Windows 10: Macrium Help

Okay so I have been having some issues with Macrium reflect. Its with imaging, I only want to image my C drive however when I do it says it will take about 10-16hrs on a 16gb flash drive. Now I don't think it should take this long but maybe I did something wrong. Also should I format my Flash Drive before I do it again?

:)

 

Win 10 upgrade help: "macrium reflect" "uninstall this app now because it isn't compatible with Windows 10"

Thanks. I'll try the Media Creation / Upgrade Now path ... should work.

I'd rather stay with an out of date Windows than do a Clean install ... life is too short.

Always disappointing to note that there are multiple paths to get the job done and some of them are buggy. Why not just have one and make sure it works? Or would that put too many Tech Support folks out of work? Hey - not trying to be nasty, I did software
creation and support for OS and for Apps with a major multinational for 36 years and that's enough to expect better.

 

Win 10 upgrade help: "macrium reflect" "uninstall this app now because it isn't compatible with Windows 10"

Installing a Win 10 update. Currently at 1511 build 10586.1176.

Download and install goes smoothly until it trips over an app called Macrium Reflect and it wants me to uninstall this app now because it isn't compatible with Windows 10.

That's well and good and makes sense BUT

I don't have that app installed, in fact I never heard of it before now.

All the PC Settings and Control Panel lists of apps don't show it and a scan of the hard drive has no hits for Macrium and only obvious other things for Reflect. I'd run an uninstall if I could find one!

I rebooted and retried but same error.

I ran the Windows Update Troubleshooter and it fixed a few things but same error.

I have scanned the Help community and don't see anything about others running into this.

I have scanned the Macrium site and all it wants to do is sell me a Windows 10 version.

Help!

 

How is the Flash Drive Formatted?

 

16Gb sounds very small for a backup drive even allowing for the fact Macrium will compress the image.

If you go to 'File Explorer' and 'This PC', how much space is taken on your C drive ? I'm just wondering if it will fit onto 16Gb.

 

What if I just wanna back up the OS, or do something to a recovery drive?

 

Some basics about Flash Drives.

They are notoriously slow. They are not intended for the type of work you are trying to do. An external spinner drive is the correct way to go. Flash drives cannot use Windows cache. They will, and do, wear out Much Much Much faster than any external drive would. They are simply not intended to be overwritten time and time again. They are memory cells, not magnetic media like an external drive. Even a USB 3.0 thumb will never come close to the speed of an external drive.

You will get ONE image, maybe, on that thumb drive.

Guess what I'm trying to say to you is that is the wrong choice. You will regret it in the long run. $50-$60 will get you a decent 1TB external with speed and capacity.

 

You shouldn't just image C:. Hopefully you know when Windows is installed it creates some other small partitions.
If your disk fails, you will want these as well to restore your PC.

Macrium provides a useful option which selects all relevant partitions - e.g. click
Backup, Windows Backup

 

Alright but just to be safe should I format my USB 3.0 drive to NTFS. Or should I be fine?

 

My very rough guide for OS files is to use one at least 2x the amount of data I plan to back up. Backing up video/image files is different - these don't compress, so you need more storage. The drive you mention above is inadequate as f14tomcat says.

I use a 2Tb USB3 external hard drive, NTFS formatted.

 

Actually some usb3 flash drives are very fast. My san cruzer extreme reads at 250 MB/s (2000 Mb/s) and writes at 100 MB/s (800 Mb/s).

 

It really does not matter as Macrium splits backup file into smaller sections if fat32.

 

Not sure if you're still talking about your 16GB flash drive or a new external HDD. Most flash drives come pre-formatted as FAT32, which has a maximum file size of "4GB minus 2 Bytes" (and a max volume size of 32GB for some OSs). If your 16GB flash drive is formatted FAT32, this could(?) be part of the problem with Macrium in your OP as you are likely trying to create a single image file larger than 4GB (which is what I imagine is why Josey Wales asked about the formatting), which would fail on FAT32.

If you're trying to image something that should fit on your 16GB flash drive, you should probably verify that the flash drive is formatted as NTFS, and reformat it to NTFS if it is FAT32. (You can also convert it from FAT32 to NTFS if it has files on it you want to keep on it, though it would probably be simpler to just copy them to another location, reformat, then copy them back.)

[Edit: Oops! my first 2 paragraphs above probably not relevant to your situation, given cereberus' post just before mine -- I had forgotten Macrium would split an image into FAT32-size chunks -- but I'll leave the info for readers who may not already understand the issue]

If you're talking about a new external HDD, it is probably already formatted as NTFS, which is fine.

(BTW, the estimated time of 10-16hrs reminds me of when I backed up a very full laptop 30GB HDD to an external USB HDD over USB 1.1 about 11 years ago and it took about 24-30 hours as I recall. Are you by any chance using a USB 1.1 port? If so, your Macrium image will probably take a similar 10-16hrs on either your 16GB flash drive or an external USB HDD.)

 

This was relatively speaking...the speed. There is no Flash Drive on earth that could be faster than an external drive.

Why does the OP need/want/have to use a flash drive? I don't see any mention of that anywhere. And the OP has made no response about the possibility of an external drive.

@Redbatman- could you explain to us the need to use a flash drive and not an external?

Thanks

 

Your drive is not big enough. A lot of USB key drives are quite slow. It maybe trying to compress it so that it does fit.

I use at least a 1 TB - 2 TB drive for images.

A quick look at just my Windows folder, that's 30 GB.