I tried to set up a schedule to backup a system on a day prior to the 2nd Tuesday Window's updates (for instance the 2nd Monday). Unfortunately, that cannot work as depending on the month's calendar (if the 1st of the month is on a Tuesday), the 2nd Monday may not precede the 2nd Tuesday but follow it. Is there any option to handle this situation? If I use the 2nd Tuesday, I cannot be sure that the backup gets done before the updates are installed.

Thanks,
JohnD

Not natively, it'd be scriptable, though a bit of a pain to do.
Personally I think I'd just backup every Monday, full once a month & diff the other Mondays.

You'd basically schedule every Monday (or minimally the 1st & 2nd Mondays), then trigger a backup if the date was between the 7th and 13th by checking in your script, or exit if it 's outside that range. Since second Tuesday has to fall between the 8th & 14th, assuming I've got my counting right.

Even that gives you fun with out of cycle patches & offsets for time zones, but it does get you a backup the Monday before the 2nd Tuesday.  When does Tuesday start in Redmond compared to where you are?

So you’re trying to get a backup that will always be the day before Patch Tuesday without having to make more than one backup per month? I can’t think of a way to schedule that purely within Reflect, but I wouldn’t advise trying to do that little in terms of backups anyway. Why not set up a schedule to run on the first two Mondays of the month? If you use Incrementals, the additional backup shouldn’t add too much in terms of storage requirements. Or even more often since there’s plenty that can go sideways on your system other than Windows updates.

What about out of cycle patches like zero day patches?  Depending on your version of Windows you may be able to delay patches so you ca nmanually run a backup before installing them.

Depending on your version of Windows & proficiency with GPEDIT.msc you can delay updates as long as you want & have update notify to install, or even notify to download, that doesn't make going an entire month without a backup a "good idea" though, even if you can trigger one when informed updates are pending/available, which you are frequently if you do such a thing owing to very frequent updates foe Defender's AV definitions.

I've outlined a method using scripting to do what the OP wants, I can't imagine many wish to emulate that strategy though, nor would I recommend it.  If you're short of space for backups, I'd suggest you obtaining more rather than only backup monthly.

Yes I can give details how the OP can do what they asked via scripting, you'll notice I didn't rush to do so, given precisely the issues regarding 0 Day patches.

Personally I'd rather have daily incrementals, that way if there's a 0 Day exploit, I can restore back to -1 Day.

Beardy,

I do weekly full backups with daily incrementals. So I am on the same page as you in that regard.  I was not commenting on the logic of his plan.  I was just pointing out that his plan focused on SCHEDULED updates but did not take into account the unplanned updates that can occur. And for that reason a plan that delayed ALL updates might be better than focusing only on the scheduled updates. 

@Drac144 That's why (one of the reasons) I have Group Policy set to notify updates rather than auto-install  I can back up manually before triggering a manual install, though I usually only bother for feature updates since I have daily backups anyway.  You do need a Pro or Server edition of Windows to have that control though, I believe Microsoft have the option disabled on Home even if you create the registry entries.

I use the Home edition so, as you say, I do not have the group policy option or the ability to control install of updates.  I DO have control of install of upgrades. 

But because I have the daily backup I can undo it with minimal losses. I have 6 partitions on my system with most software and data (other than Windows) on drives other than C. So undoing a Windows update is not likely to cause the loss of anything important.

OK, I have MR Free on a mix of Win10 Pro and Home computers so incrementals are out. At this point in time, due to the COVID issue, these computers are not being used very much so that is why I am limiting taking backups. What I think I will do is set the backup to start on the 2nd Tuesday and put a pause on updates until after the 2nd Tuesday. That will allow me to run the backup and then let the update run a few days later. Considering what has just happened with the latest 2nd Tuesday update (KB5000802 causing crashes when trying to print), that might be a better way to go anyway.

JohnD