Introduction and Overview
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      1. Macrium Reflect X
      2. Introduction and Overview

      Getting Started with Macrium Reflect

      Summary

      If you consider yourself non-technical this article should help you to start understanding the terminology, workings and concepts of imaging, backup and Macrium Reflect.

      - Introduction

      - Rescue Media and Windows PE

      - Disk Imaging

      - Differential and Incremental Images

      - File and Folder Backups

      - Disk Cloning

      - Backup Plans and Retention Rules

      - Restoring Files and Folders

      - Restoring Images

      - ReDeploy

      - VBScript, PowerShell and MS-DOS Batch File Support

      Introduction

      Using Macrium Reflect you can backup whole partitions or individual files and folders into a single compressed, mountable archive file. You can use this archive to restore exact images of the partitions on a hard disk so that you can easily upgrade your hard disk or recover your system if it fails. You can also mount images as a virtual drive in Windows Explorer to easily recover individual files and folders.

      Inside a PC, the operating system, applications, and all your files need to be kept somewhere when the power is off. This permanent storage is often a hard disk drive (HDD) containing a spinning magnetic platter or a solid-state drive (SSD) using integrated circuits to persistently store data. In the example of HDDs, the information on the platter is recorded and read by read-heads. So that the read-heads can store and find recorded data, the disk is split into blocks, usually 512 bytes each, which are numbered from the start to the end of the platter.

      So that the operating system can use different file systems or provide multiple volumes (like the C: drive, D: drive, and recovery area), it partitions these blocks into volumes (sometimes also called partitions). These volumes and their file systems are the first things you'll see when you start Macrium Reflect.

      Rescue Media and Windows PE

      If you are unable to boot your Windows operating system, you can start your PC using Macrium Reflect rescue media on CD, DVD, or USB stick. To ensure an easy recovery, creating rescue media is the first thing you need to do with Macrium Reflect. It contains a bootable, lightweight version of Windows and a full version of Macrium Reflect.

      This lightweight version of Windows is called the Windows Recovery Environment (also known as Windows RE or WinRE) and is supplied with Windows 7 and later operating systems.  For Windows XP, Vista, and systems without WinRE, Reflect will download the Windows Pre-installation Environment (also known as Windows PE or WinPE) directly from Microsoft.

      You can read more about creating the rescue media here.

      Disk Imaging

      Macrium Reflect creates an accurate and reliable image of a hard disk or the partitions on the disk. In the event of a partial or complete system loss, you can use this image to restore the entire disk, one or more partitions, or even individual files and folders.

      During the imaging process, Macrium Reflect copies the contents of entire volumes including a reference to their physical location on the storage device to an image file (.mrimgx). You would normally store the image file on local or network drives, or removable drives connected using USB or eSATA.

      We strongly recommend that you create an image of your system at regular intervals.

      You can read more about how to use Macrium Reflect to image your PC in our knowledge base article Creating a backup image of your computer, drive or partitions.

      Macrium Reflect can help you automate the creation of images with scheduling. It can even tidy up after itself - see Scheduling retention and disk space.

      Differential and Incremental Images

      Macrium Reflect can create full, differential, and incremental images to optimize backup speed and disk space requirements.

      When you image a volume for the first time it is referred to as a full image. A full image file contains all of the data stored in the volume. Macrium Reflect provides two alternative methods of backing up your data after the initial full image has been completed:

      1. A differential image that backs up all the data that has changed on the volumes since the last full image was taken.
      2. An incremental image that backs up all the data that has changed on the volumes since the last image was taken whether that is a full, an incremental, or a differential image.

      These methods significantly reduce the amount of disk space and time required to create image files and make it possible to restore your system from intermediate points within the backup chain.

      To restore a differential image, you must have the original full and the differential image you wish to restore. To restore an incremental image, you must have the original full and all subsequent incremental images in the backup set.

      If you want to learn how to create differential or incremental images using Macrium Reflect, please see Differential and incremental disk images.

      To learn more about backup sets, please see Backup, imaging and cloning.

      File and Folder Backups

      To create a file and folder backup, select the files and folders you want to backup, apply file and folder filtering criteria to include and exclude files and/or folders, and Macrium Reflect creates a compressed backup file (.mrbak) that can be restored directly or browsed using Windows Explorer. Storing backups in a single file is beneficial because it can be compressed, encrypted, and stored elsewhere with ease.
      As you can for images, you can also create differential, and incremental file and folder backups to optimize backup speed and disk space requirements. File and folder backups are ideal if you only wish to backup specific documents, photos, or music, rather than your whole system.

      More information on how to backup files and folders is in our knowledge base article Backing up Files and Folders.

      Disk Cloning

      With Macrium Reflect, you can clone your system disks to enable you to swap failed disks out of your system and get things back up and running again in minutes.
      Cloning is often confused with imaging. The process is identical but instead of storing data to a file, it replicates volume contents and disk structures to an alternative device. When the cloning process is complete, the target disk is identical to the original and contains a duplicate of all volumes, files, operating systems, and applications.

      Any data on the target disk prior to the cloning process will be erased.

      Cloning a disk is particularly useful to upgrade an existing hard disk and in the event of a hard drive failure, you can simply replace the failed disk with a clone and have your system up and running again in minutes. However, cloning a disk is not an efficient way of backing up your data if it changes frequently because the clone will only contain one point in time as there is no "backup chain" history that is available with disk images. Also, disk images can be compressed and saved to any location.

      More information on how to clone your disk is in our knowledge base article Cloning a disk.

      Backup Plans and Retention Rules

      Macrium Reflect provides multiple backup plan options to create backup cycles in days, weeks, or months that allow you to pick when you want your backup definitions to run and whether they should be full, differential, or incremental backups. Scheduled backups can run independently of whether anyone is logged into the computer.
      Macrium Reflect provides an easy 3 step approach to editing backup plans for a backup definition:
      1. First, optionally select a template from a set that includes implementations of industry best practices like Grandfather, Father, Son (GFS), or Incremental Forever.
      2. Add, remove, or change the schedules as needed for full, differential, and incremental backups.
      3. Finally, define retention rules for each type of backup. Using the retention rules, you can retain a specific number of each type of backup or keep them for a number of days or weeks before cleaning up.

      Additional options define whether to apply the retention rules to all the backups in the folder, whether to run the purge before backing up, and let you define a minimum amount of disk space to retain in gigabytes (GB) before automatically deleting the oldest backup sets in the destination folder to make space available for new backups.

      Note: A backup set consists of a full backup and any incrementals or differentials with the same image ID. The image ID is the part underlined in the following example backup file name:  69B5FC3F39E0F9F5-00-00.mrimg

      Restoring Files and Folders

      Macrium Reflect restores selected files and their folder structures from file and folder backup .mrbak files. There are a number of ways to restore backups:

      1. You can restore individual files, for example, accidentally deleted spreadsheets or lost photos by browsing an image or file and folder backup. This process mounts the image file in Windows Explorer as if it were an extra disk drive. After it is mounted, you can browse and open files and copy the files back onto your active file system whenever you like.
      2. You can directly restore the contents of a file and folder backup using the Macrium Reflect file and folder restore feature.

      You can find more information in  Restoring a file and folder backup and Browsing Macrium Reflect images and backups in Windows Explorer.

      Restoring Images

      Macrium Reflect restores disks or their partitions exactly as they were when the backup was taken. The restore process also enables you to expand, shrink, and reorder partitions. Read more about modifying partition properties during restores here.

      If your whole system becomes corrupt, you can load Macrium Reflect and restore your image despite being unable to boot Windows. You can boot from the Macrium Reflect Windows PE rescue media and use Macrium Reflect to find and restore your images

      The rescue media restore process is documented in this article.

      ReDeploy

      From the rescue environment, you can launch Macrium ReDeploy to adapt the recovered Windows system to its new environment whether that is a virtual machine or a different computer. With Macrium ReDeploy, you can restore an image to a replacement computer or even create virtual hard drives to virtualize the machine, a technique sometimes called physical to virtual restore or P2V restore.

      Macrium ReDeploy is included in all paid editions of Macrium Reflect. This excludes 30-day trials.

      VBScript, PowerShell, and MS-DOS batch file support

      Macrium Reflect stores backup definitions as XML files that are loaded using the Reflect command line. This enables powerful batch and scheduling processing using VBScript, PowerShell or MS DOS batch files.

      Macrium Reflect includes a VBScript and PowerShell generator that creates template script files for programmable control over your backup cycles and Pre/Post backup events.