Windows 10: A Question About Macrium Reflect

Why did my thread turn into something rather complicated looking including some very bad advice about formatting the Rescue Drive in NFTS??? It's all sorted now anyway and I've successfully created both my Image and Rescue media using Macrium some days ago.

With regards the USB Flash Drive for Rescue. It was already factory made as FAT32. I simply placed the USB into the socket on my PC and let Macrium do the rest by creating the Rescue tools.

I've successfully tested the Rescue USB when Booting from it via selecting it in BIOS and I got to WINPE. Once in,..I successfully navigated to where my Image was on my external Drive and it found it. I then cancelled as I obviously didn't want to actually restore, it was just a test.

That's it. Done and dusted!

Thanks to Kari for his excellent tutorial which got me through it.

 

With all due respect, I would disregard @jimbo45's post on this one. One reason is that it is completely unnecessary - the Macrium Reflect built-in process for creating a bootable USB flash drive will do everything that is needed. As @cereberus pointed out, for bootable rescue type flash drives you want fat32, not NTFS. RUFUS is completely not needed at all. Sorry, @jimbo45, I know you were just trying to help, but, in this case, the help offered needlessly complicates a very simple process.

 

Horses for courses.

 

To be fair, the advice was more irrelevant than bad. If you used rufus, it would sort out correct formats anyway.

As you say (and @NavyLCDR) - Macrium Reflect does it all.

By the way, I recommend you now add MRF as a boot entry from Other Tasks menu. In most cases, you will not even need to boot from a flash drive except if drive fails or is very badly corrupted or gets wiped.

 

Kari, MR7 for some reason refuses to complete a MR7/WinPE DVD on my laptop -- something seems to be wrong with WinPE loading/mounting/etc. I'm asking here because the same problem has happened before (MR6) for my USB boot.

 

Hi,
Recovery media finding a system image is only step one
Step two would be using the Verify image in the recovery media
If it successfully verified the image you have the best chance reflect will be able to restore that image.

If an image fails to be restored it will hose the disk it attempted to restore.

 

Oh,...Thanks for the tip. How do I go about that please? Is that "verifying" the image something I click on in WinPE? Is there a tutorial I can follow for this Verifying process?

I don't think Kari's tutorial explained that part.

 

I forgot about that. Thanks for the tip. Is there a tutorial on here for that?

 

Hi,
After you make an image go to the restore section and on the right side of the just made image there are several listings verify is one of the listings.

On the recovery cd/ flash media after it finds a system image click on it and then it will show the same listing where again verify is there.

I start just for win-10 creating system images with the recovery media instead of inside win-10
Less items moving around apps/........
I always enjoyed this video
Create Backup Image with Macrium Reflect by Britec - YouTube

 

It's explained in tutorial, in a TIP box in Part Two Step 7: Backup and Restore with Macrium Reflect Backup Restore Tutorials

 

Yes,..I did just revisit that actually and noticed that you had it there as an Optional method. I see you personally don't recommend that though, preferring to use the Recovery USB instead. I think I would prefer that too rather than do it within Windows.

 

I do not know how you came to that conclusion? Adding Macrium to Windows boot menu is the second thing I always do after a clean install, first thing being installing Macrium Reflect.

I use Macrium USB very seldom, in fact almost never. I usually use the boot menu option.

 

Backup and Restore with Macrium Reflect Backup Restore Tutorials

Part Five
Restore a system backup
2.) Although restoring an image backup is fully possible when started from Windows desktop, I recommend restoring only when PC is booted with Macrium Rescue device you created in Part 2. An old school geek as I am, I get bad feeling when replacing system files on a running system, therefore always using restore from WinPE, booting to Macrium Rescue environment instead of Windows

 

OK, I see I have caused this misunderstanding by myself.

When restoring an image Macrium needs to get full access to absolutely everything which is not always possible if Windows is online. Starting restore from desktop, at some point Macrium can't continue and informs you that it needs to restart to PE to finalize restore process. I am old school. I prefer not even start restore process from desktop but instead boot to Macrium PE and run restore when Windows is offline.

That's just my recommendation, only to use restore when booted to Macrium PE, nothing more.

I've now edited the part in tutorial you quoted, it is now as follows:

Personally, I can't even remember when was the last time I've used Macrium USB. I have it on Windows boot menu which launches Macrium PE from RAM disk.

Of course if Windows drive is totally inaccessible, HDD corrupted or something similar, you can't boot to Macrium Rescue on RAM disk. In that case you will need the USB boot device. I'm not saying you don't need the USB, I am just saying that if and when possible, I'd rather use boot menu / RAM disk option.

 

@Kari
might to elaborate a little bit ? How is this fully possible while Windows is running ? The minute you hit <Finish> button, Macrium will stop and tell you it cannot lock the drive and give you the choice to boot into WinPE provided if only you have already set up the "Recovery Boot Menu Option".