Windows 10: Question on Macrium backups

Thanks for thinking about answering my question!

I currently have the following backup plan for my laptop - full backup on Sunday, then Differential every other day of the week. So in the case of a failure, I just have to restore the Sunday Full and the latest Differential backups and I am good to go.

A little while ago, I added a second step - on Wednesday during the day, I connect another external SSD, and do a Full backup. I then disconnect it. I do this to have something completely offline in case of weird viruses, ransomware, etc.

My question is this - I assume the Wednesday Full backup clears the archive bit on every file. While I can work with that, I would prefer that it did not clear the archive bit so the Wednesday evening Differential backup backs up everything changed since Sunday. I thought it would be easy to find how to change that option on a Full backup, but I can't find it.

It's not the end of the world, if the laptop dies on Friday I just grab my Wednesday full and use my Thursday Differential. But I would prefer not to touch my Wed. full backup.

Can I tell it not to clear the archive bit on a full backup?

Thanks!

:)

 

Macrium Scheduled Backups Broken with Anniversary Update

Macrium is now up to Version 7, it could be that V5 does not support Windows 10's later releases.

Read:
http://knowledgebase.macrium.com/display/KNOW/Windows+10+Aniversary+Update+issues

Macrium Reflect:

Free version: Macrium Software | Macrium Reflect Free

(No technical support available for the free version)

Macrium Reflect Home Edition ($69.95)

Macrium Software | Home Edition

Support: Macrium Software | Your Image is Everything

Version 7 supports XP, Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 / 8.1 and Windows 10　

:
http://www.pagestart.com

 

Macrium Scheduled Backups Broken with Anniversary Update

Reflect v5 was working just fine, right up until the day I installed the Anniversary Update which made changes to the task scheduler API breaking Macrium.

I have yet to use any "Anniversary" features pushed out via Windows Update, and there's a high likelihood I won't use anything in Creators either. Seriously, stop with the forced builds. There's no reason I should have to lay out money for a new copy of
Macrium Reflect.

Not once in the history of Windows XP and Windows 7 being the dominant OSs did an application suddenly become rendered inoperable. Christ almighty, there was a better likelihood applications ran properly after moving from XP to 7 than there is between builds
of Windows 10.

Dear Microsoft: Un-screw what screwed up my Macrium software, or give me a free copy of Enterprise LTSB so I don't have to continue to deal with this BS. Thank you.

 

Hi, does this answer your question? However it is old... what evidence do you have that the bit you're concerned about is changing?
Macrium Support Forum - Macrium Archive bit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archive_bit

 

Short answer:

This is not about archive bit, it's all about a backup plan; if the Sunday and Wednesday full backups belong to same backup set, a differential image when restored restores the last full backup regardless if it's your Sunday full or Wednesday full, then the last differential backup.

In other words, archive bit has nothing to do with Macrium Reflect backup.

If your Wednesday full backup files have a different backup definition (the 16 character hexadecimal part of the filename) than your Sunday full / every other day differential set, then it's exactly as it should be. The Wednesday full will not be used when the original plan's differential will be restored.

Somewhat longer answer:

Let's say that you created a full backup now on Sunday, today Tuesday a differential, tomorrow Wednesday again a full backup, on Thursday a differential and so on.

If you now restore the differential made on Tuesday, it restores itself and full from Sunday. If you restore the Thursday differential, it picks up besides itself the full from Wednesday. This is not because Wednesday full backup cleared the archive bit, it is because both Sunday and Wednesday full backups belong to the same backup plan.

A backup set is a set of full, differential and incremental backups. When you created your first backup with Macrium Reflect you were asked to name that backup set (backup plan):





The file names of each backup file in each backup set have the same hexadecimal string as filename, followed by digits. Below an extract from Macrium Reflect tutorial here at Ten Forums, its Part Four Step 8:

What you want to achieve is simply done by creating a new backup plan for your Wednesday full backup. This puts the Wednesday full backups to a new backup set, without any whatsoever connection to your other backup set. Macrium Reflect is an intelligent application, by default it assumes you want to create a new plan and prompts for the name:





If you now give a new plan name, the backup will belong to new backup set with a different filename. To include this backup to your existing backup set you would need to browse and select the name of that set.

How backup sets are created and maintained - KnowledgeBase - Macrium Reflect Knowledgebase

I might have misunderstood the highlighted part in above quote, but just to be sure I want to add this:

You don't have to restore first the last full image and then the last differential image. Simply restore the last differential image, it will automatically restore last full it finds belonging to same set, thereafter itself.

Restoring first a full image is completely unnecessary.

 

Thank you dalchina and Kari for the time you spent answering and pointing me to other information. I understand completely what you said and pointed me to, I thought Macrium was an archive-bit program like traditional Windows backups, my bad! I know what I Have to do now, thanks again!

 

You are welcome *Smile

 

Just to close this thread and update with what I found based on the advice I received, I neglected to say the way I run the "Wednesday" full backup is just going into the scheduled backup tabs of Macrium (which shows my full and differential backup definition), I right click on the 'Full' and choose "Run now". What I have found is given the backup file name is of the form XX-YY-ZZ where XX is a 16 character ID same for all files in same set, the 'XX' part is different in my Wednesday full backup compared to the Sunday and daily backups that run on a schedule! So it's working optimally for me. Thanks again!