Hi,
I'm sure this has been discussed before, but I searched and couldn't find any relevant thread, so I'll just ask.
I'm doing Intra-daily backups of my workstation to a file share on my NAS (over SMB).
I'm just testing restores of my Macrium Reflect backups, and when browsing the directory on my NAS where my backups are stored, I'm presented with a flat list of the backup files from which I need to select one. Now the backup file naming isn't particularly intuitive, and since backups are being merged regularly, file dates aren't exactly a reliable source of order either. This is manageable in the Windows client as the backups are presented in a tree structure of the hierarchy by which Reflect knows about them. Without it, I find it very challenging to choose the correct file.

To illustrate with a reasonably simple tree, This is how an older, consolidated set looks in the Windows client:


Now, IF I manage to pick the middle file in this tree in the rescue environment, It'll show me the hierarchy *above* the item I selected. But nothing below and nothing in other tree structures (root and descendants of other full backups)


Isolated like this, it seems trivial, but the entire contents of the backup directory are 356 files.
So in a disaster recovery scenario where the Windows client with the tree view is unavailable, what is the best way to choose the exact file I need when only knowing when the backup was taken?

You can create your own custom names for files.  The names can include variables (like date, time, backup type, etc.) to help identify the file so you can pick the correct one. However if you are using consolidation, I am not sure if the "full backup" file name will change as new data is included within it.   You can see the date of the files (it is cut off in your second clip but is there).  Not sure what you are asking for or how you want to see the file list.  Can you provide a little more detail about that?

+x

 

Drac144 - 27 January 2023 11:49 PM

You can create your own custom names for files.  The names can include variables (like date, time, backup type, etc.) to help identify the file so you can pick the correct one. However if you are using consolidation, I am not sure if the "full backup" file name will change as new data is included within it.   You can see the date of the files (it is cut off in your second clip but is there).  Not sure what you are asking for or how you want to see the file list.  Can you provide a little more detail about that?

Thanks for the reply.
Doh! I can't believe I missed that I can build my own naming scheme; I guess I missed it during the initial setup, and I haven't recreated the job since, only tweaked schedules etc. I think I need to start a new job to change the naming now, so I'll have to consider that when I get more space added to my offsite NAS.

That will indeed simplify identifying the correct tree from which I want to restore.
To clarify what my initial concern was, even if it's not that relevant anymore, this dialog box where I need to pick which image to restore from was confusing:


With a custom naming scheme, I should be able to take a lot of the guesswork out of it. I wish I had discovered this earlier

+x

 

jphughan - 28 January 2023 4:07 AM

I was a bit confused by your original post, because the two screenshots in that first post are identical except for the Rescue Media screenshot using italics, as it does — perhaps allow Macrium Support to identify even with cropped screenshots whether it came from Windows or Rescue?  The hierarchical view shows the Backup Date to the right of the crop limits of your Rescue screenshot. So if your Rescue environment allows sufficient display resolution, or you scroll horizontally, you should be able to see the Backup Date information and therefore choose the correct backup if you know when the desired backup was captured.

Regarding your follow-up post that shows the Browse interface rather than the Existing Backups interface, I suspect the problem you’ve illustrated there is the result of that UI having been designed before intra-daily backups made this more of an issue than it would have been before. I guess my answer to that would be to note that if “file hunting” is difficult in your scenario, then it would be best to avoid the Browse interface and instead add the folder of interest to the Existing Backups view in order to benefit from the option to view backups hierarchically. That can be achieved by clicking the Edit button in the button bar along the middle of the Existing Backups UI and adding the folder path of interest.

The idea of the second screenshot was to illustrate that if I don't manage to select the absolute last backup in a chain from the flat list in screenshot 3, I won't see the entire chain, just the upstream ones. Thus screenshot two is one item shorter than the list in the first screenshot. I guess it wasn't as clear as I hoped.

But that's kind of moot, as the Edit button was exactly what I was looking for. So thank you a lot for that. Not entirely intuitively named, I think, but now I know and it's exactly what I needed. I have also adopted a new naming scheme following @Drac144s post, so between these I have exactly what I needed. Thanks to the both of you. And yes, I believe this is an issue that will have been made more pressing with the introduction of intra-daily backups.

Browsing a flat list by date is a bit challenging because differential backups will change timestamp. Initially they will have the date they were originally taken, then as incremental files expire, they will get merged into the differential file and the diff will have the date of the merge operation.

Thank you both again.

Ah ok, now I understand. The file you select in the Browse dialog governs the files that are visible in the Existing Backups view. That’s true, and that has evolved from V7 where previously Reflect would show only the exact backup you had selected in that view. Now they show a bit more, but showing the entire set might provoke complaints that it becomes harder to see the backup that the user actually selected. It’s a moving target, since different people sometimes have conflicting viewpoints as to what’s best or what’s intuitive. Speaking of, that Edit button used to be called “Folders to search”, but it was also in a completely different area of the UI since that interface was redesigned for V8, to great improvement in my opinion.

Anyhow, glad you’ve found a solution, and happy to have helped!