Any advice on restoring a Macrium Reflect Free image?

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Considering how frequently the folks on this site need – and recommend – full-image backups, it’d be good to have a definitive guide. Anybody interest
[See the full post at: Any advice on restoring a Macrium Reflect Free image?]

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RedRobot, Michael432, Lori, SueW, rc primak, jburk07

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https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/61026-backup-restore-macrium-reflect.html

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Thanks but this is for Ver 6, August 2016.

Has anything changed with what I would download today?

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Woody, a couple of questions just to make sure:

• How extensive or step-by-step detailed would you like the guide to be?
• Restoring only? How about creating the image in the first place?

Thanks!  🙂

 

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I use Macrium Reflect infrequently, but (fingers crossed) never had to do an image restore.

Macrium have an excellent KB here…

https://knowledgebase.macrium.com/

… including how to restore an image …

https://knowledgebase.macrium.com/display/KNOW72/Restoring+an+image+from+Windows

One important thing is to have created rescue media and tested it before it’s needed…

https://knowledgebase.macrium.com/display/KNOW72/Creating+rescue+media

Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

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SueW, cesmart4125, rc primak

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Karlston wrote:

One important thing is to have created rescue media and tested it before it’s needed…

This is key. You have to be able to boot your computer using the Macrium rescue media. If you can’t do that, you will be dead in the water if your hard drive crashes, whether or not you have a good backup.

I made a couple of copies for each of my computers, just in case. But in reality, you can probably make the disk on one computer, then use it on another.

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JohnW

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You first need a bootable Reflect disc. I use a USB with Windows Boot Menu for best compatibility, made with Reflect Home Edition. Once booted you search for and select the drive image you want to restore, and the destination drive. With Reflect 7.2 you can restore all earlier versions. Simply pay attention to the selections so you put the image where you want it to go. The free version is not password protected, so you can pretty much get it done quickly.

GreatAndPowerfulTech

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cesmart4125, rc primak, Great Lake Bunyip, jburk07

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I agree one would first create Rescue media but, once made, it is only required if the PC won’t boot. Otherwise, an image can be restored directly from Reflect.

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I would not restore from any environment except WinPE rescue media. I’ve had issues where time-date stamps and Windows VolSnap, among other things, got really messed up when I tried to restore starting from within Windows.

-- rc primak

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JohnW, cesmart4125, GreatAndPowerfulTech

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I’m not a writer of major documents, but I have worked extensively with Macrium Reflect and other such “rescue” software for both backup and recovery. In fact, I have three of them (Reflect, Acronis TI and Terabyte IFW) included and loaded in my own multi-purpose WinPE builds. So, if there are specific questions I can answer on the subject, I’d be happy to help as much as I can.

Basically, if you can boot to a WinPE environment, the restoration procedure is essentially one of selecting a backup image and allowing the chosen application to do its thing. Just be sure to choose the correct restore destination drive/partition and any of those three will handle the rest of the process pretty much without any need for further human intervention.

__
P.S.: The latest Reflect release (among others) will now let you use WinRE as an alternative to WinPE as the base for your “rescue” media builds.

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rc primak, Great Lake Bunyip, jburk07

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While we are at it, how ab0ut the other recommended program – EaseUS ToDo Backup?

Actually for either of these, and other backup programs, the thing that really confuses me is making the necessary bootable recover disk.  Most programs make it seem effortless in their instructions, but then there is talk about needing to add additional drivers etc, but no information on how to do that.

Like how does one go about finding what device(s) need a special driver?

Where do you find what the actual driver(s) is, and where is the actual driver file on your computer – and I mean the real actual driver file not what Device Manager shows (and pls dont say go to the manufacturer’s site, that’s even more confusing as many times a driver file is packaged with control panels etc vs only the driver).

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anonymous wrote:

Actually for either of these, and other backup programs, the thing that really confuses me is making the necessary bootable recover disk.

Yes, I think that is true for most users. It’s not the straightforward backup and restore processes that raise most issues and questions. It’s all of the other user interface “bells and whistles”, and creating rescue disks and operational scheduling/scripting are probably the two most prominent sources of confusion in that latter category.

Although Macrium has done a very commendable job of automating the inclusion of most common device drivers in their WinPE (and now WinRE) build processes, it’s not foolproof. In less common circumstances, users may be forced to discover and add their own driver inclusions. In such cases, the trick is to find the complete package for driver installation as a subfolder of C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository and copy that entire subfolder to the C:\boot\Macrium\Drivers folder. Looking at the driver details in the Windows Device Manager can help you to identify the correct FileRepository subfolder.

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 Looking at the driver details in the Windows Device Manager can help you to identify the correct FileRepository subfolder.

Could you pls elaborate on exactly how to use Device Manager information to find the correct FileRepository subfolder as my experience has been the DM name is different from the actual file the backup programs need.

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Without knowing your situation in detail, the best I can offer is an example from my own past history. At a time before Macrium improved Reflect’s screen resolution behavior when booted to the WinPE environment I found it necessary to add my own system’s video driver to those which Reflect’s rescue build process included automatically by default.

In my own case, the Windows Device Manager driver details for my AMD video card told me that one of its driver files was amdkmpfd.stz and searching for that file under C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository found it in subfolder c0296217.inf_amd64_5c110cd680d977f2. So I copied that entire FileRepository subfolder to my C:\boot\Macrium\Drivers\Video folder and support for my AMD video was thus loaded when I booted using Reflect’s WinPE rescue media environment. It was then able to respond correctly to Refect’s Other Tasks -> Screen Resolution settings in that WinPE environment.

There may be other ways to accomplish the same thing, but that was the easiest solution I found for my own issue. No guarantee that it will fix the particular problem that you’re experiencing, but it may be worth a try. Good luck.

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The only useful special drivers not found in the backup programs’ standard WinPE environment are networking drivers. Maybe a touchscreen driver on some 2-in-1 devices. Networking comes into play only if you are backing up to a network drive, or restoring from a network drive location. Most home users aren’t doing these things.

I do however, include on my rescue media USB stick a full uncompressed copy of my system’s current Windows DriverStore from the System32 folder. From this, the Macrium Reflect WinPE 10 environment can pick up both the Ethernet and the Wireless WiFi drivers. Frankly, I’ve never used either. But it’s nice to know the rescue media could use these network drivers.

Reference: (By Ed Bott)

Windows 10 tip: Back up your third-party hardware drivers

https://www.zdnet.com/article/windows-10-tip-back-up-your-third-party-hardware-drivers/

USB sticks are so big these days, you could even store a spare copy of the system image archive on the rescue media, so you don’t have to lug around a hard drive or external SSD when you travel. AOMEI encourages making a bootable system image in their WinPE environment.

-- rc primak

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jburk07, cesmart4125, LH

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I have used it many times and never had a failure. I would add that when creating your image, just before tell it to “go”, select options and tell it to validate the image. Also I always create my image from booting to the rescue media. You can created an image with windows running, but I would rather not because you never know when Windows or your antivirus or firewall will interfere with creating your image. Always best to boot to the rescue media and do it from there, as nothing is running to take a chance on.

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Great Lake Bunyip

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anonymous wrote:

You can created an image with windows running, but I would rather not because you never know when Windows or your antivirus or firewall will interfere with creating your image.

Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) should handle it okay. If you are experiencing VSS issues, that will have much wider consequences.

As for image validation upon image creation, it’s not a bad idea to validate the “snapshot”, but no guarantee against subsequent corruption. Probably equally important, if not more so, to validate prior to restoration.

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jburk07

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How do you validate the image once it is made? Is that the same thing as the verify image option when you make the image?

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Yup. Sorry if my “loose terminology” added to the confusion. Validating or verifying a backup image merely checks the entire contents of backup files against MD5 message digests (Hashes) created from the source data when the backup was created. See this KB article for more details and possible failure modes.

When you select any existing backup image, either within the Reflect UI or by right-clicking the file in the Windows File Explorer, you should see verification as one of the process options available in the menu.

__
P.S.: If I recall correctly, the Reflect restore process also provid3es an option for verifying the image prior to its restoration

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cesmart4125, rc primak

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I’ve never had problems under Windows 10 restoring from a Macrium Reflect image created from within Windows. This used to be a problem before Windows 7, but not anymore for most systems. Just shut down the Internet and any background processes you can easily close before doing the image backup.

One more thing most people gloss over. Make a few Comments on the condition of your system, and attach the Comments to the backup archive. Saves a lot of guesswork as to exactly what changes happened in the system and when.

-- rc primak

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jburk07, GreatAndPowerfulTech

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I used to use easeus but now use Macrium. because I have a mixed (ubuntu 18.10 and win7) ssd (boot is via grub2). I randomly take full ssd images. If I need to restore, I restore the SSD by booting to a thumb drive with Macrium on it.  macrium prog has directions on how to create that. So the restore is done totally standalone. Laptop Lenovo T530. I have actually had to do it a couple times so I know it works for me. To create the backups, I turn on an external HD linked by USB3, boot to win7, start macrium, and do it.  It’s simple.

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Great Lake Bunyip

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a wrote:

… I have a mixed (ubuntu 18.10 and win7) ssd (boot is via grub2).

Similar to my setup with Win 7, 8.1, 10 and Linux Mint. Curious about whether you get proper “intelligent backups” if you include any ext4 partition(s). I’ve found that most (excluding Terabyte) insist on doing full sector-by-sector backups in those cases.

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For Linux, once you get used to how it works, Clonezilla makes decent, restorable backups. I wouldn’t trust a Windows program to back up Linux. Maybe that’s just me.

-- rc primak

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I’ve used Macrium Reflect, Aomei Backupper, and Acronis True Image to make Linux EXT4 backups, and none of them insist on a sector by sector backup.  The one exception is the LUKS encrypted volume I am using on my Acer Swift since I discovered that Acer/Insyde “helpfully” give a key to anyone who tries to break into my PC’s encrypted data.  As the data within the volume (including the file metadata) is encrypted, the only way for a system to back that volume up with the volume locked is to do it sector by sector.

I’ve restored these backups and ended up with a perfectly functional system many times, so I have no less trust in any of the three to properly image and restore EXT4 volumes than I do Windows ones.  The rescue media for Windows backup programs was almost always Linux-based in years past anyway, before Microsoft loosened the restrictions on WinPE.  My various versions of True Image always had Linux rescue media, while Aomei has a choice of Linux or WinPE, and I am not certain about Macrium (and I don’t really feel like booting Windows just to find out).  I used the WinPE rescue media for Linux restore operations with Aomei, and they worked fine.  I seem to remember never being able to get the Linux ones to actually work (as far as booting) with Aomei.

 

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rc primak

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Macrium Reflect in Version 7.2 can create rescue media using the Linux environment (with limited features), WinPE (various numbered versions) or WinRE (the newest Microsoft Rescuel Environment). By default,WinPE for your version of Windows is selected. The number of bits (32/64) also selects itself.

-- rc primak

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Ascaris

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Agreed @Ascaris.

I’ve restored EXT partitions many times with Macrium Reflect. In fact I restored my LM18.3 partition a few days ago.

I couldn’t be bothered trying to manually install an earlier version of Firefox (the latest version kept crashing trying to load Unity content) so I just used my Backup Image.

-lehnerus2000

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Just to be clear and to avoid any possible misunderstanding, there is no doubt whatever about the ability of any of the aforementioned software applications to back up and restore Linux ext4 partitions successfully and without reported errors of any kind. In some cases, however, subsequent careful examination of logged results reveals that they have done so by switching automatically (and often silently) to their full sector-by-sector backup capability rather than using their so-called “intelligent backup” of used sectors only. It has been a well-known issue with some products. (See this Acronis TI forum thread as just one of many examples.) And I’ve noted it in other cases as well which was the only reason for my question above.

To repeat: There is no doubt that they can do the job successfully with Linux ext partitions, just an incidental question of how they do it in certain cases.

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Arvy wrote:

In some cases, however, subsequent careful examination of logged results reveals that they have done so by switching automatically (and often silently) to their full sector-by-sector backup capability rather than using their so-called “intelligent backup” of used sectors only.

The benefit to intelligent backup (as opposed to sector by sector) is to save time and disk space.  I’ve never looked through my logs to see if it is switching to SbS mode, but I do know that the Acronis issue you referenced did hit me at times when I used True Image for imaging Linux volumes.  I seem to remember the Acronis people minimizing the issue, saying that it was normal for Linux volumes to be imaged SbS, but it’s so slow and space-wasting that I never would have used ATI to do Linux backups if that was really the case.

When this issue manifested, a backup task that usually took a few (2 to 3) hours was taking more than 7, and used up all my hard drive space when I should have had enough free space for two full backups, and it wasn’t even done.  Rather than try to find/create more empty space, I used another backup program, and that fixed it.  I’d been a user of many (paid) versions of Acronis True Image since version 6, but it’s gotten so buggy, invasive, and obnoxious that I’ve written it off.

I haven’t had that happen with Aomei or Macrium products (free versions).  The backups I perform in Linux end up being about the same size and taking about as long as NTFS backups of similarly-sized partitions.  As long as that’s the case, and the backups created are reliable (as both of the two programs mentioned have demonstrated, though Aomei has at times had minor boot issues I have had to correct after successful restores), I’m happy, regardless of the method used.  Backup speed and the size of the created image are certainly important things to keep in mind while evaluating backup software, though nothing, of course, trumps reliability.

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Agreed that it’s a backup “time and size” issue only and not critical otherwise. Having seen it myself with Reflect (both v6 and v7) I asked about other people’s experience just out of curiosity. In fact, I see now that Macrium did issue “bug fixes” last January to deal with the issue in both versions: v6.3.1852 and v7.1.2833.

I also agree with your comment about Acronis TI being “invasive and obnoxious”. Unfortunately, Macrium’s recent introduction of certain “feature add-ons” and increased reliance on kernel-mode drivers (handled quite carelessly in some cases) make me wonder if they are not headed down that same path. I understand the motivation, but it does not bode well for the future IMO.

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In my case, I used a Differential Image.

I created a MR Master Image which has W7 & LM18.3 partitions on it. Each month I create a Differential Image based on it.

I just chose the LM18.3 partition for the restore operation (i.e. deselected the W7 partition).

-lehnerus2000

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The only way to be sure that any image is good is to restore it to a hard drive and verify that you can boot from that hard drive.

You don’t need to go through the restoration process every time you create an image, but you should consider doing it at least monthly, maybe just before the Patch Tuesday updates.  Since you don’t want to restore over your current working system drive, you will need a second hard drive.  And you also need a way to dual boot so that you can have a choice of booting to the restored image as a test, or to your main hard drive for daily work.  I use the free program EasyBCD for multi-boot capability.

This takes some time to set up, and you will need good notes to remind you of the restore and test process.  But you are assured that if you really need that image you will know that it’s good and you can restore it.

And you do back up your documents, music, videos, etc offline on a daily basis, right?

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rc primak

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Excellent advice … and it is also said that only two backup images are one too few. For real peace of mind at least one of the rotating destination drives should be swappable to allow disaster-proof safeguarding off-site.

BillBecker wrote:

And you do back up your documents, music, videos, etc offline on a daily basis, right?

Yes, but not to any “proprietary container” type of backup. Perhaps I’m overly paranoid, but those super-critical items just get Xcopied daily (or more often) to a regular backup storage drive location.

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rc primak

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Also useful for just data backups is Windows File History. You do need to dedicate a drive for that, but it works for continuous file backups and versioning.

-- rc primak

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Prior to doing a full Windows backup, I usually clean up the free space (i.e. write it all with zeros). Yes it takes time and it wears down a bit of the life of my SSD, but I can then make a backup that compresses better, faster, smarter, becomes smaller for storage and the restore is faster.

I use AOMEI Backupper for Windows and fsarchiver for Linux.

My Linux systems are typically trimmed under 4GB and my backup files under 1GB. Backup and restore are done fully manually (but there is a GUI) by booting the live version of Linux Mint. I have a 8GB USB drive with 2 partitions, one with the live boot and the other one with the fsarchiver.deb and some image files for all my computers. The restore is the fastest of it all: I go to the WC, take a wizz, wash my hands and it’s done when I return. With 4 threads uncompressing to SSD drives, things run faster than your bladder empties at 40! What takes the most time is if I have to chroot into the target restored system to update grub if meantime the restored kernel is different than the one running prior on the machine. fsarchiver takes time to master and if you make a mistake selecting the destination partition the data’s just gone, but if you pay attention to it and once you’ve mastered it, it is something quite easy and fast, allowing me to treat OSs like chewing gum.

Can’t do this good with Windows. AOMEI is fine and the Universal Restore allows restoring an image into a new machine with a totally different hardware (that’s very nice, I configure the OS on a VM and then port it to bare metal, same thing with Linux with the plus of all the drivers being already in the kernel).

I’ve only used AOMEI on Windows 7 and 8.1. I just refuse Windows 10. My new laptop came with it and it spent more time at the repair shop than in my hands by now. The 1st thing I always did was grab a USB drive and make a recovery unit using the Windows 10 built in software, but both failed restore, under 1709 and 1803. In fact, the 1803 restored is so bad I had to send the laptop back to the shop 3 days after receiving it: the Windows 10 restore said something in Portuguese just like “An error has occurred” and a cancel button, nothing nothing else, and upon restarting the EUFI was screwed up, not turning the screen light on and not initializing the built in keyboard, making it impossible to restore the EUFI settings. Then the very same day after the laptop returning from the manufacturer warranty the same thing happened when I tested the restore. I called them back and they advised me to connect an USB keyboard. Go figure, the hardware does not initialize it’s built in keyboard but it does it with an external one, and at “the dark” (with the screen at zero brightness) I can press F3 + Enter to load the system’s default and then F4 + Enter to exit and save.

Needless to say, no more Windows 10 on that laptop, it is running LMDE2. By the way, The Linux Mint team is dropping support for LMDE2 on January, but the Debian team is supporting Jessie until June 2020. All I had to do was installing Firefox-ESR from the Debian repos and I’m good and happy to go for 1 and a half more rock solid stable years. With fsarchiver.

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anonymous wrote:

I’ve only used AOMEI on Windows 7 and 8.1. I just refuse Windows 10. […]The 1st thing I always did was grab a USB drive and make a recovery unit using the Windows 10 built in software, but both failed restore, under 1709 and 1803.

If I understand correctly you seem to be saying that, having rejected Windows 10 as such, you trusted it none the less to provide its own backup rather than use the same software that you rely on for backing up Windows 7 and 8.1. I’m sure the comprehension deficit is my own fault, but I fail to grasp the logic. In my own experience, any of the “rescue” applications that I use regularly work just fine with Windows 10 releases up to and including W10.1809 build 17763.168.

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I think you did misunderstand. It looks to me as if this post recommends AOMEI Backer Upper. It runs inside a custom WinPE environment, which is ideal for doing anything by way of repairing or restoring Windows in any version. Just make sure the AOMEI WinPE version matches the Windows version you’re repairing or restoring, or backing up. WinPE 5 was Windows 7. WinPE 10 or WinRE is for Windows 10.

Yes, the Windows 10 Restore Environment has undergone a new morph lately. But WinPE 10 is what most backup programs are using for their best bootable rescue media these days. This may change soon, and Macrium Reflect is keeping pace with these changes, per their updates which I receive for the program and their bootable media.

I would expect AOMEI to offer a WinRE based product sooner or later, but this really doesn’t matter right now. Just use whatever you can understand or learn to understand. The point is to actually do these backups on a regular basis with as little fuss as possible.

-- rc primak

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anonymous wrote:

Prior to doing a full Windows backup, I usually clean up the free space (i.e. write it all with zeros). Yes it takes time and it wears down a bit of the life of my SSD, but I can then make a backup that compresses better, faster, smarter, becomes smaller for storage and the restore is faster.

An SSD should do this (zero out any areas marked unused) automatically whenever a TRIM command is issued.  The OS should do this by itself, but just to make sure, Macrium Reflect does so as well just before starting a backup or restore operation (it’s in the operations window that it detects a SSD and executes TRIM).

Even if TRIM was not being issued, the zero write should only matter if you are doing a sector by sector backup.  A regular backup image won’t back up areas marked as free space, even if they contain data (as they may on a magnetic HDD).

 

 

 

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rc primak

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@YP

I have used old versions of Aconis & Paragon Free for both image,  restores partitions, and replacing new disks.  I have no experience with Macrium Reflect.  From the documentation, image creation  & restore seems reasonably straight forward .

It’s the rescue media building that I’m a little confused.  I believe MR uses winpe for rescue media.  My questions is.

If I have 5 win7 machines, do I need 5 rescue media build on for each machine?  The reason I’m confused is because winpe places driver from the  build system, at least this is my impressions.  My own experience with of Acronis & Paragon; they use generic drivers on rescues disk.  Hence, I create 1 32bit restore, and use it on my 3 machines.

Thanks for any informations

 

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I do build WinPE rescue media per machine. There are drivers which can be picked up in the WinPE environment, so it’s best to build the rescue system on the device for which it will be used, and to update the WinPE build each time the target system is updated or receives new driver versions. Also, each time the backup program is updated it’s best to update the rescue media at that time as well. With USB rescue media this is very easy for almost any backup program.

-- rc primak

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jburk07

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After Macrium gets updates do you update the recovery media completely from scratch (format usb etc) or can the latter have a limited update?

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The initial install of Macrium Reflect does a multi-gigabyte download of WAIK or WinRE from Microsoft’s servers. After that, the updates are only a few hundred MB if that. Much more limited. Unless a new WinPE update from say, WinPE 5 to WinPE 10 is made, all that happens is that the installed WAIK rebuilds the local WinPE environment using the updated Macrium Reflect files only, with no changes to WinPE itself. Maybe more drivers get picked up, but that’s usually about it.

I think most backup programs which use WinPE do the same or similar things.

If you use USB media, the actual “burn” is very quick, and now Macrium Reflect will update the Windows Boot Menu Option without turning it off then on again manually.

-- rc primak

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anonymous wrote:

If I have 5 win7 machines, do I need 5 rescue media build on for each machine?

If your question is whether you have any other choice, that answer is yes. It’s up to you. It is possible to use a single MR rescue build for multiple machines (or for handing any one machine’s hardware changes) by adding drivers to the build. The relevant KB article explains how and you’ll find additional background in this KB section regarding the Macrium rescue environment.

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Just want to pass on a top-notch resource, the Wilders Security Forums thread for using Macrium Reflect.  Note well: it’s a long standing, running discussion that currently has 278 pages

Yes, a lot to read… BUT if you have any trouble with Macrium, it’s a great place to get actual help since over a dozen imaging experts  regularly post, share tips and answer questions.

In fact, there’s a entire Subforum dedicated to “Backup, Imaging and Disk Mgmt” which contains various threads about other imagining programs such as Aoemi, Drive Snapshot, and Terabyte’s Image for Windows/DOS/Linux suite.

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JohnW, SueW, jburk07, cesmart4125, rc primak

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People, and Woody, there is a very simple answer to Woody’s original question:

Macrium Reflect has an extensive and very easy to understand visual and text explanation of every aspect of backup and recovery, right there at their own support pages on their own web site. I have based presentations to user groups on these exact tutorials:

https://reflect.macrium.com/webtutorial/tutorial.asp

If you can’t find it there, shoot the folks at Macrium Reflect a support email. They are very responsive. They have a Twitter presence as well. Also, several active Reddit threads.

But honestly, I think you’ll find everything you’ll ever need to know, and a lot you don’t need to know, in those online tutorials. That’s how I learned to use Macrium Reflect, and that’s where I go if I get stuck, or some new interface change confuses me when it first arrives.

Compared with other backup products, I find the Macrium Reflect interface the best organized and easiest to use, and it keeps getting better, not worse like Windows 10.

Most importantly, MR Free has saved my bacon many, many times, all without pestering me with popups or excessive spam emails.  A one-time email registration is needed for each new installation. After that they pretty much leave me alone. They don’t even nag me to upgrade to a paid version.

The only other backup program I use is Clonezilla, for all my Linux backup and restore needs. But that’s fodder for another thread.

-- rc primak

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JohnW, SueW, jburk07, cesmart4125

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Here is another resource about using Macrium Reflect – Macrium Reflect User Guide

This goes well beyond the basic tutorial and covers features of the non-free version, too. Quite detailed and can be downloaded as a pdf as well as browsed online.

Win10 Pro x64 22H2, Win10 Home 22H2, Linux Mint + a cat with 'tortitude'.

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Bottom line is Macrium does work and it works well. Anyone who does windows updates and doesn’t do an image before hand is playing Russian Roulette. Soon or later …Bang!

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rc primak

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Amazing Truths Revealed: Link to Simply Magnificent AskWoody Knowledge Bases

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rc primak, Cybertooth

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While I do appreciate that this thread began by requesting particular advice on restoring a Macrium Reflect Free image, I would think it only fair nevertheless for the “bottom line” here to acknowledge that some other backup software brands work at least equally well in achieving essentially the same end result.  Some have received more widespread recognition than others, but end users will make their own choices among them to suit individual perceptions about ease of use, automation options, user interface preferences, et cetera.

Probably the most important advice on the subject in general is to resolve any issues, questions or uncertainties about creating and testing “rescue media” thoroughly before you need it for actually restoring a backup image with whatever software brand you choose.  Other than that, as with voting, backup early and often. :^)

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rc primak

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Whats the REAL difference/benefit of a MR7 PAID from FREE for a normal user for backup-purpose-only pls?
It seems the FREE ver can do the image and clone just well and PAID are add-function for higher end user looking for more fancy functions. – Am I right?
From W7, I cloned a HD with Linux to another new SSD – it worked 🙂 so far anyway…
I assume I can also clone W7 from one HD to another HD/SSD right?
Is there Anything the FREE cannot do or do not include that could result or contribute to failure to restore image? Both- for Win7 or for Linux. Any user expereicne you have come accross by any chance?
TIA:) Hv A gd Day 🙂

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The free version of Macrium Reflect does not offer incremental backups (just differential backups and full backups), and it does not allow the backup sets to be encrypted.  Those things require the full version.  There may be more than that (I would bet there is), but those are the things I most wish that Reflect free had.

If Reflect wasn’t so much more expensive than its competition ($70 per PC, and I have lots of PCs), I would have bought it back when Windows 8.1 was my main OS.  Now, I have a “no Windows software” policy when it comes to things that cost money.  I will pay for Linux software if necessary, or I will use free versions of Windows software if that ends up being the best choice, but my days of buying Windows software are behind me.

Until recently, Aomei Backupper free did all I want, including both of those things that are missing from Macrium Reflect free, but they yanked encrypted backup support from the later (>4.10) versions, even to the point that attempting to use 4.50 to restore backups made on Backupper Free 4.10 results in a “your trial period has ended” error message/failure, even though I never actually used any trial version.

If Aomei wants to take features out of the free version, that’s their prerogative, but it’s not going to win hearts and minds of potential paying customers if backups made on a fully valid free edition won’t restore when the chips are down.  I have plenty of PCs (way too many for one person), so even if my main PC was down, it would have been no problem to go redownload 4.10 and create a new rescue USB to perform the restore (fortunately, they still provide older versions of the program on their site).  A more typical person with only one PC and without a tech background would be in a bad position, not being able to get their PC running in order to write the rescue USB drive, even if they thought they had to buy Aomei full to do it (which is the impression they would probably get from the error message).  Even buying the full version won’t help if they still can’t boot into the PC the full version is to be installed upon.

If users knew they could download the rescue .iso directly (assuming it will not also refuse to restore an encrypted image), they would still need a PC to be bootable to turn that into a workable drive.  If they had existing Linux live USB drives, they could use Linux to write the image to the USB drive, but most non-techie people would not have a Linux bootable drive on hand.

Ideally, what I would suggest to Aomei would be to have Backupper simply refuse to create new encrypted backup volumes with the free version, but to always be able to restore existing ones, encrypted or not, from any rescue media.

There’s a lesson in this.  Usually, allowing a program to update to the latest version will not be a bad thing (though recent experience with Windows 10 calls that into question), and usually, using a rescue USB drive built with a newer version of a backup program won’t prevent it from restoring older images.  Usually.  Sometimes, though, things like this will happen, so it’s good to make sure you have rescue media ready from the same version you used to create every version of every backup that you might want to restore.

If you have backups extending back months or years as I do, it is possible you’d have to have lots of different rescue USB drives floating around, all with the same software but in different versions.  I don’t do this, as I have lots of PCs (so I can still download and make USB rescue drives even if one PC is out of commission) and I save every installer for every program I use, so even if an Aomei or other software company doesn’t make older versions available, I might still have the one I used to install it on my PC in the first place, assuming it didn’t upgrade in-place from an earlier version).  I also stagger my backups, so that even if Aomei is my primary, I still use Macrium every once in a while too, making sure I have at least one of each on hand for each PC at all times.

 

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It is just a bit too late now, but around Black Friday/Cyber Monday Macrium usually has a 40% discount deal. They also have a 4-license package that is only the price of 2 individual licenses, so on Black Friday you can save some good money. And also: use your credit card and pay in British Pounds. That saves you another 10% instead of paying in your local currency. The exchange rate of a credit card is (much) better than that of payment provider Cleverbridge.

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SueW, Ascaris

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See this for comparisons: https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.

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I have always restored on a machine with a dual boot; just boot into the other OS and fire up Reflect, making sure it is the correct image to the correct partition; check it numerous times. Reflect will usually select it correctly automatically.

You should set up a recovery USB in Reflect and make sure you know how to use it. It is not as easy as you think to get the BIOS to boot from a USB. Note the steps so when you need it, you can do it. Then it is easy, or follow the tutorials as above.

If you think you need to do this regularly, such as due to Win 10 updates, invest the time and move all data to another disk. Create shortcuts on your desktop so everything of value is on the other drive. Change data file locations and downloads as well.

That way if you do a restore, you only need to maybe update some programs, or not at all if an image is made after any changes.

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Since all most of us need is a simple Full System backup before applying monthly updates, Why not use the built-in Windows 10 Backup program?

Many poo-poo it, but then many claim it is easy and works very well.

So why not use?

(Reading all the above to this point makes my head spin and is exactly why backing up is difficult and confusing for many of us).

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Windows’s built-in method for creating system images works well enough. When my wife got her Windows 10 PC, that’s the method we used at first to create her regular backups.

The drawback of the built-in system is that Windows will reuse the same folder to write the new image, thus overwriting the previous image. If you want to keep previous images, you need to think ahead and first rename the backup folder, and only then start the imaging process, otherwise you’ll lose the previous image.

After doing this for a few months, the procedure got pretty old (tedious), so we switched to Macrium Reflect. Although there are more steps to complete the image creation process, it’s much more straightforward for a non-techie to carry out as she doesn’t need to remember to take that preliminary folder renaming step.

 

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Ascaris

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Another issue with the built-in Windows backup feature is usability. That means, compared with Windows Backup and especially their Restore phase, third party user interfaces are clearer, often better organized (everything in one page or tab) and just easier to navigate and read. Others may disagree with me about this, but interface design if all products being compared are free, makes the biggest difference, provided each product actually works as advertised.

Then important thing is to choose something, stick with it and actually do the backups. And test those backups once in awhile.

-- rc primak

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Ascaris

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Let me offer a different approach… One for the ordinary user who is no techie. I have used Macrium Reflect and although most of you would find it easy to follow, I can easily see where a non-techie would have a lot of trouble understanding it.

When ever I install a new hard drive, re-install Windows on an existing drive, or set up a brand new PC, I create an image of the drive. The reason for this image is to make it easy to recover from some kind of a disaster. In the life of a typical PC, I do this once or twice. So, it is really not a backup thing. It is more of an insurance thing. Data backups are a completely different matter

However, in today’s world of messed up Windows Update, bad drivers all over the place and numerous activation problems, this is a shinning beacon. The recovery from an initial image is a complete recovery, although it does not include the installation of dynamic applications (e.g. AV) or data of any kind.

For the past 19 months, I have shut down Windows Update. That means when I finish this image, it is what I called a “Final State” image. That means when installed, it requires NO UPDATING. Microsoft could have evaporated and you can still install a new hard drive and have a good OS. The recovered system is activated, has all the updates and drivers it should ever need, and simply works 30 minutes later.

What is different about this is that I use the built-in Windows 7 image creation tool. It works just fine. I do this on DVD’s. It takes from 2 to 6 of them. I know a lot of people claim that DVD’s are not reliable. That’s just not true if you do this ONLY on PLUS R DVDs. MINUS R DVDs are the unreliable part that people have experienced.

With this image, all you need is a standard Windows 7 Repair disk to boot the system.

CT

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For what you have done, I could use Clonezilla or MiniTool Partition Wizard Free.

https://www.partitionwizard.com/clone-disk/

This is similar to the approach used by older programs which would create a partial Windows image, freeze it in place, and revert any changes made during a session. Nobody I know of maintains those programs anymore, and more’s the pity they do not.

-- rc primak

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Although I’m not as experienced as many here, I have used Macrium Reflect Free to make a full image of an entire drive as follows:
First, I have Macrium make a bootable recovery USB stick (in WinPE), then detach the USB stick safely from the PC.
Then in normal Windows I hook up an external drive to the PC via USB, and I double-check which drive is which and what they look like in Explorer(very important).  The external drive must have enough room to receive the Macrium image.
Then I reboot the PC with the bootable recovery USB connected and make sure I boot to it (not to my normal hard drive).
Then I very carefully use the USB stick’s Macrium to image the hard drive to the external drive, with Verify pre-selected as ON.

WARNING – with Verify on and backing up to an external drive connected by USB, the full image backup and verification can take quite a few hours.  You might want to do this while you sleep.

ALSO – I have never actually restored a Macrium image, but the verify part gives me some comfort that it was made correctly.

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Creating and verifying the image of a 1 TB Windows hard drive with EFI Boot and about 70 GB of Windows and user data from within the Macrium Reflect Free program has never taken me more than about a half-hour, start to finish, on a modern PC.

Your Mileage obviously may vary.

It used to take much longer, and using the Linux based USB environment takes forever, but I do not recommend that method for the average home or small office user for a single, stand-alone PC.

-- rc primak

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I’m using Macrium Reflect free and it saved my butt several times this summer when my laptop started to die. I’m going to image my drive in a few minutes before I install Windows and Office updates.

There has been a problem with earlier versions of v.7 where the rescue disc is not created properly. Make sure that you regularly update your rescue media. If your machine gets hosed, it will suck to have a backup image and no way to write it to your disk.

EDIT: Especially create a new rescue disk when you upgrade Windows versions. A current version of Windows PE in your restore media seems like a good idea.

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rc primak

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There has been a problem with earlier versions of v.7 where the rescue disc is not created properly.

True story. Fixed as of Version 7.2.

-- rc primak

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SueW

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In case you get stuck because you don’t have a good Macrium rescue disk, you can always install any current version of Windows on the machine, then install Macrium. Now you can either create a Macrium rescue disk, or just do the restore from within Macrium.

You don’t need to activate Windows, because it won’t be on the computer for very long – only long enough to enable you to do the restore.

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Ascaris

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Hi everyone,

I have used older free paid versions of Macrium Reflect. The latest free version can also perform differential backups. Unlike incremental backups, all differential backups are “stand alone” from any other differential backup.

The upshot is that a differential backup saves all changes which have occurred since the last full backup, whereas an incremental backup saves all changes since the last incremental backup. New differential backups take progressively longer to create and can become quite large over time, whereas incremental backups usually are created very quickly and usually are very small.

Personally, I don’t schedule backups since I keep the backups offline. Instead, I prefer to manually perform either a differential backup or a new full backup just before going to bed, yet only after having additionally scanned my PC using the stand-alone versions of MBAM and Hitman Pro as a “sanity check” that my primary AV program hasn’t missed anything. After performing the sanity check, I reboot and wait 15 minutes, and then I start the backup and go to bed.

Stupid Pet Tricks for using Macrium Reflect…

1A. Optional: Go to System Properties >> Advanced >> Startup and Recovery and click on Settings. Enable “Time to display list of operating systems:” and “Time to display recovery options when needed:” since it is a good idea to always have these options available to you when you boot up your computer. See the attached image whose name starts with “01”.

1B. Optional: If your motherboard supports a PS/2 keyboard and mouse, and if you have a PS/2 keyboard and mouse lying around which you are not using, shut down Windows and temporarily replace your USB keyboard and mouse with the PS/2 equivalents. Then power on and launch Windows. Why should you do this? Doing so forces Windows to install generic PS/2 drivers for PS/2 keyboards and PS/2 mice. I had one instance where Macrium’s recovery console couldn’t correctly see my USB keyboard such that I couldn’t do anything in the recovery console. Thus, it is best that when doing #3, below, that Macrium does incorporate PS/2 drivers for a PS/2 keyboard and mouse. I should note that this probably is a very rare problem which may have already been fixed by Macrium. Regardless, I thought that it was worth mentioning since I always initially install Windows using a PS/2 keyboard and mouse, and since I always want these PS/2 drivers to be inherently installed in Windows should I ever encounter any issues with USB such that I have to fall back to using a PS/2 keyboard and mouse.

2. Optional: If you use a removable backup drive, it is a good idea to permanently assign it a drive letter — preferably a drive letter such as X, Y or Z. Never assign the chosen drive letter to any other removable drive since the assigned drive letter for the removable backup drive will be lost the next time you attach it. See the attached image whose name starts with “02”.

If you have more than one installed hard drive, it is a really good idea to include drive numbers in the partition volume labels for each hard drive partition. Again, see  the attached image whose name starts with “02”. In the attached image, you can see that I have three installed hard drives. The single partition volume label for my OS hard drive starts with “1_”.  My second hard drive has three partitions, and the volume labels for each of these three partitions starts with “2_”. Similarly, my third hard drive has four partitions, and the volume labels for each of these four partitions starts with “3_”. So, what is the purpose of doing this? Simple! This is to help you make absolutely sure that, when performing a Macrium Reflect recovery, that you are absolutely sure about which drive or partition you are about to restore to. You will be quite upset if you accidentally restored to the wrong hard drive or to the wrong partition.

NOTES ABOUT ASSIGNING VOLUME LABELS FOR PARTITIONS: Make sure that the volume label does not exceed 11 characters. This is for backwards compatibility — all the way back to the days of DOS. Make sure that you use only letters, digits and optionally either dashes (“-“) or underscores (“_”) in volume label names. Never use any other type of special character! Again, this is all about compatibility with any and all older programs.

3. Required: After installing Macrium Reflect, you do want to be sure to install the correct PE for its Windows Boot Menu so that you will be able to jump into Macrium’s recovery environment when booting up your computer. It is IMPORTANT to choose the CORRECT Windows PE, depending on your version of Windows! The same applies when creating a Macrium Reflect USB recovery drive. See the attached image whose name starts with “03”.

Windows 7 — Select Windows PE 3.1 menu
Windows 8x — Select Windows PE 4.0 menu
Windows 10 — Select Windows PE 5.0 menu

For example, Windows 7 needs the Windows PE 3.1 menu. If you install the Windows PE 4.0 menu, you might find that the PE environment will not correctly start because your computer’s BIOS either lacks features for Windows 8x, or your computer’s BIOS does not have these features enabled. The result could be a black screen or a reboot.

So how do you test that Macrium’s recovery console is working correctly when using the added Windows Boot Menu or when using the USB recovery drive? Simple. If the recovery console correctly launches (doesn’t go to a black screen or show any other type of error), and if you properly see your installed hard drives AND your removable backup hard drive or CD or DVD drive, AND if both your keyboard and mouse work, then you should be totally good to go, since all the rest (when doing a restore) is simply low level disk I/O operations. You can further verify by going to a DOS prompt within the recovery console and verifying that using the DOS DIR command to list the contents of each drive or partition actually works. For example, “DIR X:”. If the DIR commands work, then you just performed direct low level I/O access via Macrium’s recovery console to the given partition in order to list the partition’s contents.

NOTES ABOUT THE MACRIUM RECOVERY CONSOLE: If you either change or install new hardware within your computer (a new or different graphics card, or perhaps you installed a PCI SATA card or USB card, et cetera), then you must remember to reinstall (update) Macrium’s Windows Boot Menu and to recreate (update) your USB recovery drive.

4. Strongly Recommended: When creating a backup, ALWAYS save Macrium’s XML file for the backup to the SAME location to where the backup is being saved to. This particularly applies when backing up to removable storage (hard drives or DVDs). If everything hits the fan in terms of your OS hard drive (dead or inaccessible), you need the associated XML file for your backup(s) which were saved on removable media. Macrium’s XML file for the backup does you no good if you can’t access it, for example, if your OS hard drive has failed or is non-bootable. This is why it is important to save the Macrium XML file to the same location to which the backup is being saved to. For example, see the attached image whose name starts with “04”. In this image, you will see that this was a full backup of a freshly installed Windows 7 installation. Since this was a backup of a fresh Windows 7 installation, you will see that I marked both the full backup and its associated XML file as read only. Why? So that I will get a confirmation prompt if I ever try to accidentally delete this full backup and its associated XML file.

5. Finally, older versions of Macrium Reflect either may not or do not restore System Restore points after you have performed an OS system restore using Macrium Reflect. The upshot is that, after using Macrium to perform an OS System Restore, you should always be diligent to immediately check that not only is System Restore enabled for your OS hard drive partition and that the System Restore space is set to what you prefer, but also you that should immediately create a new System Restore point.

On a final note…

The EaseUS products do work well, yet note that the EaseUS products do incorporate built-in telemetry and “call home” functions. Keep in mind that EaseUS is a company which is based in China. Just a thought for what it is worth.

Best regards,

–GTP

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cesmart4125, SueW, Cybertooth, Grond

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GoneToPlaid wrote:

4. Strongly Recommended: When creating a backup, ALWAYS save Macrium’s XML file for the backup to the SAME location to where the backup is being saved to. This particularly applies when backing up to removable storage (hard drives or DVDs). If everything hits the fan in terms of your OS hard drive (dead or inaccessible), you need the associated XML file for your backup(s) which were saved on removable media.

If you are implying that the backup definition XML file is required in order to restore the backup image thus created, that is not correct. The XML file only contains instructions for Reflect to use for the backup operation itself. It has no role in restoring that or any other backup image.

__
P.S.:  Whether or not Windows restore points get included in the backup image is a VSS issue which gets its instructions from the registry.  Reflect itself plays no part in that decision.  However, if you run any backup op within the WinPE “rescue” environment, VSS and its instructions to omit restore points aren’t involved in that case.  So they do get included under those circumstances.

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rc primak

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Hi Arvy,

You are correct about the XML file. Thanks for the tip about VSS getting its instructions from the registry.

Best regards,

–GTP

 

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Karlston wrote:

One important thing is to have created rescue media and tested it before it’s needed…

Of course, there is only so much restore testing that can be done. If you actually do a full restore and make a mistake, it may not be fixable… Best way to test restoring is with a new computer, if you have that luxury.

My experience with image backups is that it is often confusing. On the backup side, which partitions really need to be copied? Do you need to backup Track zero? Backup all sectors or just used sectors? Not to mention incremental backups which I avoid. On the restore side too, track zero has always confused me. Then too there are partition resizing issues when restoring.

So yes, any and all advice is great.

Get up to speed on router security at RouterSecurity.org and Defensive Computing at DefensiveComputingChecklist.com

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I’m not @Karlston  🙂  but…

When I do a Macrium Reflect backup image, I keep it simple, making sure to select all the partitions that are shown and checkable on the source disk. I figure that if the hard drive fails catastrophically, then the data on all the partitions on it could be lost, so I may as well have backups of all of them. Then I don’t have to worry about whether I have this partition backed up but not that one.

You can do a complete, sector-by-sector image that includes unused sectors, but IMHO this is useful mainly for investigators. I normally choose “intelligent sector copy,” which takes a lot less time and uses a lot less space.

I don’t do “differential” or “incremental” backups: they’re much too complicated for my simple mind to grasp, especially (by far) the “differential” ones. I guess I just can’t be bothered to understand these kinds of backups, much less to manage them–I simply do full-system backups and move on to other things.

 

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cesmart4125

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Well, hopefully, I can help make that a little less confusing.

Differential and incremental backups both start with a full backup image.  If you start with a differential scheme, that doesn’t mean the first image is differential.  It’s not… it’s always a full image for the first one.  A scheme is just a plan for how you’re going to approach handling the backing up now and into the future.  If you want to do a full backup every time, that’s a full backup scheme.  If you want to do a full backup and then incrementals after that, that’s a basic incremental scheme, and so on.  Schemes can get pretty complicated, with all sorts of variations and differences for different reasons, but you don’t need to worry about them if you don’t want to.

When performing a differential backup, the backup program looks at the full backup image that has already been created and compares that to the drive or drives it is backing up, and it only backs up that data which has changed since the full backup was done.  It does not look at other differential images… it only omits what is in the full backup image when writing the subsequent images.

An incremental backup looks at the full backup image AND all of the previous incremental images, compares that whole series (called the backup chain) to the actual data on the drive(s), and backs up only the data that has changed since the last incremental backup.

So, in other words,  if you do backups on the last day of every month, starting with March 31, the March backup will be a full one, since all initial backups are full backups.  The March backup will contain all of the data saved up until that point– from the beginning of time (as far as that PC is concerned) until March 31, it’s all in there.  This is generally going to be the biggest file in the series by far.

In April, if it’s a differential backup you’re doing, only the changes made in April will need to be backed up.  The same is true if it is an incremental backup, for this month only.  If it was a full backup, it would again include all the changes from the beginning of time until April 30.

The next backup would be on May 31.  The differential backup will include all the changes from April and May.  The incremental would only include the changes from May.  The full backup… well, you know the deal! Everything.

The June 30 differential would include all the changes from April, May, and June.  If an incremental was done instead, it would include only the changes in June.

As you can see, the differential tends to get bigger over time, since each version includes all of the changes from all the previous differentials in addition to the current month’s data.  The incremental only includes changes since the previous backup.

The advantages of the two (differential and incremental) are in the smaller size of the backup images and in the speed.  Usually, creating a full backup takes the longest, while incremental backups are the fastest.  This is reversed in restoration, with full backups being the fastest, but most people do a lot more backing up than restoring, so the option that speeds up backing up but slows restoring is still a big time saver.

The biggest advantage (IMO) of incremental and differential is that the subsequent backups (all but the first) are a lot smaller than another full backup would be.  This makes it possible to keep backup sets that go further back in time on any given backup medium.  You may think that having a good backup of the most recent configuration that worked is all you need, but sometimes that’s not the case.  If you discover an important file is missing, you might look for it in the most recent backup and discover that it is not there either.  It must have been lost before that backup was created!  If that is the only backup you have, you’re out of luck.

If a ransomware is quietly encrypting your data before it springs its evil “pay up or lose your stuff” message on you, and the backup is done after this has started, you’re unknowingly backing up files that are already locked.  If you don’t have any backup that was done before the ransomware began, you can either hope that some white hat has broken the encryption (a lot of ransomware is very badly coded, as getting encryption right is difficult), pay the criminal to maybe get the data back, or lose it forever.  Of course, that still ends up with you losing the data that is now locked and is too new to be in any backup, but it’s better than losing it all.  Better still is not getting the ransomware in the first place, obviously.

Backups that go back further than the most recent will have a greater chance of protecting against these possibilities.  You’d want a setup where the backup drive is offline other than when it is in use for backing up, or else the nastiness from ransomware could spread there and encrypt all of the backups on that drive before the ransomware is detected.

Having incremental and differential backups effectively expands the size of the drive(s) you use to store the backups.  If you have enough room for only two full backups, you might be able to get five, even ten or more backups on there using incrementals.  The less the data on the drive changes, the more space the incremental or differential scheme saves you.   If ransomware is encrypting large amounts of data on the drive, you will see a spike in the size of differential or incremental images made subsequently, as more and more data is converted from being the same to being different.  If you see a sudden increase in the size of the created backups, and you haven’t made major changes to the stuff on the drive, it’s a good idea to investigate and see why it is happening.

I only use differentials in Reflect because incrementals are not available in the free edition.  I use only incrementals (aside from the initial images, of course) in Backupper.

 

 

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jburk07, cesmart4125, SueW, Elly, Cybertooth

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@ascaris, thanks very much for taking the time to prepare this detailed explanation. Over the years I’ve read probably half a dozen different descriptions of “differential” backups, but for the first time now I actually understand the concept.

 

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Elly

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Macrium Reflect has a very handy checkbox in their Backup pane. It reads something like “back up all partitions needed to restore Windows”. This will take care of EFI Boot and other partitions not normally seen by Windows users.

Making incremental backups is a user choice. With hard drive real estate so cheap these days, I simply make monthly full backups, with no increments. If I were a very active Windows user, I might make weekly incremental backups as well.

I have never had to resize a C:/Windows partition when restoring from a backup image. If you originally had at least 20 percent of that partition free, no amount of Windows normal activities should make the free space disappear in even a year’s use. Windows 7 used to have issues with massively expanding SysWoW64 and WSxS areas due to inefficient internal housekeeping, but those days are long behind us.  Most of us, anyway.

-- rc primak

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cesmart4125, JohnW

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My best advice, after reading the very user-friendly user guide, would be to:

1. Keep the Macrium software updated to the latest patch.  They issue bug fixes on a regular basis.

2. Periodically rebuild your WinPE rescue media, especially if there was a bug fix for it.  READ THE RELEASE NOTES!

3. TEST your WinPE media regularly!  Make sure it boots and that you can access your drives when it is booted, especially the drive that contains your backup images.  Make sure that you can select an image source, and a target drive to restore to.  You can stop here (cancel the restore) and be 99% confident that you are set to go with a full restore if needed.

4. If you want to be ~100% confident, you can test restore to a spare hard drive to make sure that the process will complete, and that you will have a bootable image fully restored.

Windows 10 Pro 22H2

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rc primak

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I just recently restored a Macrium image onto my C: drive and it worked flawlessly.  I take automatic images daily, so I can always roll back to the previous day, if needed.

What had happened is that I experienced a random Windows error out of the blue that resulted in Windows becoming unbootable.  My first effort was to load the Windows repair disk, and go back to the last Windows restore point.

That worked, and my system was bootable again, but the restore point was several days older than my most recent Macrium image.  I just don’t trust Windows restore points, and the loose ends that they can leave behind.

So I fired up the Macrium WinPE boot disk and restored my most recent image.

All good now!  🙂

Windows 10 Pro 22H2

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Hi,
Macrium have created a detailed user guide, which also covers the free product. You can view it here
https://knowledgebase.macrium.com/display/KNOW7/Macrium+Reflect+User+Guide.
When I first started, I had never used any kind of backup software, so I had no idea where to begin and I found that this was all I needed. I have had to restore from backups several times and I have never had any problems, my Reflect backups have always worked.

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cesmart4125, SueW

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OK, backing up to Woody’s original idea. I am a complete backup novice other than using Windows 7 and Windows 10 built in system backup program. I can make them but have never had to restore one (figured I’d look for help it ever had to).

I would like to see (using the free version of Macrium Reflect that I would download today) a click this, push that icon to create, and then to restore a full system image (the type to create before installing a monthly update) back onto the disk it came from (same make, model, size). AND how to create a bootable restore disk – again click this, push that icon then what to do with it.

Simple, Simple, Simple don’t go off track with Incremental, Linux, restore to a new hard drive or different computer, nothing extra but point and shoot. Leave the discussions to you much smarter types that quickly lose the rest of us.

And do it all here in one place, not go here, read that, spell it all out here. (Someone early on suggested you should read like 287 pages of print). That is why this is always so confusing. We just want to make a backup and restore, not start a new career.

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cesmart4125, AusJohn

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Also should add:

Details about program downloading and installing. The download I looked at one time wanted to know about PE version? MBR, GPT Disk, UEFI etc etc.

What the heck is all that about??!!

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There’s nothing really very complicated about the backup process itself. As with creating a ZIP file or other type of compressed archive, just select what you want to include and hit the button that tells the application to back up what you’ve selected. That part only gets slightly complicated if you want to establish a “differential” or “incremental” plan for updating the initial full backup. That’s optional and you may need to read just a little bit to understand what those options involve.

Some complications can and do arise with restoration for two reasons: (a) you can’t restore a backup image to a drive partition that is in active use, and (b) because you want the end result of restoration to be a bootable system. So you need to create “rescue” media to deal with the first issue and you need to know at least a little bit about the drive partitions involved in system booting to deal with the second. That’s where things like MBR, GPT and EUFI get involved, but even so, Reflect’s “Fix Windows Boot Problems” utility can handle most of that for you … provided, of course, that you’ve backed up all required partitions in the first place. Either you need to know what’s needed and select it all yourself, or use the MR option to backup partitions required to boot the Windows OS.

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anonymous wrote:

OK, backing up to Woody’s original idea. I am a complete backup novice other than using Windows 7 and Windows 10 built in system backup program. I can make them but have never had to restore one (figured I’d look for help it ever had to). I would like to see (using the free version of Macrium Reflect that I would download today) a click this, push that icon to create, and then to restore a full system image (the type to create before installing a monthly update) back onto the disk it came from (same make, model, size). AND how to create a bootable restore disk – again click this, push that icon then what to do with it. Simple, Simple, Simple don’t go off track with Incremental, Linux, restore to a new hard drive or different computer, nothing extra but point and shoot. Leave the discussions to you much smarter types that quickly lose the rest of us. And do it all here in one place, not go here, read that, spell it all out here. (Someone early on suggested you should read like 287 pages of print). That is why this is always so confusing. We just want to make a backup and restore, not start a new career.

Seriously, the Macrium Reflect v7 User Guide is a very well written resource that spells things out as clearly as possible.  A few years ago I downloaded the user guides for three leading disk imaging software applications in an attempt to select one, and the Macrium guide was the only one that clearly explained everything in a very user friendly way, without leaving gaps in the process and unexplained options.

Latest full user guide here: http://updates.macrium.com/reflect/v7/user_guide/macrium_reflect_v7_user_guide.pdf?src=sidebar

If you do not have the time to cover the entire user guide, I would suggest reading these highlights from the introduction that cover the basic essentials:

To get you started the following are some useful tutorials and articles:
Introduction (see page 7)
Rescue Environment (see page 96)
Backup, imaging and cloning (see page 147)
Scheduling (see page 215)
Restoring and browsing (see page 239)

Windows 10 Pro 22H2

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GoneToPlaid

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OK, I downloaded the PDF manual (all 550 pages!) and spent some time scanning through it.

It definitely has tons of information (too much actually for a few “simple” procedures). And confirms creating a restore disk/usb stick is a complex operation.

I note that depending on whether you have UEFI or MBR you need to use NTFS or Fat32 formating on a USB stick after using a Diskpart program before creating the Rescue USB!!! Or, something like that.

Then there is adding drivers, updating the drivers, updating the Rescue USB, or making a new one depending ……………..

How is this simple?

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anonymous wrote:

\I note that depending on whether you have UEFI or MBR you need to use NTFS or Fat32 formating on a USB stick after using a Diskpart program before creating the Rescue USB!!! Or, something like that. Then there is adding drivers, updating the drivers, updating the Rescue USB, or making a new one depending …………….. How is this simple?

There is a lot of information in there because the program is very complete, and designed to meet a lot of needs.  But for the average user with a recent off the shelf computer, most of the defaults will work.

For example, I have a 5 year old consumer motherboard without RAID, and all drives are locally attached (SATA or USB3), so not using network shares in the rescue environment.  I use Win 10 with UEFI boot.

The rescue media wizard defaults to WinPE 10 for me (the correct version for Win 8-10 users). WinPE 5 is available for Win 7 users.

I have always had success with the default drivers found by the WinPE wizard.  I don’t need networking, etc. running while in the rescue environment.  I just need be able to read my image file and restore it onto another drive.  Never had to add or update any drivers to make that work.  Remember, these WinPE drivers are only there in order for the rescue environment to function.  Your backup image file holds all of the Windows drivers needed (and everything else) to boot your system into the full normal Windows after the restore.

Since I use UEFI boot, I have always just used the Windows format tool to quick format the USB stick to “FAT”.  Never had any problems with that, and never had to use the Diskpart utility for that.

As far as making images go, I always stick with full images and never mess with differential or incremental.  In my opinion those methods were developed when backup media was relatively slow and expensive.  Large inexpensive USB3 drives are available now that will hold more than a few full images.

If you update the Macrium version, it wouldn’t hurt to rebuild the USB stick from the new version, just in case.  It only takes a few minutes.

Finally, always perform a test boot with the rescue stick after you build it, just to make sure you can boot your system with it if ever needed.  And while in the rescue environment, make sure that you can locate an image file on your backup storage drive and locate your potential target drive for restore.  If you can do that, you should have all the drivers you need for that task.

Windows 10 Pro 22H2

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anonymous wrote:

OK, I downloaded the PDF manual (all 550 pages!) and spent some time scanning through it. It definitely has tons of information (too much actually for a few “simple” procedures). 

To be fair that 500+ pages is mostly screen grabs.  Easy to follow along with.

Windows 10 Pro 22H2

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