Windows 1903 and Macrium Reflect

I have been running the same install of windows since Windows 8.0,
Updating and upgrading and adding tons of programs through the Years.
So for this upgrade I decided to Nuke and Pave and start afresh and just
renew programs as required, No hurry.
Installed 1903 and checked with Winver, it read 1903 18362.116.

First oddity today Winver shows 1903 18362.30 ! What the heck is that.

My old version 1809 was at about 30.5 GB as I do not allow programs and
crud to install on C:
My new 1903 after trimming pagefile and deleteing hiberfile is about
the same size, 29.8 GB, nearly the same,
Macrium Reflect used to take about 9.8 seconds for a backup and the
..mrimg file was about 18.8 to 19.4 GB, Now it backs up in about 5.4
seconds and the file is about 15.4 GB, on the same drives!
The files are valid, tried it twice and restored with both, no problems.

As I am doing a clean new system I am downloading fresh new programs and
not reusing my old downloads, consequently my old Macrium Reflect was
ver 7.2.4148 and the new one is 7.2.4228, So Windws and Macrium are both
new versions,

I am not complaining believe me the new speed increase is great, I am
just curios as to which one is suddenly so much quicker.

Anyone else seeing these improvements yet?

By the way 1903 is running like a charm, And I really appreciate the new
cursor size and color settings My old eyes thank Microsoft.

Rene

On 2019-05-23 3:22 p.m., Rene Lamontagne wrote:
I have been running the same install of windows since Windows 8.0,
Updating and upgrading and adding tons of programs through the Years.
So for this upgrade I decided to Nuke and Pave and start afresh and just
renew programs as required, No hurry.
Installed 1903 and checked with Winver, it read 1903 18362.116.

First oddity today Winver shows 1903 18362.30 !Â* What the heck is that.

My old version 1809 was at about 30.5 GB as I do not allow programs and
crud to install on C:
My new 1903 after trimming pagefile and deleteing hiberfileÂ* is about
the same size, 29.8 GB, nearly the same,
Macrium Reflect used to take about 9.8 seconds for a backup and the
.mrimg file was about 18.8 to 19.4 GB, Now it backs up in about 5.4
seconds and the file is about 15.4 GB, on the same drives!
The files are valid, tried it twice and restored with both, no problems.

As I am doing a clean new system I am downloading fresh new programs and
not reusing my old downloads, consequently my old Macrium Reflect was
ver 7.2.4148 and the new one is 7.2.4228, So Windws and Macrium are both
new versions,

I am not complaining believe me the new speed increase is great, I am
just curios as to which one is suddenly so much quicker.

Anyone else seeing these improvements yet?

By the way 1903 is running like a charm, And I really appreciate the new
cursor size and color settings My old eyes thank Microsoft.

Rene

Twice! I made the same error where it says seconds I meant Minuets.

Rene

Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 2019-05-23 3:22 p.m., Rene Lamontagne wrote:
I have been running the same install of windows since Windows 8.0,
Updating and upgrading and adding tons of programs through the Years.
So for this upgrade I decided to Nuke and Pave and start afresh and
just renew programs as required, No hurry.
Installed 1903 and checked with Winver, it read 1903 18362.116.

First oddity today Winver shows 1903 18362.30 ! What the heck is that.

My old version 1809 was at about 30.5 GB as I do not allow programs
and crud to install on C:
My new 1903 after trimming pagefile and deleteing hiberfile is about
the same size, 29.8 GB, nearly the same,
Macrium Reflect used to take about 9.8 seconds for a backup and the
.mrimg file was about 18.8 to 19.4 GB, Now it backs up in about 5.4
seconds and the file is about 15.4 GB, on the same drives!
The files are valid, tried it twice and restored with both, no problems.

As I am doing a clean new system I am downloading fresh new programs
and not reusing my old downloads, consequently my old Macrium Reflect
was ver 7.2.4148 and the new one is 7.2.4228, So Windws and Macrium
are both new versions,

I am not complaining believe me the new speed increase is great, I am
just curios as to which one is suddenly so much quicker.

Anyone else seeing these improvements yet?

By the way 1903 is running like a charm, And I really appreciate the
new cursor size and color settings My old eyes thank Microsoft.

Rene

Twice! I made the same error where it says seconds I meant Minuets.

Rene

The last Insiders Upgrade I did, seemed to have smaller Windows
folders, as if Compression was being used somehow. But that's not
the same version you're using. And my attempts to use CompactOS:never
on it, didn't seem to change it either.

The 1903 would have been running on my Insider setup a couple months
ago, but Microsoft doesn't allow it to stick around for too long,
so I didn't really do any experiments with it. And I don't
really want to mess with my other installs to test it. Maybe I
should leave a USB stick plugged in, to make it "go away" ?

They keep making the Settings hamburger contents, more
and more bizarre. As if adding frilly curtains and doilies/drink
coasters, is going to somehow make a difference.

The other job you'll likely have, is going through settings,
one pane at a time, and adjusting all the Privacy settings
they've meddled with.

Paul

On 5/23/19 4:22 PM, Rene Lamontagne wrote:
I have been running the same install of windows since Windows 8.0,
Updating and upgrading and adding tons of programs through the Years.
So for this upgrade I decided to Nuke and Pave and start afresh and just
renew programs as required, No hurry.
Installed 1903 and checked with Winver, it read 1903 18362.116.

First oddity today Winver shows 1903 18362.30 !Â* What the heck is that.

My old version 1809 was at about 30.5 GB as I do not allow programs and
crud to install on C:
My new 1903 after trimming pagefile and deleteing hiberfileÂ* is about
the same size, 29.8 GB, nearly the same,
Macrium Reflect used to take about 9.8 seconds for a backup and the
.mrimg file was about 18.8 to 19.4 GB, Now it backs up in about 5.4
seconds and the file is about 15.4 GB, on the same drives!
The files are valid, tried it twice and restored with both, no problems.

As I am doing a clean new system I am downloading fresh new programs and
not reusing my old downloads, consequently my old Macrium Reflect was
ver 7.2.4148 and the new one is 7.2.4228, So Windws and Macrium are both
new versions,

I am not complaining believe me the new speed increase is great, I am
just curios as to which one is suddenly so much quicker.

Anyone else seeing these improvements yet?

By the way 1903 is running like a charm, And I really appreciate the new
cursor size and color settings My old eyes thank Microsoft.

Rene

One of the things that 1903 (maybe it's 1905) is supposed to include is
some reset settings for the spectre code and it's supposed to make the
OS run faster. Maybe that's what you're seeing.

I wiped my wife's laptop to put in a SSD and as much as the SSD did a
lot of good, the wipe and new 1903 works like a charm on her machine
too. I see nothing wrong with it.

I'm on the Insider track on one machine and it just updated to 190510
build 18898. It runs okay and I don't see any issue with it either.

Al

On 2019-05-23 3:49 p.m., Paul wrote:
Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 2019-05-23 3:22 p.m., Rene Lamontagne wrote:
I have been running the same install of windows since Windows 8.0,
Updating and upgrading and adding tons of programs through the Years.
So for this upgrade I decided to Nuke and Pave and start afresh and
just renew programs as required, No hurry.
Installed 1903 and checked with Winver, it read 1903 18362.116.

First oddity today Winver shows 1903 18362.30 !Â* What the heck is that.

My old version 1809 was at about 30.5 GB as I do not allow programs
and crud to install on C:
My new 1903 after trimming pagefile and deleteing hiberfileÂ* is about
the same size, 29.8 GB, nearly the same,
Macrium Reflect used to take about 9.8 seconds for a backup and the
.mrimg file was about 18.8 to 19.4 GB, Now it backs up in about 5.4
seconds and the file is about 15.4 GB, on the same drives!
The files are valid, tried it twice and restored with both, no problems.

As I am doing a clean new system I am downloading fresh new programs
and not reusing my old downloads, consequently my old Macrium Reflect
was ver 7.2.4148 and the new one is 7.2.4228, So Windws and Macrium
are both new versions,

I am not complaining believe me the new speed increase is great, I am
just curios as to which one is suddenly so much quicker.

Anyone else seeing these improvements yet?

By the way 1903 is running like a charm, And I really appreciate the
new cursor size and color settings My old eyes thank Microsoft.

Rene

Twice! I made the same error where it says seconds I meant Minuets.

Rene

The last Insiders Upgrade I did, seemed to have smaller Windows
folders, as if Compression was being used somehow. But that's not
the same version you're using. And my attempts to use CompactOS:never
on it, didn't seem to change it either.

The 1903 would have been running on my Insider setup a couple months
ago, but Microsoft doesn't allow it to stick around for too long,
so I didn't really do any experiments with it. And I don't
really want to mess with my other installs to test it. Maybe I
should leave a USB stick plugged in, to make it "go away" ?

They keep making the Settings hamburger contents, more
and more bizarre. As if adding frilly curtains and doilies/drink
coasters, is going to somehow make a difference.

The other job you'll likely have, is going through settings,
one pane at a time, and adjusting all the Privacy settings
they've meddled with.

Â*Â* Paul

I just checked update history and find that Microsoft installed 21
updates today! That's a lot for a 2 day old install.

Just thinking, If Macrium had increased compression ratio to decrease
the file size, the time should have increased proportionately, But in
fact it decreased (scratches head) also checked and Macrium says
compression is Normal.
just curious, no complaints. :-)

Rene

Rene Lamontagne wrote:

I just checked update history and find that Microsoft installed 21
updates today!

Mine got a dotnet and flash update yesterday, but only defender updates
today.

That's a lot for a 2 day old install.

Not unusual to release a big load of updates on day 1, rather than risk
merging them into the base product, but none seen here.

On 2019-05-23 4:37 p.m., Andy Burns wrote:
Rene Lamontagne wrote:

I just checked update history and find that Microsoft installed 21
updates today!

Mine got a dotnet and flash update yesterday, but only defender updates
today.

That's a lot for a 2 day old install.

Not unusual to release a big load of updates on day 1, rather than risk
merging them into the base product, but none seen here.

Seeing its working great, I'll just let things take their course. :-)

Rene

Rene Lamontagne wrote:

Installed 1903 and checked with Winver, it read 1903 18362.116.

First oddity today Winver shows 1903 18362.30 ! What the heck is that.

Winver reports OS version buildnumber.

Despite Microsoft's claim that Windows 10 is the last version, that's
marketing lies. WinX will be getting new versions at about 6-month
intervals called Cumulative Updates. Consider "Windows 10" the name of
the product, as though you were calling it "WinX", not the product and
its version. That's why the consumer edition of WinX is always beta, so
Microsoft can employ their home users as unpaid beta testers.

My old version 1809 was at about 30.5 GB as I do not allow programs and
crud to install on C:
My new 1903 after trimming pagefile and deleteing hiberfile is about
the same size, 29.8 GB, nearly the same,
Macrium Reflect used to take about 9.8 seconds for a backup and the
.mrimg file was about 18.8 to 19.4 GB, Now it backs up in about 5.4
seconds and the file is about 15.4 GB, on the same drives!
The files are valid, tried it twice and restored with both, no problems.

As I am doing a clean new system I am downloading fresh new programs and
not reusing my old downloads, consequently my old Macrium Reflect was
ver 7.2.4148 and the new one is 7.2.4228, So Windws and Macrium are both
new versions,

I am not complaining believe me the new speed increase is great, I am
just curios as to which one is suddenly so much quicker.

Anyone else seeing these improvements yet?

By the way 1903 is running like a charm, And I really appreciate the new
cursor size and color settings My old eyes thank Microsoft.

Rene

1903 has yet to roll out to all users. I'm still back on 1809, and WU
is not offering any updates.

https://pureinfotech.com/windows-10-...date-features/

No mention of any performance enhancements or reduction in the space
fingerprint size on the drive.

On Thu, 23 May 2019 15:30:17 -0500, Rene Lamontagne
wrote:

On 2019-05-23 3:22 p.m., Rene Lamontagne wrote:
I have been running the same install of windows since Windows 8.0,
Updating and upgrading and adding tons of programs through the Years.
So for this upgrade I decided to Nuke and Pave and start afresh and just
renew programs as required, No hurry.
Installed 1903 and checked with Winver, it read 1903 18362.116.

First oddity today Winver shows 1903 18362.30 !* What the heck is that.

My old version 1809 was at about 30.5 GB as I do not allow programs and
crud to install on C:
My new 1903 after trimming pagefile and deleteing hiberfile* is about
the same size, 29.8 GB, nearly the same,
Macrium Reflect used to take about 9.8 seconds for a backup and the
.mrimg file was about 18.8 to 19.4 GB, Now it backs up in about 5.4
seconds and the file is about 15.4 GB, on the same drives!
The files are valid, tried it twice and restored with both, no problems.

As I am doing a clean new system I am downloading fresh new programs and
not reusing my old downloads, consequently my old Macrium Reflect was
ver 7.2.4148 and the new one is 7.2.4228, So Windws and Macrium are both
new versions,

I am not complaining believe me the new speed increase is great, I am
just curios as to which one is suddenly so much quicker.

Anyone else seeing these improvements yet?

By the way 1903 is running like a charm, And I really appreciate the new
cursor size and color settings My old eyes thank Microsoft.

Rene

Twice! I made the same error where it says seconds I meant Minuets.


And here I thought you meant trio sonatas. g

On 2019-05-23 7:01 p.m., Ken Blake wrote:
On Thu, 23 May 2019 15:30:17 -0500, Rene Lamontagne
wrote:

On 2019-05-23 3:22 p.m., Rene Lamontagne wrote:
I have been running the same install of windows since Windows 8.0,
Updating and upgrading and adding tons of programs through the Years.
So for this upgrade I decided to Nuke and Pave and start afresh and just
renew programs as required, No hurry.
Installed 1903 and checked with Winver, it read 1903 18362.116.

First oddity today Winver shows 1903 18362.30 !Â* What the heck is that.

My old version 1809 was at about 30.5 GB as I do not allow programs and
crud to install on C:
My new 1903 after trimming pagefile and deleteing hiberfileÂ* is about
the same size, 29.8 GB, nearly the same,
Macrium Reflect used to take about 9.8 seconds for a backup and the
.mrimg file was about 18.8 to 19.4 GB, Now it backs up in about 5.4
seconds and the file is about 15.4 GB, on the same drives!
The files are valid, tried it twice and restored with both, no problems.

As I am doing a clean new system I am downloading fresh new programs and
not reusing my old downloads, consequently my old Macrium Reflect was
ver 7.2.4148 and the new one is 7.2.4228, So Windws and Macrium are both
new versions,

I am not complaining believe me the new speed increase is great, I am
just curios as to which one is suddenly so much quicker.

Anyone else seeing these improvements yet?

By the way 1903 is running like a charm, And I really appreciate the new
cursor size and color settings My old eyes thank Microsoft.

Rene

Twice! I made the same error where it says seconds I meant Minuets.


And here I thought you meant trio sonatas. g


Minuets! Jeez, minutes, I am really batting Zero on that one today.
Teacher would say ,write that 500 times on the blackboard, After school
:-)

Rene

Hi, Rene.
21 Windows o/s including Flash and/or Defender?

Only 3 here at this end(Flash, Defender, and a CPU related Intel Display
Audio driver[1]) - which prior to updating via USB MCT created media the
system was updated for
- UEFI/BIOS updated(released and included and Intel 8th Gen CPU firmware
for Spectre variants - I skipped the prior two UEFI/BIOS updates since they
didn't resolve any issues being experienced - this one installed because of
the firmware unique update for Spectre)
- Microcode update that the UEFI/BIOS didn't update
- Servicing Stack(SSU)
- KB4505064(May 19th Cumulative)
- the last three above were installed manually after downloading from the
MSFT Catalog

Office 2016 was also fully updated prior to running 1903's setup.exe(on USB
3.0 media).

I have not seen any performance drags from the Spectre related firmware
updates(UEFI/BIOS or Microcode).

[1] The Intel update did surprise me since it was installed post 1903 but
available since Oct 2018(which could mean it was throttled for deployment to
1809 via WU or possibly for a combo of 1809 and this i7-8550U 8th gen CPU.

--
....w¡ñ§±¤ñ


"Rene Lamontagne" wrote in message
...
I just checked update history and find that Microsoft installed 21 updates
today! That's a lot for a 2 day old install.

On 2019-05-23 10:02 p.m., ...winston wrote:
Hi, Rene.
21 Windows o/s including Flash and/or Defender?

Only 3 here at this end(Flash, Defender, and a CPU related Intel Display
Audio driver[1]) - which prior to updating via USB MCT created media the
system was updated for
-Â* UEFI/BIOS updated(released and included and Intel 8th Gen CPU firmware
for Spectre variants - I skipped the prior two UEFI/BIOS updates since they
didn't resolve any issues being experienced - this one installed because of
the firmware unique update for Spectre)
-Â* Microcode update that the UEFI/BIOS didn't update
- Servicing Stack(SSU)
- KB4505064(May 19th Cumulative)
- the last three above were installed manually after downloading from the
MSFT Catalog

Office 2016 was also fully updated prior to running 1903's setup.exe(on USB
3.0 media).

I have not seen any performance drags from the Spectre related firmware
updates(UEFI/BIOS or Microcode).

[1] The Intel update did surprise me since it was installed post 1903 but
available since Oct 2018(which could mean it was throttled for
deployment to
1809 via WU or possibly for a combo of 1809 and this i7-8550U 8th gen CPU.


3 Windows, 8 driver, 12 definition and 1 other, I have to shut off the
driver updates yet.

Rene

On 2019-05-25 5:50 a.m., John Doe wrote:
Rene Lamontagne wrote:

Macrium Reflect used to take about 9.8 minutes for a backup and
the .mrimg file was about 18.8 to 19.4 GB, Now it backs up in
about 5.4 minutes and the file is about 15.4 GB, on the same
drives! The files are valid, tried it twice and restored with
both, no problems.

From NVMe to NVMe, Macrium Reflect took 2 minutes and 3 seconds to
make a 16.2 GB MRIMG file.


Likewise John, I tried that today, NVMe to NVMe Made an MRIMG file of
15.9 GB in 2 minutes 7 seconds, I think I may buy another one just for
backups.

Rene

Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 2019-05-25 5:50 a.m., John Doe wrote:
Rene Lamontagne wrote:

Macrium Reflect used to take about 9.8 minutes for a backup and
the .mrimg file was about 18.8 to 19.4 GB, Now it backs up in
about 5.4 minutes and the file is about 15.4 GB, on the same
drives! The files are valid, tried it twice and restored with
both, no problems.

From NVMe to NVMe, Macrium Reflect took 2 minutes and 3 seconds to
make a 16.2 GB MRIMG file.


Likewise John, I tried that today, NVMe to NVMe Made an MRIMG file of
15.9 GB in 2 minutes 7 seconds, I think I may buy another one just for
backups.

Rene


OK, so

16200 MB
------ = 132 MB/sec
123 seconds

The thing to remember here, is Macrium isn't constrained by
I/O rate as much as it's constrained by the checksum method
it uses. It needs to generate a checksum so it can detect
that the backup is corrupted. And one of those does not
run at the "speed of light".

It's true you can do parallel CRC32 (table driven) at around
1500MB/sec. So as a "minimal" check, that would allow a lot
more of the NVMe speed to be seen. The trouble with CRC32, is
many errors would go undetected (relatively speaking). CRC32 works
best for 1.5KB packets, rather than detecting some error
occurred in a 1.5TB file.

The checksum method has to be "strong enough" to make the
possibility of errors leaking through be extremely small.
Maybe they don't consider MD5 to be good enough, and want
SHA1 instead.

Some processors have an AES128 instruction, for computing
that one faster. But I don't think "every crypto thing" is
accelerated on modern CPUs.

And I don't notice Macrium trying to use all the
cores on the CPU either, while it works. Macrium
seems to mainly be concerned with "correctness" of
what it's doing, rather than absolutely winning
every possible benchmark while it works.

*******

While there are "read" and "write" indicators showing
in the Macrium window while the program processes stuff,
you can also use the Task Manager diskI/O window to see the
actual (smoothed) line display of transfer rate.

Be aware that some performance counters in Windows
count things twice, so for example, you might not
see an exact match between one partitions "read" counter,
and the "write" counter on the other (when compression
is disabled in Macrium so you can get more speed).

But there should be an upper transfer limit established
by the method used to checksum the file, and make it
possible later to detect corruption.

When I had some bad RAM on this computer, it *was*
possible for Macrium to detect, that between
first seeing a file on the source volume, until
it was written incorrectly to the destination
volume, it used the checksum to detect something
had gone wrong (during a later Restore or Verify).
And that's the first confirmation I got, that the
RAM had broken on the machine. I ran Verify on things
from the same epoch, and detected two files, one
rather large, were ruined. Having some sort of checksum
is a useful feature.

Paul

Paul wrote:

Rene Lamontagne wrote:
John Doe wrote:
Rene Lamontagne wrote:

Macrium Reflect used to take about 9.8 minutes for a backup and
the .mrimg file was about 18.8 to 19.4 GB, Now it backs up in
about 5.4 minutes and the file is about 15.4 GB, on the same
drives! The files are valid, tried it twice and restored with
both, no problems.

From NVMe to NVMe, Macrium Reflect took 2 minutes and 3 seconds
to
make a 16.2 GB MRIMG file.

Likewise John, I tried that today, NVMe to NVMe Made an MRIMG
file of 15.9 GB in 2 minutes 7 seconds, I think I may buy another
one just for backups.

OK, so

16200 MB
------ = 132 MB/sec
123 seconds

It's almost 3 times faster than his prior times.

The thing to remember here, is Macrium isn't constrained by I/O
rate as much as it's constrained by the checksum method it uses.
It needs to generate a checksum so it can detect that the backup
is corrupted. And one of those does not run at the "speed of
light".

At least here, NVMe is not just for backups. Using NVMe for file
transfers is blazing fast, too. I copy 1 GB (minimum) media files
between NVMe drives without the Windows file copy window pop up even
appearing. Nonvolatile storage is the workhorse in a computer. NVMe
costs a lot per gigabyte and it's a boring upgrade, but it saves much
time every full day of use.