Techie Tuesday: Macrium Reflect Quick Start

Macrium Reflect is intuitively designed and organised with simple to follow wizards guiding you through tasks. If you have never used backup software before, however, you might feel some trepidation, needing a little extra guidance to get you started.

First create rescue media

We recommended that the first time you use Macrium Reflect, you create bootable rescue media before performing any other tasks.

Click the Create bootable Rescue media icon to access the wizard.

For further guidance see Creating rescue media.

Imaging disks

Disk imaging is a Backup task and can be accessed from the Backup task bar.

For further guidance see Creating a backup of your computer.

Differential and incremental disk images

When your first full backup you can run differential and incremental backups to capture just the changes because it is quicker. Macrium then manages these backup sets for you.

Right click the file you want to backup up and select the type of image to create.

For more information see Differential and incremental disk images.

Backing up files and folders

Creating full, differential, and incremental backups of specific files or folders can optimize backup speed and disk space requirements. The wizard can be accessed from the Backup task bar.

For more information see Backing up files and folders.

Cloning disks

Cloning is particularly useful if you are upgrading to a new, larger hard drive or if you need to quickly swap failed disks out of your system.

Select the the disk or partition you require from the Create a Backup screen and click Clone this disk.

For more information see Cloning a disk.

Scheduling, retention and disk space

Whenever you create a backup, regardless of type you have the option to create a backup plan using the scheduling and retention wizard.

Click below Select a Template for you Backup Plan to select from industry best practice backup plans templates, quick-start backup plan templates or even templates that you have created. You can even skip over scheduling to simply take advantage of the retention rules for managing your disk space.

You can then customize the plan to suit your needs.

You can view, edit, cancel or run scheduled backups from the Scheduled Backups screen.

Backup plan templates

Macrium Reflect includes templates for automating industry best practice backup plans that help you maximize retention for your available storage space. These can be accessed and modified, or you can create your own backup templates.

To manage backup plan templates click Backup and select Backup Templates… .

For more information about using backup templates see Scheduling backups.

For more information about retaining backups and backup plans see Retention and consolidation.

Restoring files and folders

To directly restore the contents of a file and folder backup use the Macrium Reflect file and folder restore feature.

For more information see Restoring a file and folder backup.

Restoring images

Select the Restore task bar, choose the image you want to restore and click Restore Image.

For more information see Restoring an image from Windows.

Note: If you are unable to boot Windows you can still restore an image by booting from the Macrium Reflect rescue media and using the temporary Macrium Reflect to find and restore images.

ReDeploying computers

Macrium ReDeploy is included in the Server editions of Macrium Reflect. With ReDeploy you can restore an image to a replacement computer or even create various types of virtual hard drives to virtualize the machine, a technique sometimes called Physical to Virtual or P2V. ReDeploy modifys an existing offline operating system to work with new hardware.

1. Restore your system image to the PC being deployed before running ReDeploy.
   Note:There is no need to reboot your PC after restoring an Image and before you run ReDeploy.
2. Boot the target PC with the Windows PE rescue CD or USB equivalent. There is a link to a video on creating a Windows PE rescue CD at the bottom of this page.
3. On the Restore task pane, click ReDeploy Restored Image to new hardware.

For more information see Re-deploying Windows to new hardware using Macrium ReDeploy.

Scripting backup processes

VBScripts, Powershell and MS-DOS batch file tabs are available when you select the Backup task bar.

In each tab you can manage files, run or schedule them to run later. You can even create a desktop shortcut for convenience.

Managing Macrium files in Windows

Wherever you browse for files in Windows programs or Windows Explorer, you can find Macrium Reflect functions by right-clicking on drives or Macrium files. If you have file extensions showing, Macrium files have the extensions .mrimg for images or .mrbak for file and folder backups. Otherwise, you can look for the icons.

With Macrium Reflect installed, directly from Windows you can:

• Image drives
• Run Macrium XML definition files
• Mount and unmount images for browsing
• View file Macrium properties in the file properties dialog
• See comments in Windows Explorer columns
• See a popup summary of the file contents by hovering the mouse pointer

Note though, the best way to view backup sets is in the Macrium Reflect interface itself where it can automatically collate the multiple files involved in incremental and differential backups and you can manage them as a set.

Download a 30-day Trial of Macrium Reflect for Home or Business use.