New in Macrium Reflect
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      1. Macrium Reflect X
      2. Introduction to Macrium Reflect X
      3. New in Macrium Reflect

      New in Macrium Reflect 6

      Macrium Reflect 6 was first released on the 16th of February 2015. This article includes the new features that were included in Macrium Reflect 6. Extended support for Macrium Reflect 6 ended on the 26th of February 2018. To continue receiving support and product updates, it is recommended that customers migrate to Macrium Reflect X. This article contains more information about the new features that are included in Macrium Reflect X.

      This article contains information about the features as they were released in Macrium Reflect 6; due to ongoing improvements to features, the information in this article may now be out of date.

      Rapid Delta Restore (RDR)

      Using advanced delta detection technology, RDR can rapidly recover data from Disk Images. This cuts restore times by 90% or more.

      Note: RDR is not available when shrinking partitions during a restore.

      Rapid Delta Clone (RDC)

      Improving further on the cloning capabilities using technology based on RDR to speed up disk cloning activities by 90% or more.

      Note: RDC is not available when shrinking partitions during a clone.

      Scheduled Cloning

      Clones can now be scheduled to run unattended using the task scheduler. In conjunction with RDC, this makes keeping an up-to-date clone of your system an easier process.

      Backup Plans and Retention Rules

      Backup plan support allows administrators the flexibility of creating custom backup plans to provide the level of protection they require. Backup Plans can be saved to reusable templates, making backup plan creation a cinch. 

      The Disk Space Management (DSM) in Macrium Reflect version 5 has been substantially improved in version 6 to provide retention and consolidation of full, differential, and incremental backups. The new deletion logic maintains backup-set integrity by ensuring that the backup chain is never broken. 

      1. Full Backup Deletion - As with v5, entire backup sets will be deleted when the specified number or age is reached.
      2. Differential Deletion  - When the specified number or age of backups is reached, differential backups are removed together with subsequent linked incrementals. 
      3. Incremental Deletion - When the specified number or age of backups is reached, incremental backups are removed. If, by removing Incremental backups, the backup chain is broken, then the oldest retained Incremental is automatically consolidated with the deleted Incremental backups to ensure backup set integrity.  

      Temp files during backup creation

      A common problem for Macrium Reflect v5 customers was that incomplete backups could be left in the backup folder, taking up valuable disk space. This could happen if your network dropped, your external drive was unplugged, or your PC turned off before the backup completed. In v6, all backups are created with an '.mimg.tmp' or '.mrbak.tmp' file extension and only renamed to .mrimg or .mrbak after successful creation. To recover space, Macrium Reflect will now automatically delete .tmp files when starting or when creating a new backup to the same folder.

      Note: To prevent multiple PC's backing up to the same folder and causing problems with retention rules, consolidation and .tmp file deletion, a mutex file ''backup_running" is created and locked in the backup folder. If an existing locked mutex file is found in the folder, then a backup cannot proceed.

      Improved start-up time

      Macrium Reflect now scans local disks much faster at startup. This significantly reduces the startup time if large (multi-terabyte) disks are attached to your system.

      SSD TRIM support

      This feature provides automated SSD optimization, resulting in enhanced SSD performance and longevity. Writing to an unused block is much quicker than an in-use block as it avoids both the slow erase operation and the read-modify-write cycle. This results in an increase of both the lifetime and the performance of the device. It is effective for all Windows operating systems, even those that support SSD trim natively, as the file system driver can only TRIM blocks on de-allocation; it cannot TRIM blocks written by another process. It is also effective for USB-attached SSDs.

      Increased maximum partition size when imaging

      The maximum partition size that can be imaged is increased from 53.3TB to 3413.3TB.

      Note: While we can never guarantee 'Future Proofing' of Macrium Reflect, the new limit means that Macrium Reflect should be able to handle the steady increase in available disk sizes for quite some time.

      Automatic VSS Fall-back

      The Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service framework (VSS) can sometimes become unreliable and cause backups to fail with VSS Writer errors. While VSS Writers provide additional support for VSS-aware applications, in many cases, a perfectly valid Image can be created without using them. In v6, if a shadow copy fails, then another shadow copy is automatically tried without using writers. This is configurable in the program defaults.

      iSCSI and BitLocker support in Windows PE

      Support has been added to automatically download and include support for iSCSI and BitLocker encryption in Windows PE.