Practice what you preach! A cautionary tale.

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[RetiredGeek]

Hey Y’all,

Well, I got caught today not practicing what I preach.

I was working on a neighbors PC that required an major repair. So the first thing I did was to load Macrium Reflect V6 on the machine and successfully made a backup.

What I didn’t do was test the USB Key I’ve used on dozens of computers and never had a problem with. Lo and behold when I decided to reload the backup the USB Key booted successfully but it would not see the NVMe stick in the computer. BOOM!!

Luckily, I could still access the the Image after normal booting and mounting it as a drive to copy off all of the User files. Also, I was only trying to reload the old system to get into the MS account because the new one wouldn’t recognize the password to activate Microsoft 365.

After this I did some testing and created a new USB key via Macrium. It also would not recognize the NVMe drive when it booted up. This is a Dell laptop and it uses Optaine memory for something and I’m pretty sure that is the culprit.

Next, I downloaded the Trial version of Image For Windows, created the USB Key. It booted and recognized the drive.

So I guess there comes a time when even though software still works it may not work in all situations…

Note: the machine was running Win 11 24H2 Home.

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

• This topic was modified 3 days, 2 hours ago by RetiredGeek.

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Patricia Grace

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RG, this is helpful info.

What version of Macrium were you using?

Desktop Asus TUF X299 Mark 1, CPU: Intel Core i7-7820X Skylake-X 8-Core 3.6 GHz, RAM: 32GB, GPU: Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti 4GB. Display: Four 27" 1080p screens 2 over 2 quad.

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TT,

The last iteration of V6. I use it all the time on older machines w/o problems.
This is just a new wrinkle I wasn’t expecting. I thought Optaine wad DEAD!

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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TechTango

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I also once got caught mistakenly thinking I could use an older Macrium Reflect Rescue USB to boot a new Windows 11 PC to create a system image before beginning initial setup. The goal had been to have a system image as it came from the manufacturer. The older Macrium Reflect Rescue USB appeared to be missing one or more drivers for the newer hardware.

That got me thinking that perhaps there may be an exposure should a Rescue USB unexpectedly become unusable for whatever reason and a spare might be useful. I began wondering whether having a duplicate of each Rescue USB would be desirable to deal with Murphy’s Law.

In my case – setting up a new PC – I proceeded without the initial system image and installed Macrium Reflect first thing after completing setup and made the Rescue USB and then system image.

Is making duplicate Rescue USBs overly paranoid?

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Hi castiel

No harm to have duplicate Rescue USBs

The thing is to always test your recovery media,

and make sure all is working as it should…

FYI. If you are using the new Macrium Reflect X,

that requires a new recovery media to be done.

Then test that is working…

 

 

 

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castiel wrote:

Is making duplicate Rescue USBs overly paranoid?

Heck no, I keep 3 Macrium rescue USBs.

Desktop Asus TUF X299 Mark 1, CPU: Intel Core i7-7820X Skylake-X 8-Core 3.6 GHz, RAM: 32GB, GPU: Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti 4GB. Display: Four 27" 1080p screens 2 over 2 quad.

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RetiredGeek wrote:

This is a Dell laptop and it uses Optaine memory for something and I’m pretty sure that is the culprit.

100% correct!

To properly backup/restore a PC that’s using Optane memory with Macrium, you have to disable Optane before backing up or or it won’t actually be a full image backup because the main part of the OS has been moved into the Optane memory (that’s how it accomplishes it’s magic of “speeding up” the OS.)

For more details see Optane m10 and Macrium Reflect Free thread over on the Intel Community forum (especially this post).

BTW, the other solution is to do exactly what you did, mount the image, and then copy the relevant parts back to the original drive.

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windbg, satrow, RetiredGeek

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Optane memory?  Never heard of it.  How do I know if I have it?

Is this only a problem with older version of Macrium Reflect?  I have Reflect X.

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Optane memory (also known as 3D XPoint) was a special type of non-volatile memory that significantly sped up everything the OS did.

It was available from Intel Apr 2016 thru Jan 2021 (they closed the Optane division in Jul 2022) and required a special Intel chipset and motherboard ports (a non-standard type of M2 port) to function.

It was an available option from most PC manufacturers for a while but, because SSD’s gave very similar speed increases at a much cheaper price, never really achieved a high percentage of market penetration.

If your PC has it, it should be mentioned in the user manual for your PC and will be shown somewhere in the BIOS settings.

Because of how it works (it moves parts of the OS into itself) it’d present a problem for any and all backup S/W unless it’s been specifically designed to deal with that bit of strangeness!

BTW, Intel Optane memory shouldn’t be confused with Intel’s Optane SSD’s – which are still available and compatible with any motherboard just like other SSD’s.

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Cybertooth, Tech Hiker

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Hey Y’all,

Further research turned up that it wasn’t actually Optane memory (although there were drivers for it) that was causing the problem.

The real culprit is that Dell sets up their SSD/NVMe storage as RAID vs ACHI. This causes the need for the Intel Rapid Storage Driver. This was not incorporated into the Macrium Boot disk as when Version 6 came out RST wasn’t a thing, at least on consumer PCs. IFW which is current did pick it up! I’d be curious if any of you are using a newer version of Reflect and also have a Dell with RAID set in the BIOS if the Recovery USB incorporates RST driver. You have tested your boot USB right?!

So a little surgery to change over to ACHI:

1. Enter the BIOS via F2
2. Switch to ACHI
3. Boot FAILED (Knew this would happen)
4. Reboot also FAILED
5. Went into Automatic Repair and booted into the Recovery Enviroment
6. Navigated Troubleshoot -> Advanced -> Options -> Startup Settings
7. Click on RESTART, system reboots
8. Select SAFE Boot (#4), system reboots into SAFE Mode
9. Reboot again and system starts up normally
10. Done

I created a new Macrium Reflect Boot disk (V6) and everything works as it should.

Sorry for the false lead on Optane, but it sure looked like that was the problem at first.

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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windbg, Sueska, TechTango, satrow

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I have MR8 on my Dell XPS 8940 with RAID (I dislike that decision by Dell, nobody runs RAID disks on a non-server – almost). I can boot happily and see all my disks.

cheers, Paul

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RetiredGeek

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