Using Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) Macrium Reflect creates 'point-in-time' persistent images of your system. In Addition to creating backups of all partitions required to backup and restore Windows, you can backup all or selected drives and partitions on the PC.
Starting the Image Wizard
The Image Wizard can be started in multiple ways...
By selecting 'Image selected disks on this computer'.
Using this option will populate the Image Wizard with all selected disks and partitions in the application main Window.By selecting 'Create an image of the partition(s) required to backup and restore Windows'.
Using this option will choose all the partitions required to boot Windows. This may include hidden system partitions that are essential for Windows to start and run.By Selecting a disk in the application main Window and click 'Image this disk...'.
By Selecting a disk in the application main Window, click on a partition, then click 'Actions' and select 'Image this partition only...'
Setting the Image destination
The first page of the Image Wizard shows the selected disks and partitions to be included in your Image and allows you to choose a destination.
In the Destination section, enter the target backup folder.
You can type the destination path or click the browse button to choose a folder. The destination path can be on a local drive or network share.Note: You cannot enter a path that is located in any of the partitions included in the Image.The recommended name for your Image file is the unique backup set identifier {{ImageID}}. We recommend that you always use this recommended setting as choosing your own name can cause file name collisions. Please see How backup sets are created and maintained for more information on backup file naming.
Click 'Next'. to edit the Backup Plan for this image or click 'Finish' to save and/or run the Image now.
Adding and Editing the Backup Plan
The second page of the Image Wizard is where you create or edit your 'Backup Plan'. This defines the backup schedules and retention rules for your backup.
The new Macrium Reflect retention rules provide a powerful and flexible way to manage the lifetime and storage space used by your backups. Choose how backups are matched and retention rules are applied to the target folder Retention rules are applied to the target folder of the backup by selecting one of two options: Apply retention rules to matching backup sets in the target folder. Apply retention rules to all backup sets in the target folder. All backup sets in the target folder of the same type (Disk Image or File and Folder) are purged according the retention rules. Select the age or number of backup types that you wish to keep When deleting Incremental backups the integrity of the backup set is maintained by ensuring that the chain is never broken. This is achieved by merging older Incremental backups when required. In the example below, before retention, there is 1 Full backup, 1 Differential backup and 6 Incremental backups. The retention rules are set to retain 4 incremental backups. After retention, the most recent 4 incremental backups are retained. Deleting the oldest 2 incrementals would cause the backup chain to be invalid as the oldest retained incremental requires the previous 2 incremental backups to complete the chain. To ensure backup integrity the 2 older incremental backups are consolidated with it to create a new incremental backup. When purging Incremental backups, if the backup set only contains a Full backup followed by Incremental backups, then this option causes the Full backup to be 'rolled forward' to create a Synthetic Full backup. This is also known as Incremental Forever. Select this option to run the retention rules before the current backup. Automatically remove the oldest backup set(s) in the target folder if the free space on the drive drops below the GB threshold.
Disk Images are purged if they contain exactly the same Partitions as the current Image. Partitions are identified using the unique Disk ID stored in sector 0 of the disk and the Partition sector offset.
For File and Folder backups retention rules are applied according to the 'Backup Set Matching' option select in the 'Advanced Properties' for this backup. Option Description Full When deleting Full backups all linked incremental and Differential backups in the same backup chain (set) are also deleted This operation will delete the entire backup set. Differential When deleting Differential backups all linked incremental backups in the same backup chain (set) are also deleted. Incremental
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= FullD
= DifferentialI
= IncrementalM
T
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T
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I
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-- ->
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Create a Synthetic Full if possible Run the purge before the backup Delete oldest backup set(s) if less than n GB
Click 'Next'. to view a summary of all settings for this image or click 'Finish' to save and/or run the Image now.
Displaying the Image settings
The final page of the Image Wizard displays all settings used for creating this image.
Click Finish to Run and/or save your Image definition.
Saving the backup definition
You are now given the opportunity to save the backup options.
If you want to run the backup at this point, select 'Run this backup now' and click OK.