macrium reflect and win 7 backup confusion!

Heedtheadvice

Ok, having a bad day, not the first time and some bad naming of backups/images. Trying to sort it all out.

Can anybody shed some light to determine which files are which? I must have several windows 10 images to recover windows, image partitions (c and g drives-latter one is data only) and also some backups made with win 7 classic prog (rather than win 10, I like the more classic interface style).

Backups etc of some machines I have named well in their own folders.......but my own main machine......what a mess.

I want to locate those to keep, delete old ones and now mainly just use macrium in differential mode.

TIA

were

I am unsure how entangled you are, personally I would restore the hives, these always change, so are always backed up and can be used as a marker, and you have their dates too.

Think it was hiren CD that had a hive modifier/reader and you should be able to read the Host name, also the files should be date stamped, besides the backup time stamp.

Heedtheadvice

Well I am tangled up in something!

Thanks for the response.

I am not sure that I fully understand why you mention registry hives -so that shows a limitation I have! Perhaps I have not explained myself well enough in the question or I just have not grasped your answer's meaning!

What I really want to be able to do is differentiate between macrium's and win 7's type of produced backups/images so I can delete the older versions and thus free up space on my backup drive to do new ones. The drive is getting a bit full having done several over the recent period following changes, data additions, and new progs added. I have a new drive but I will be keeping that for data and the older one for 'system'. I.e. a rationalisation process.

Can this not be done with file extensions (in conjunction with name and date). I was thinking if I just did it by date then it could be that I delete the latest version of one type of backup just because it is older than the other.

Does that make sense?

grumpycrab

Going back a step (or 2); have you written down what you've got, including modified dates, already? Windows Backups identified by :-
WindowsImageBackup\computer name\
And Macrium backups identified by extension mrimg (or .mrbak)

were

Heedtheadvice wrote: »

I am not sure that I fully understand why you mention registry hives -so that shows a limitation I have! Perhaps I have not explained myself well enough in the question or I just have not grasped your answer's meaning!

Ok, your registry is made from hives found on your system. These registry changes also change the hives. There is no real registry file, just the hives are read and interpreted.


the hives contain the host name, among all the other registry settings, and you can you an offline explorer to get to theses - think it is hiren? Often the hive contain things like Hostname which will probably be on more than one hive, and possibly more than one location.


the offline registry viewers will convert the hive into readable registy values


So restore the hive to separate directories, noteing down which backup belongs to which drive, and use the offline registry reading software to look at the files, probably regedit may work?


No, notepad or a Text editor does not work.


In windows 7 the host name is found in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ComputerName\ActiveComputerName
The hive containing this information is in (%windir%/system32/config/system)


http://smallvoid.com/article/winnt-offline-registry-edit.html
https://4sysops.com/archives/regedit-as-offline-registry-editor/
https://www.raymond.cc/blog/how-to-edit-windows-registry-key-values-without-booting-in-windows/

I do not 'know' Macrilum, though have used it many years ago. You do know the difference between full, incremental, and differential backups? If they are incremental backups, you will need all of them in the correct order.
http://novabackup.novastor.com/blog/differential-incremental-backup/

Heedtheadvice

Ah, I see where you are coming from now, Were.

Without going into things too deeply I think Grumpy's identification is the place for me to start.

The gives info is useful though (and if I make the simple approach progress successfully) I will file for future info. One more thing just learnt!

I did not say, whilst using win 7 style backup, it uses a win 10 os. Does that affect where the host name is stored?

Yes thanks different backup types understood......it's just everything else, so it seems!!!

were

Heedtheadvice wrote: »

I did not say, whilst using win 7 style backup, it uses a win 10 os. Does that affect where the host name is stored?

being lazy, google gave me the first result for a windows 7 hostname to that registry path.

On 10, the path is often the same, or very close, but some extra features have been added and a bit of renaming has also taken place, but generally it is the same-ish.


on my 10, the host name is in
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ComputerName\ActiveComputerName]


I am sure hostname is in other hives and places too besides above, but apparently gets pulled from above.

Heedtheadvice

Thanks, brilliant help once again.
Fingers crossed now for progress on the next rainy day - so that will be soon!