Windows 10: Macrium Bootable Rescue USB - why 1 Gb drive recomended!!

After installing Reflect I made a Rescue Media USB, however the only spare size I had was 4 Gb, and seeing the file are less than 250 Mb considered this was a waste of a thumb drive, especially as I have three different systems that each will require their own Rescue Media.
I bought some 512 Mb drives, however Reflect informs me there is insufficient room on the drives, when using the help files I am informed to use 1 Gb drives, which I don't understand for 0.25 Gb of files. However I have transferred my files from the 4 Gb drive to the 512 Mb drive and they seem to work (well boots up OK), though I have kept my original on the 4 Gb drive.
Questions:

• Why are Macrium recommending to to use 1 Gb drive.
• Why does Reflect tell me there isn't enough room on the drive, when there obviously is.
• Will my 512 Mb drive actually work.
• Can I put more than one set of Rescue Media on one USB drive, and if so how.

Many thanks to those of you who, and more so to those that provide answers.

:)

 

Correct Format for USB Stick | FAT32? | NTFS? | Some Other Format?

Windows 10 on PC.

I plan to use Macrium Reflect Free to create a System Image on a USB stick (not a removable USB drive). Macrium will create the Image as a .mcimg file. The file will be approximately 74 GB. In the future, when
I want to restore to the System Image, I plan to use Macrium to perform the restore. Because Macrium will be used for the restore, the USB stick does not have to be bootable.

Given this scenario, what format should be used for the USB stick? FAT32, or NTFS, or some other format?

Thanks

 

Correct Format for USB Stick | FAT32? | NTFS? | Some Other Format?

So, that appears to indicate that Macrium doesn't care about the format... as long as the file system can be "seen" by your system.

I'd suggest exFAT...
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3109559/hardware/why-your-usb-drives-file-format-matters-fat32-vs-exfat-vs-ntfs.html

 

I think they're just playing it safe and recommending 1 GB based on some worst case scenario for space required. The required space will depend on the boot options you select when creating the rescue media as well as the Win PE version you select and the drivers you include in the creation of the rescue. So, I'm assuming your particular environment build is just that - 512MB or less.

I have a 1TB external portable USB3 HDD that I use occasionally with Macrium Rescue (routine daily images go across my network to a desktop USB HDD). When I set it up 2 years ago, I created a 512MB FAT32 partition on it to contain the rescue environment and boot from (remainder of disk is formatted NTFS to hold the created images). Sometime last year, I forget when, maybe late summer, I went to recreate an updated rescue version and found that the 512MB partition was not large enough to hold the required files - I had to expand the partition to 1GB. I think it uses about 600-700 MB of that partition now.

I would simply give the 512MB USB a test run to answer your question #3. Boot to it and make a test file & folder backup and restore perhaps.

As far as question #4 - there are ways (especially with 3rd part utilities - YUMI is one I think) to put multiple partitions on a USB drive but I haven't given it a try. Maybe that would allow you to have multiple rescue versions, one of which you select at boot time. However, that may or may not be necessary depending on how similar these multiple machines are that you create rescue media for.

 

Gays, Gals, don't some if not most of these bootable USBs or DVDs contain one or more directories and files that are not visible to Windows Explorer? For example my Image for Windows creates USB and DVD boots that according to Windows explorer only have one file: content (or was it contents?). However, those "content(s)" devices booted up just fine.

 

Not normally but a utility such as Mini Tool Partition wizard will show you what's there. Here's mine (most of it at least):




I must confess I'm a bit mystified however, that the total contents is only 272MB. I could have sworn it ended up 600-700MB sometime last year and that that's what prompted me to resize it...*Rolleyes

 

The Rescue Media Itself Does Not Need To Change Between PC's.

You will Need x86 and x64 versions of PE, for which current version of PE is backwards compatible.
What will change between PC's is the Driver Files - and all one needs to do is merge the "drivers" folder

 

@Kyhi very interesting, not long ago I posted to request if I could use a single Rescue Media, and was informed that I should have a separate USB drive one for each system; thread link below:

Macrium Bootable Rescue USB - 32 & 64 bit

 

I personally use 8 GB Thumb Driver one for each of my computer.
It doesn't matter 4 GB and 8 GB are the same thing with 4 GB blocked out. I haven't seen any dependably 1 or 2 GB thumb drives that were any cheaper than 8 GB, then I don't shop at Best Buy or WalMart for computer components or devices.
I buy USB Thumb Drivers by the dozen and I turn in reports from projects on them far superiors to DVD's
A multiboot USB Thumb drive would be too much of hassle for me, these thumb drives are very cheap and you can partition them and put other files on them however using them for other purposes leaves you at risk of corrupting your boot sector of your rescue thumb drive.
The comment about adding drivers to the drivers folder sounds interesting to have one that you could carry around with you. Still I like keeping my recovery Thumb Drive near by each computer ready to go and most likely not corrupted
This is all just MHO and how I do it.

 

I think it would be fairer to say that @cereberus informed you if would be simpler and more guaranteed to work if you used a separate device for each machine, not that you should or in any way contradicting what Kyhi said. It's really a matter or your preference and how prepared you are to arrange the device(s) in a useable fashion.

 

Main reasons that I have separate USB and DVD boots for each of my two laptops:
-- no matter where any particular laptop happens to be during a "logical" failure, my boot stuff is close by
-- if one USB stick develops a "logical" or physical failure, I can reach for the other one later on
-- when using Macrium Reflect, it is an advantage (though not critical) that the drivers for that specific laptop
is loaded onto the USB or DVD boot.