I think that’s not the right test for the topic being discussed. Your tests confirm that a non-RDR restore takes the same time regardless of the state of the target. But that was never in dispute. The question at hand is this: You replied in the affirmative: I don’t believe Macrium would have implemented something so inefficient when the capability exists to examine the backups holistically. Note that this has nothing to do with the state of the target and everything to do with the state of the source backups. It may not have helped that your reply post ALSO discussed delta restore, seemingly as a contrasting design, even though these concepts are not the same. But here would be a suitable test setup: - Restore your disk to the state of Incremental #63 - Capture a new Full backup of that state, totally separate from the chain you have. At this point, you have essentially the same data state captured in two different backup chains. One has it all in a single brand new Full, and the other has it as the culmination of an older Full, then a Diff, and then 63 Incs. If you’re correct that Reflect must process each backup in a chain in isolation to perform a restore, then restoring to that data state from Incremental #63 should take longer than restoring to that same data state from your brand new Full — avoiding RDR in both cases of course. So what are those numbers? (Also, how very fortuitous that you have such a long real-world Incremental chain! )
OK, completed your test, and based on your assumptions, they appear to be correct. ------------------Single FULL image (63.2gB) restore time = 8-min, 9-sec --FULL (63.41gB) + DIFF (2.51gB) + 62-INCs (22.41gB) = 8-min, 45-sec In the case of the multi-image restore, the amount of total DATA available to restore is 88.33gB vs 63.2gB for the single FULL image. With the timing only having a difference of 36-sec, clearly all that DATA is not being written to the disk during either the non-RDR restore or the Full Copy restore operation. The non-RDR and the Full Copy of the multi-image restore are both only restoring what's needed to bring the image to the final index state... the entire image (DIFF + INCs) is not being written to the disk. I stand corrected... , thank you!
@TheRollbackFrog I hadn't expected my question to spark this much discussion. Yes, thanks for testing and for the responses from both of you. Interesting stuff.
Yes, save the installers too. Especially the final one, whatever that'll end up being. The bottom links will return the latest version.
I want to switch my Windows 10 laptop rescue media from WinRE to WinPE because the Winre.wim file is very old, and I’m concerned about the upcoming boot manager revocations. Can I use WinPE 11 with a WinPE 10 laptop? I’m thinking it would be more up to date than WinPE 10 with respect to the revocations. The laptop has device encryption (BitLocker-lite) if that makes a difference.
Hadron, can you please clarify the difference between the top files and the bottom files . What does latest version mean in this case?
Thanks very much! I used the bottom link for the 64 bit version. It downloaded a 177MB file. Properties/details shows it as build 7783, so it looks like the latest version. Does that sound like a reasonable size for the complete installer? Or is it just a downloader ?
Yes you can build WinPE 11 on Win10. Not sure about whether there’s a difference in terms of revocation updates though. Haven’t checked in on that for a while.
@beethoven - the top LINKs are for direct download of the version #s in the link. The bottom LINKs will give you the very latest version available for download. In Hadron's example, the result will be the same (latest version is Build 7783 for the FREE version). If a new version is made available, it will always be available from the "latest version" links.
Froggy explained it perfectly in his post above. I probably should have just posted the latest version links which download the latest available version, but the direct version links may come in handy for someone looking for a specific older version. For example, you could replace v8.0.7783 in the direct version links to v8.0.7175, if you were looking for that version.
Code: Macrium Reflect Home Edition (v8.1.7784) (Specific Version Links) 64-bit: https://download.macrium.com/reflect/v8/v8.1.7784/reflect_home_setup_x64.exe 32-bit: https://download.macrium.com/reflect/v8/v8.1.7784/reflect_home_setup_x86.exe Macrium Reflect Home Edition (Latest Version Links) 64-bit: http://updates.macrium.com/Reflect/v8/getmsi.asp?edition=0&type=0&arch=1&redirect=Y 32-bit: http://updates.macrium.com/Reflect/v8/getmsi.asp?edition=0&type=0&arch=0&redirect=Y
Macrium Reflect Download Agent is the official portable download tool for any version of MR. Download Macrium Reflect Download Agent Use ReflectDLFull.exe to download Home, WS, S, S+. Rename its copy to ReflectDL.exe and use it to download Home and Free
Microsoft’s article about this contains this language: So I guess sometime in the second half of 2024, at least as of now?
That’s good to know. For some reason I thought the enforcement phase was much sooner. I think I will wait a bit before switching to WinPE. There’s still a chance that Windows will update the WinRE WIM file. If not, I will switch to WinPE before the enforcement phase begins.
I have a (probably dumb) question about GPT and MBR disks. Can a reflect image taken from an MBR data disk be restored to the same disk after the disk has been cleaned and converted to GPS?
