Techie Tuesday: Standalone backup set consolidation

It can be useful to independently consolidate multiple files in a backup set into a single Full or to consolidate a group of Incremental backups. This helps to conserve disk space and can be used when archiving your backups to optimize the number of backups being copied.

Independent consolidations can be run without creating a backup or launching Macrium Reflect by running a small utility Macrium Image Consolidation:

Download:http://updates.macrium.com/reflect/utilities/consolidate.exe

Using Macrium Image Consolidation

To Launch Macrium Image Consolidation double click ‘consolidate.exe’ in Windows Explorer.

‘consolidate.exe’ is a standalone executable that does not require installing.

AreaDescription1Enter the ‘From’ backup file for the consolidation process, or click ‘…’ to browse. This is usually the Full backup, ending in ‘00–00.mrimg’, but can be an Incremental file.

Valid Macrium backup file types are:

Image files:.mrimgFile and Folder backup files:.mrbakExchange backup files:.mrex

2. Enter the ‘To’ file for the consolidation process, or click ‘…’ to browse. This must be in the same backup set as 1. and must have been created after the backup in 1.

Click ‘Consolidate’ to begin the consolidation process.

3.Basic information about the backup files.4.The output Window. This is populated after clicking ‘Consolidate’ and contains detailed information about the consolidation process.

Note: Selecting a ‘Full’ image for the ‘From’ backup file will create a consolidated ‘Synthetic Full’ image.

Restrictions when choosing the ‘From’ and ‘To’ backup files.

• Each file must be from the same backup set. See How backup sets are created and maintained for more information on sets.Error output:
  
  
  
  
  
  
  From and To files are from a different backup set.
• The ‘To’ file must have been created after the from file.Error output:
  
  
  
  
  
  
  From file is more recent than the To file
• The backup set cannot contain any Differential backups.Error output:
  
  
  
  
  
  
  The backup set contains Differential backups

Standalone backup set consolidation - KnowledgeBase - Macrium Reflect Knowledgebase