Windows 10: Macrium Reflect free

But isn't more convenient to have the USB hard drive bootable into Macrium Reflect? I mean what is the advantage to having a USB flash drive recovery that you have to boot with, then replace that with the hard drive the image is on in order to restore it? (other than, I suppose, it is much easier to create the first time).

 

Just simplicity for the average user, as you stated. Also allows option of having multiple ext drives for rotation/redundancy without having to install the Rescue PE on every drive.

However he wants to do it..........his machine, not mine.

 

We seem to have two threads at once running through this discussion. In my case, at least, using a USB stick for recovery booting is what makes sense for two reasons.

The main one is that I backup three different laptops to the same USB hard drives. The laptops are different so their recovery files will be different too. One is Windows 7. The others are different brands with some different drivers. Each one gets its own USB recovery stick. (Ok, if someone can tell me I'm wrong on this and only need one recovery USB for all my machine, I will be delighted.)

The second reason, which would apply if I only had one machine, is that with multiple USB backup hard drives, every time there was an update to the recovery files, I'd have to update every backup hard drive's recovery files separately.

 

I prefer to use a separate partition rather than use Macrium's own method because you can delete the "boot" folder it creates, as that uses nearly 1GB of space. Also, if C drive files get corrupted, the partition method still works. Of course, you still need a flash drive in case hard drive(s) fail.

 

@Randysea

In general, your are correct in your statement. My DT and my SP3 are quite different (drivers, etc) and have separate Rescue media. If the machines are identical, in all aspects, then of course a Rescue could be shared.

I think what makes sense to you is what you should do. It's a perfectly normal scenario.

 

Yes, it's more convenient, if the hard-drive itself is working reasonably well at the time; because sometimes my hard-drive has a "logical problem" that prevents any kind of booting -- I'm glad I have both usb and dvd MR boots.

 

@f14tomcat , does the drive with the injected drivers not work on the Desktop as well?

A backup for the backup... can never have too many heh?

 

I'm not following you. Sorry.

 

I'm thinking.. you have 2 drives for Desktop and tablet - the latter with additional (non-native MS supported) disk drivers...

 

I haven't tried it on my new rig, but I would imagine the DT would get upset because of the dumb way Dell set up the NVMe SSD almost-quasi-kinda RAID0. Laptop/tablet being a MS Surface Pro 3, and DT Alienware R6, the hardware couldn't be farther apart! When I get brave, I'll try it. Worse that can happen is it won't boot, or see the SSD. Had that issue with Kyhi's PE and had to play with the .wim to inject the proper SSD drivers.

 

OK, cool, would be interested to know whether there is a conflict with the additional drivers... Windows PE should be intuitive enough to find the correct drivers.. as long as they are in the wim.

 

Ah, that's the point. At least here. If I make an install thumb, either Media Creation tool or roll my own, with any method, the install will boot, but not see the SSD. I have to include a folder on the thumb and manually add more drivers (Intel stuff), then the install will see the SSD. It's all very weird.

 

1) Inject the ssd drivers into the Setup media's Boot.wim - following same method as with winpe.
2) inject the ssd drivers into the setup media's install.wim - " "
3) inject the ssd drivers also into the mounted Install.wim's - windows/system32/recovery/ winre.wim

Image-Prep will do option 2 and 3 for you creating the new install.wim for the setup media.

 

Yes, but for Windows Install Media, it's easier, and much quicker , to just copy the folder of drivers to the media, and use the built-in option at install time to add the missing driver. It's only needed that one time, when choosing where to install.