've seen. And that monitor has since gone to the big recycling place in the sky, for unrelated reasons.

 

[RolandJS]

defrag Spot

 

[kol12]

Do you think it would better to make a notepad list for backup of frequently installed programs rather than backing up the downloads folder for which program versions are always being updated? My downloads folder already being 5 GB, I'm not sure... Only thing is you would have to remember to add newly downloaded apps to the list which might not be ideal...

Edit: Duh, my heads really stuck on this need for individual file backup, sooner I get Macrium v7 the better I think...

 

[kol12]

So I'm having some issues with SyncBackFree in that the profile schedules won't run from Windows Task Scheduler because I'm running it from a Standard user account. I've tried some suggested fixes on the forum that haven't worked and aren't getting much more support.

I'm getting a bit impatient on Macrium v7 Free and wondered if there's anything else you could recommend for full drive backup with individual file extraction capability in the mean time? How about EaseUS Todo?

 

[USAFRet]

So I'm having some issues with SyncBackFree in that the profile schedules won't run from Windows Task Scheduler because I'm running it from a Standard user account. I've tried some suggested fixes on the forum that haven't worked and aren't getting much more support.

I'm getting a bit impatient on Macrium v7 Free and wondered if there's anything else you could recommend for full drive backup with individual file extraction capability in the mean time? How about EaseUS Todo?

https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree
"Coming soon: Macrium Reflect 7 Free Edition!"

 

[kol12]

You seem adamant on waiting for Macrium v7 free.

I want to manually install the Creators Update so I suppose I just have to take my chances with a Macrium system image before hand.

 

[USAFRet]

You seem adamant on waiting for Macrium v7 free.

I want to manually install the Creators Update so I suppose I just have to take my chances with a Macrium system image before hand.

No, I already have Macrium v7 (Paid).
But, that seems to do what you require.

SyncBackFree apparently does not run scheduled from a standard acct.
Have you tried FreeFileSync?

 

[kol12]

No, I'll try it.

Ideally I'd like a full system image with file extraction capability as if I needed to clean install the Creators Update that would be much more convenient. I don't think a clean install would be necessary but you never know.

 

[kol12]

@USAFRet

Are you sure file extraction isn't a feature of Macrium v6 free? I mounted an old Win 8.1 image I have and could easily pull out files and copy them to another source...??

 

[USAFRet]

@USAFRet

Are you sure file extraction isn't a feature of Macrium v6 free? I mounted an old Win 8.1 image I have and could easily pull out files and copy them to another source...??

No, I'm not 'sure'.

But v7 brings this

Opens the contents of an image in windows explorer. Just like any other folder or drive.

 

[kol12]

I'm right clicking the .mrimg itself and selecting "Browse Image" which mounts it as a browsable drive. If I do that through the main program it does the same and mounts it as a drive, except this way I'm prompted for the administrator password to certain folders for which it just continues to load then says access is denied. No such thing required when mounting the first way.

Because you have the paid version maybe you forgot what the free version could do? It doesn't matter, I may contact Macrium to get some peace of mind...

 

[USAFRet]

I'm right clicking the .mrimg itself and selecting "Browse Image" which mounts it as a browsable drive. If I do that through the main program it does the same and mounts it as a drive, except this way I'm prompted for the administrator password to certain folders for which it just continues to load then says access is denied. No such thing required when mounting the first way.

Because you have the paid version maybe you forgot what the free version could do? It doesn't matter, I may contact Macrium to get some peace of mind...

Possibly. or it was an inclusion in a later update for v6.

 

[USAFRet]

I'm right clicking the .mrimg itself and selecting "Browse Image" which mounts it as a browsable drive. If I do that through the main program it does the same and mounts it as a drive, except this way I'm prompted for the administrator password to certain folders for which it just continues to load then says access is denied. No such thing required when mounting the first way.

Because you have the paid version maybe you forgot what the free version could do? It doesn't matter, I may contact Macrium to get some peace of mind...

Looking in one of my other systems, Macrium Free v 6.3....that Browse Image exists and works.

 

[kol12]

I just installed the Creators Update which seems to have gone smoothly. 😉

So, that's pretty neat then if v 6.3 supports file extraction. It doesn't give any indication in the basic feature run down to this, but I found this in the v7 user guide:

"By mounting image files in Windows Explorer you can browse or explore an image and access all the files in a backup. The backed up data appears as a temporary drive in Windows Explorer that you can access, just like any other drive, mounted with its own drive letter. Individual Files and Folders can easily be recovered by using Copy and Paste."

Actually, it looks like the same can be found in the v6 user guide:

http://knowledgebase.macrium.com/display/KNOW/Browsing+Macrium+Reflect+images+and+backups+in+Windows+Explorer

Only thing is, is that it doesn't really make clear whether it's applicable to the free version, at least on that page anyway.

P.S. How does Macrium achieve such fast data transfer rates to hdd?