Quick assessment of 3 Windows tools to read/write Linux filesystems on dual-boot desktops

On Sun, 30 Sep 2018 16:20:54 +0100, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote:

In message , Frank Slootweg
writes:
"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote:

[...]

[About Macrium Reflect Free:]

Well, I intend to continue to use my v5 CDs while they still work! (Or,
[]
v6 has Differential updates, v5 has not. Saves a lot of time/storage
and works like a charm.

I've never trusted differential backup - just another possible point of
failure. But each to his own.


I'm with you entirely. I always do full backups. Easier and safer.

Yes, they take longer, but I don't really care. They can be done while
doing other things on the computer, or even overnight while sleeping.

On 09/30/2018 10:52 AM, Frank Slootweg wrote:
Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 09/30/2018 8:45 AM, Frank Slootweg wrote:

[...]

So make sure you subscribe to Macrium's newslettter.

[...]


Hi Frank, I would like to subscribe to Macrium's newsletter but search
as I might all morning I cannot find anywhere on their site to do so, I
know my eyesight is pretty poor but I guess I missed it somehow.
I really would appreciate it if you could point me in the right direction.
Thanks in advance.

You can do so during the installation process:

"Would you like to register your free copy of Macrium Reflect?

This step is optional and will enable you to be informed about new
features and offers.
Your details will not be passed to a third party or used for any other
puropse."

- (leave at) * Yes - Mr Frank Slootweg - my email address - Next -

"Thank you for your registration ..."

I don't see a method to do it after the install, but if you want, you
can always do a re-install (which will keep your settings).

N.B. The upgrade from v6 to v7 was I new install (at least it was for
me).


Thanks for the information Frank, I will uninstall and reinstall it as
you suggest.

Rene

J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , Paul
writes:
[]
There is a stub downloader.

The GUI on it, allows the selection of the main application
download (maybe 40-50MB) plus you can download a WinPE kit
at the same time (maybe 500-800MB, which is then compressed).
[]
I've got what I assume is the latter (a .zip file) with each of my
installers; 1xx MB. Why isn't it compressed _before_ download?

The WinPE might be coming from Microsoft. The
stub installer does something to the download and
the end result is a ZIP of some sort. Perhaps the
Microsoft download contains materials they don't
need, which are discarded ?

Paul

In alt.comp.os.windows-10 Ken Blake wrote:

[...]

[About Macrium Reflect Free:]

Well, I intend to continue to use my v5 CDs while they still work! (Or,
[]
v6 has Differential updates, v5 has not. Saves a lot of time/storage
and works like a charm.

I've never trusted differential backup - just another possible point of
failure. But each to his own.

I'm with you entirely. I always do full backups. Easier and safer.

Yes, they take longer, but I don't really care. They can be done while
doing other things on the computer, or even overnight while sleeping.

Ditto. I do them overnight at least once a month. I also rotate
different backup image softwares for each backup (e.g., Symantec Ghost,
Macrum, O&O Disk Image, W7's, etc.). I also test and copy their images
to other drives including external.

For frequent backups, I copy my important datas (not whole image)
to multiple places and offsite.
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J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , Frank Slootweg
writes:
"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote:

[...]

[About Macrium Reflect Free:]

Well, I intend to continue to use my v5 CDs while they still work! (Or,
[]
v6 has Differential updates, v5 has not. Saves a lot of time/storage
and works like a charm.

I've never trusted differential backup - just another possible point of
failure. But each to his own.

Differential is only a diff with respect to the original Full.

It doesn't have nearly the reliability implications of
(sequential) incrementals. Incrementals would be more
efficient than a set of differentials (by a mile), but
you should truncate the incremental series after
doing a bunch and not allow one Full to be root
of a sequence forever. All the incrementals up to the
point-in-time have to be intact, to return to a particular
point-in-time.

Macrium has some sort of "Incrementals Forever", which
suggests by its name, a way of raising the reliability
level, without doing Fulls all the time. The keywords
here are "Synthetic Full" and "Consolidate.exe".

https://forum.macrium.com/Topic14392.aspx

Incrementals should be a paid feature, as that's
pretty well an industry standard for the difference
between free versions and paid versions. Nobody
gives away incrementals for free. That's how they
make a living off this stuff. The industry standard
is "giving away Fulls", because the Win7 or Win10
Backup program does that for you for free.

Paul

In message , Paul
writes:
J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , Frank
Slootweg writes:
[]
v6 has Differential updates, v5 has not. Saves a lot of time/storage
and works like a charm.
I've never trusted differential backup - just another possible point
of failure. But each to his own.

Differential is only a diff with respect to the original Full.

Ah, gotcha; I saw "differential" but read "incremental". Maybe I will
look into v6 after all. (Though knowing myself, probably not.)

It doesn't have nearly the reliability implications of
(sequential) incrementals. Incrementals would be more
efficient than a set of differentials (by a mile), but

Do you mean that the other way round? If not, then my understanding of
the difference isn't right. To match my understanding, "a set of
differentials" wouldn't have any meaning - if "Differential is only a
diff with respect to the original Full", then surely you'd only ever
need one Differential, rather than a set? Otherwise, aren't we talking
about incrementals?

you should truncate the incremental series after
doing a bunch and not allow one Full to be root
of a sequence forever. All the incrementals up to the
point-in-time have to be intact, to return to a particular
point-in-time.

Agreed.

Macrium has some sort of "Incrementals Forever", which
suggests by its name, a way of raising the reliability
level, without doing Fulls all the time. The keywords
here are "Synthetic Full" and "Consolidate.exe".

https://forum.macrium.com/Topic14392.aspx

Now I'm just confused (not difficult). I think I'll stick with what I
know (-:

Incrementals should be a paid feature, as that's
pretty well an industry standard for the difference
between free versions and paid versions. Nobody
gives away incrementals for free. That's how they

Seems odd to charge for something that's intrinsically less reliable;
however, I suppose those likely to pay are those for whom time is money
....

make a living off this stuff. The industry standard
is "giving away Fulls", because the Win7 or Win10
Backup program does that for you for free.

.... and that does make sense.

Paul
John
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Sarcasm: Barbed ire

J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:

Seems odd to charge for something that's intrinsically less reliable;
however, I suppose those likely to pay are those for whom time is money ...

You're paying for efficiency. These diffs are all
relatively the same size. (Assumes most of the changes
were before Monday but after the Full, and represents
a pathological case.)

Full ---+---------+----------+
| | |
Mon_diff Tues_diff Wed_diff
| | |
Restore Restore Restore
to to to
Monday Tuesday Wednesday
(2 files) (2 files) (2 files

The sum total of incrementals are smaller. Whereas the "diffs"
above repeat files stored in a previous diff. There are duplicates
with the diffs scheme, and you're paying for their storage.
This is why you can, as a backup developer, give away diffs
for free, because they're still not "the ultimate backup".

Full ------ Mon_Incr ------- Tues_Incr ------- Wed_Incr
| | |
Restore Restore Restore
to to to
Monday Tuesday Wednesday
(2 files) (3 files) (4 files)

To restore an incremental, like to restore a brand new
drive to "Wednesday", you need to load four files.
First the Full, then the first, second, and third incrementals.
If any of the four files is corrupted, "no Wednesday for you".

Whereas Full,Full,Full is terrible on efficiency. It's
fine for general disaster recovery, but perhaps not so fine
for day to day file loss. If it takes all day to run a Full,
you run the risk of "not being ready in time for tomorrow".
The ole "8 hour backup window" the IT guys used to
chat about at work. The existence of VSS shadow copies
on Windows, extends that window of operation - in 2018 you
don't have to "take gear offline" to do backups.

Also, one other observation about Macrium. It might look
like the right-hand-side panel only backs up one disk at
a time, but you can back up multiple disks. If you use
"Image selected disks" on the left, you can do more than
one disk drive. I'm embarrassed to report, I missed this
option for *years* :-) Never noticed it was there. You
can back up an entire machine, unattended, and plop the
results on a file share if you want. For best emergency
recovery performance, make sure your rescue.iso boot
CD can actually reach the file share and it has the
Ethernet driver you need. Macrium 5 or so, might not
be that good at it, but things improved with time.
The rescue CD preparation code, is a bit better about
getting the right drivers on the rescue.iso. It's
possible the WinPE5 or WinPE10 kits are part of the
reason for drivers being present.

Paul

In message , Paul
writes:
J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:

Seems odd to charge for something that's intrinsically less reliable;
however, I suppose those likely to pay are those for whom time is
money ...

You're paying for efficiency. These diffs are all
relatively the same size. (Assumes most of the changes
were before Monday but after the Full, and represents
a pathological case.)

Full ---+---------+----------+
| | |
Mon_diff Tues_diff Wed_diff
| | |
Restore Restore Restore
to to to
Monday Tuesday Wednesday
(2 files) (2 files) (2 files

The sum total of incrementals are smaller. Whereas the "diffs"
above repeat files stored in a previous diff. There are duplicates
with the diffs scheme, and you're paying for their storage.
This is why you can, as a backup developer, give away diffs
for free, because they're still not "the ultimate backup".

So to restore to Wednesday, you need only the Full (that you made before
Monday), and Wednesday's differential.

Full ------ Mon_Incr ------- Tues_Incr ------- Wed_Incr
| | |
Restore Restore Restore
to to to
Monday Tuesday Wednesday
(2 files) (3 files) (4 files)

To restore an incremental, like to restore a brand new
drive to "Wednesday", you need to load four files.
First the Full, then the first, second, and third incrementals.
If any of the four files is corrupted, "no Wednesday for you".

Which seemed an odd thing to charge more for.

Whereas Full,Full,Full is terrible on efficiency. It's
fine for general disaster recovery, but perhaps not so fine
for day to day file loss. If it takes all day to run a Full,

Indeed - differential sounds like a good compromise.

you run the risk of "not being ready in time for tomorrow".
The ole "8 hour backup window" the IT guys used to
chat about at work. The existence of VSS shadow copies
on Windows, extends that window of operation - in 2018 you
don't have to "take gear offline" to do backups.

There again, a corporate environment probably doesn't have a "core" OS
that changes that much (and if it does, the IT department will keep
images of it anyway), but will have a lot more _files_ that need backing
up than many private users. And I'd argue that backing up files doesn't
need imaging software as such.

Also, one other observation about Macrium. It might look
like the right-hand-side panel only backs up one disk at
a time, but you can back up multiple disks. If you use
"Image selected disks" on the left, you can do more than
one disk drive. I'm embarrassed to report, I missed this
option for *years* :-) Never noticed it was there. You
can back up an entire machine, unattended, and plop the

I had spotted that you could indeed back up (or whatever) multiple
partitions into a single image file, and I _think_ it had occurred to me
that this could actually represent multiple actual drives. (I hadn't
given it much thought, as I use imaging just to protect my activated OS
and installed - and configured! - software, so only image C: and the
hidden partition; I use SyncToy to back up my data.)

results on a file share if you want. For best emergency
recovery performance, make sure your rescue.iso boot
CD can actually reach the file share and it has the
Ethernet driver you need. Macrium 5 or so, might not
be that good at it, but things improved with time.

Well, I've never actually tried it, but even 5 does pause during booting
to ask do you want to load the drivers for the network card (or
something like that) - the implication being that they are there on the
CD, just not loaded by default. (Drivers for - USB2, anyway - USB HDs
_are_ part of the default load.)

The rescue CD preparation code, is a bit better about
getting the right drivers on the rescue.iso. It's
possible the WinPE5 or WinPE10 kits are part of the
reason for drivers being present.

Paul
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

sometimes the best way to face the music is dance.
- Andrew Collins, in RT 2017/2/11-17

Paul wrote:

[About Macrium Reflect:]

Incrementals should be a paid feature, as that's
pretty well an industry standard for the difference
between free versions and paid versions. Nobody
gives away incrementals for free. That's how they
make a living off this stuff. The industry standard
is "giving away Fulls", because the Win7 or Win10
Backup program does that for you for free.

Do all Windows 7 and Windows 10 Editions have a real backup program?

I ask, because - while Vista (at least the Home Premium edition) had
one (Backup and Restore Center) -, Windows 8.1 (Basic Edition) only has
File History, which cannot be considered a real backup program, because
it only backs up what is in its Libraries, nothing else.

Wolf K wrote:
On 2018-10-01 07:39, Frank Slootweg wrote:
Paul wrote:

[About Macrium Reflect:]

Incrementals should be a paid feature, as that's
pretty well an industry standard for the difference
between free versions and paid versions. Nobody
gives away incrementals for free. That's how they
make a living off this stuff. The industry standard
is "giving away Fulls", because the Win7 or Win10
Backup program does that for you for free.

Do all Windows 7 and Windows 10 Editions have a real backup program?

I ask, because - while Vista (at least the Home Premium edition) had
one (Backup and Restore Center) -, Windows 8.1 (Basic Edition) only has
File History, which cannot be considered a real backup program, because
it only backs up what is in its Libraries, nothing else.

No, there's no Backup program. You either back up manually, or use one
of the 3rd party utilities to do it for you. To speculate: pretty well
all systems these days come with a single HDD/SDD configured into one
humongous named partition plus a couple or three repair/restore
partitions. Thus any backup would have to be on the same disk, which
means that it's useless if that disk dies. So including a backup
utility would give the consumer a false sense of security.

Yes, of course you need an extra backup device, but that doesn't mean
that the OS can't/shouldn't contain some kind of backup/restore program.
XP included one (NTBACKUP) and - as I wrote - Vista included one as
well. I never had 7 hence my question(s).

A Google search seems to confirm that Windows 7 (all Editions?) - like
Vista - also has Backup and Restore Center.

So that leaves the question: Does Windows 10 - all Editions - include
a real backup program or not?

That said, I indeed use a 3rd party utility for file-level backup,
Cobian Backup. (Started on Vista, now on 8.1).

There's System Restore, which will restore (reinstall) older versions of
some programs when invoked, but leaves data untouched.

You *hope* (it leaves data untouched)! :-) c.q. :-( Don't get me
started on System Restore, it's broken by design, because *cannot* work
correctly.

Did I already say 'Don't get me started'? :-)

Frank

You need to be online only when installing the software, *not*
when creating Rescue Media (based on Windows PE) on CD
or USB memory-stick and *not* while using the software.

Thanks. John told me that too. It seems that, with the lack of actual
information about the process, I jumped to some worst-case scenario
conclusions.

there's no point worrying about 'problems' which you
think might exist, without checking that they actually
do exist.

How would you check if software does something does something you do not
really like *without* opening yourself up to be bitten by it ? 'Cause
where I can take a look at some big-ass metal press and just see that it
would not be a good idea to put my arm into it, you can't do that with
software.

In that regard software is like religion: your only choice is to believe.
And as I regard myself as agnostic ... :-)

Regards,
Rudy Wieser

John,

No, you misunderstand me - I meant I thought it might be a _licence_
condition of using it.

My apologies. For some reason I got the idea that the Macrium
backup-and-restore media could only be created by a PE-creator program which
would combine parts from it, and files from what was fownloaded from
Macrium - and all of it withe that PE-program being on-line, so it could
download whatever it needed (for the current computer).

Currently it sounds more like download-and-install an SDK, which than is
than used by the Macrium program to create the resulting backup-and-restore
media. That sounds much better. :-)

-- continuing with your next message

You've made me look in my download folders.
In D:\2014\9\28, I have a folder called macrium.32, which contains two
files: v5.3.7170_reflect_setup_free_x86.exe, 48,757 KB, and pe3x86.zip,
115,753 KB. I'm pretty sure those are what I built the software from which
I created my v5 CD.

While doing a search for pe3x86.zip I also came across a thread mentioning
that it gets downloaded by the Macrium program, as part if it 'doing its
thing'. In other words, I don't have to hunt for and download (and
install) it myself. Heck, there is even a good chance it does not even
need to be installed, which makes it even better.

To be honest, it looks like I jumped to some what-if "worst case"
conclusions here. :-( I definitily need to give Macrium another go.

Yes, but even if you _do_ have all the software install discs, and notes
on how to do tweaks, actually _doing_ them - and checking they're
working - would take many hours.

Hmmm.. you've got a point there. Even though I store most registry tweaks
into "just apply them" .REG files, a number of them simply cannot be done
that way. And there's the ones I have documented, but forgotten to create
..REG files for. :-\

If you really haven't got much installed/tweaked on the machine, then that
might be very different.

Although I think I've done a fair number of tweaks you're right in presuming
I've not got much installed on this machine.

But please do notice that all that re-tweaking and new installing is only
needed when I decide *not* to restore (as part of a "spring cleaning") when
I move to different hardware. And as I'm rather conservative that only
happens once in a rather long while. :-) Its exactly for all those other
cases that I'm looking for an easy backup-and-restore procedure.

Not quite. Just think of a single important(ish) file going missing or
getting corrupted on it.

True. [Though I thought you were going to reinstall all your email
software and so on anyway ... (-:]

:-p Just imagine having thrown that downloaded file away before you moved
it to long time storage ... Or the time that that one .INI file / program
got deleted when it should not have. Or that un-installing of a program
which took a bit more with it than intended. Or ... well, I think you get
my drift.

Regards,
Rudy Wieser

R.Wieser wrote:

While doing a search for pe3x86.zip I also came across a thread mentioning
that it gets downloaded by the Macrium program, as part if it 'doing its
thing'. In other words, I don't have to hunt for and download (and
install) it myself. Heck, there is even a good chance it does not even
need to be installed, which makes it even better.

You can actually install the 40MB "v5.3.7170_reflect_setup_free_x86.exe"
part first, with no WinPE option at all.

Then, later, when you want to make rescue media, the program itself
will offer you four choices for WinPE type, and there will be
choices like WinPE5 or WinPE10, which both have USB3 drivers.
It can then do the same kind of download process that the
stub thing does.

You can delay the larger download part, for a later time,
when you want to make rescue media.

At one time, the EXE installer would install a copy of the
program and it included a *Linux* based boot CD. But it
didn't have exactly the same feature set as the WinPE one
(which was also an option in that version as well). Later
versions of Macrium removed the prebuild Linux ISO delivery
vehicle entirely. Leaving the WinPE as the only emergency
boot media option for Macrium.

The Rescue CD does have value, because it has a "Windows boot repair"
menu worth its weight in gold. I've repaired non-booting Windows
OSes a number of times with that CD, and it takes a lot of pain
out of fixing stuff manually. While the tool does use tick boxes,
don't be in a rush when selecting the options. As there will be
a few cases where excessive ticking of boxes will lead to
disaster. In some cases, you will only want to select one
of the four repair steps. You are still required to think
before acting. (For example, on a dual boot Linux-after-Windows
system, you don't really want to remove GRUB, so you want
to curb your enthusiasm for ticking all four boxes in
that case. Or you'll blow GRUB away. In such a case, you
want the BCD repair option only, to fix the Windows that
will be chainloaded.)

Paul

In message , R.Wieser
writes:
[]
How would you check if software does something does something you do not
really like *without* opening yourself up to be bitten by it ? 'Cause
where I can take a look at some big-ass metal press and just see that it
would not be a good idea to put my arm into it, you can't do that with
software.

In that regard software is like religion: your only choice is to believe.
And as I regard myself as agnostic ... :-)
[]
I like it (-:. But - and I realise this is a catch-22 situation, until
you've got one of them - once you've got Macrium, or a similar product,
you _can_: if you're considering installing some piece of software but
are very dubious about what it might do, you can image your system
before installing, and then if it really screws up your system, you can
restore from the image. OK, tedious (especially if you don't keep data
separate from OS-and-software, as that makes the image/restore stages
longer), but far less so than setting everything up from scratch anyway
(in that you can just leave the system to get on with it).
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

As the man said when confronted by a large dinner salad, "This isn't food.
This is what food eats."

In message , R.Wieser
writes:
[]
Yes, but even if you _do_ have all the software install discs, and notes
on how to do tweaks, actually _doing_ them - and checking they're
working - would take many hours.

Hmmm.. you've got a point there. Even though I store most registry tweaks
into "just apply them" .REG files, a number of them simply cannot be done
that way. And there's the ones I have documented, but forgotten to create
.REG files for. :-\

I think, if/when you start creating images, you'll find you don't need
to do that any more (at least you'd only need the ones for the tweaks
since your last image). Since, obviously, restoring an image will
restore it including all the tweaks done up to the point it was made.
[]
But please do notice that all that re-tweaking and new installing is only
needed when I decide *not* to restore (as part of a "spring cleaning") when
I move to different hardware. And as I'm rather conservative that only
happens once in a rather long while. :-) Its exactly for all those other
cases that I'm looking for an easy backup-and-restore procedure.

Indeed. Imaging isn't really appropriate for moving to different
hardware; that almost always (always, I think) involves reinstallation
and reactivation, of the OS at least (and I think if you're doing the
OS, you're probably doing it for everything else).
[]
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

As the man said when confronted by a large dinner salad, "This isn't food.
This is what food eats."