I have just dual booted my Win 10 disk with Linux Mint. Over the years Macrium Reflect has been scheduled to image my disk on a daily basis Full/Incremental and has always given me confidence. I know that Reflect won't run in Linux. I am interested to know from those with a similar setup how you keep your system adequately backed up using Reflect - or do you use something else in this scenario?

When running similar setups, I just include the Linux partitions in the Macrium image, I've tended to find that sufficient, though if you were running Linux for prolonged periods it may be worth sorting out some native Linux backup so that a restored image didn't lose your last Linux session entirely & you could restore from that after booting back to Linux to update personal docs etc. modified since the last run of Reflect.  Native Linux disaster recovery solutions that can run on a live instance (stuff like using dattobd or LVM snapshots) tend to either be difficult & complex to set up. Or else you're required to resort to offline imaging anyway, which Macrium handles nicely from Windows, especially if you stick to ext filesystems where Macrium can do intelligent sector copy rather than falling back to backing up all blocks used or otherwise.  How well Reflect handles such setups is one of the attractions of the program over competitors.

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Beardy - 15 February 2021 12:13 PM

When running similar setups, I just include the Linux partitions in the Macrium image, I've tended to find that sufficient, though if you were running Linux for prolonged periods it may be worth sorting out some native Linux backup so that a restored image didn't lose your last Linux session entirely & you could restore from that after booting back to Linux to update personal docs etc. modified since the last run of Reflect.  Native Linux disaster recovery solutions that can run on a live instance (stuff like using dattobd or LVM snapshots) tend to either be difficult & complex to set up. Or else you're required to resort to offline imaging anyway, which Macrium handles nicely from Windows, especially if you stick to ext filesystems where Macrium can do intelligent sector copy rather than falling back to backing up all blocks used or otherwise.  How well Reflect handles such setups is one of the attractions of the program over competitors.

Thanks. I'd prefer to stick with reflect if I can. I guess I just have to remember to visit Windows daily to allow Reflect to do it's stuff before returning to Linux.

I know that multiple users have successfully used Reflect to back up and restore Linux partitions.  But yes you will need to do it from within Windows or the Reflect Rescue Media environment.

I was just testing the Rescue Media Environment on my first full backup of the dual boot system. When I chose to browse my Linux partition, a drive letter was assigned as usual but then a Windows message appeared telling me I needed to format the assigned drive before proceeding. Being a non-techie I aborted the operation to find out more about this. It sounds fatal to me but should I go ahead and allow the format? If not what has gone wrong?

Windows won't be able to read anything in that partition, since it's not a Windows file system, it really oughtn't to be assigning a drive letter, since it'll be a Linux partition type, that's a Windows bug though if it is assigning one. DO NOT format it, doing so would damage / obliterate the Linux setup.

I thought as much. Thanks for the confirmation. How can I browse the Linux partitions? Is it posible somehow?

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rafikiphoto - 15 February 2021 5:58 PM

I thought as much. Thanks for the confirmation. How can I browse the Linux partitions? Is it posible somehow?

There are third-party applications that you can install to browse partitions that use Linux file systems within Windows, at least for read-only access.  Not sure about read/write.  There's also Windows Subsystem for Linux, which is a feature built into newer Windows 10 releases that can be manually enabled if desired, although I haven't used it, so I can't provide much more guidance beyond that.  You might find that you can only browse your Linux partition that way within WSL, i.e. a Terminal window, and not in Windows Explorer.

Thanks for your advice. Much appreciated. I'll look into WSL and alternatives.