Windows 10: Use Macrium Reflect to backup a partition or the drive

My laptop, which is essentially a portable version of my desktop, has one physical drive partitioned into System and Data partitions. The Data partition is sync'd with my laptop so, if it were to be lost, it could be readily, though slowly, recovered.

I use Reflect to create backups and my son and I - he lives 30 minutes drive away - swap backup drives every few weeks. At the moment I create an image containing both the System and Data partitions. Clearly, as the data volume is fairly large, it takes some time to create the image which is also fairly large.

It seems to be more sensible to only image the System partition. However, in the event of some disaster, could the image be restored to either a replacement drive, or even a new PC?

:)

 

Restoring Windows 10 Image using Macrium Reflect


In addition to the above. Here's my suggestion in step by step.
I assume you have Macrium Installed in your current HD and already made a backup copy.

• Connect your new HD via USB port and boot up.
• Run Macrium, click on Restore tab then select the Backup Image that you made to restore
• click on "select a different target disk" then select your new HD as destination
  
  
  
• Proceed to restore then Shutdown and disconnect the old HD and replace with the new HD
• Boot up with your new HD.

 

Macrium Reflect and SSD drive


Here's an easy way to do it, With your SSD connected.

• If not already done. Create a backup image of your current Windows HD. From Macrium, click on "Create an image of the partition(s) required to backup and restore Windows"
  NOTE: you could actually clone the disk, but create a backup then restore will allow Macrium to correctly align the cluster size and perform trimming on the new SSD.
• After step 1 is done, click on Restore tab, select the image from step 1 then click on Select different target disk, select the SSD as destination disk then click on Next->Finish. No need to use/boot from Rescue disk. It will be faster and Macrium will also perform trimming on the new SSD.
• Disconnect the HD and reboot. Windows should boot up with the new SSD.

 

Macrium Reflect Backup Failures

I see that all the VSS Writers claim 'No Error' (perhaps optimistically).

So am I right in thinking your disk setup looks like this? :

• Main disk with
  • C: drive
  • System drive (incidentally I wanted to check that Offline was set to No; it was)
  • Recovery Tools
  • Recovery Partition ('Image')
• A WD Passport drive with encryption (I have something similar) which
  • Emulates a CD drive on drive F: so you can type in a password, and
  • Has drive K: for data once you've unlocked it
• Drive H: which is a Freeagent (Seagate?) drive, which if I remember rightly is the one you were trying to backup to in the first place?
• DVD/CD drive as drive E:

Is there any space on the K: drive? I wonder what would happen if you set up a new backup job in Macrium, which perhaps just selected the two smallest partitions on the main system drive (ESP and WinRETools), and then tried to backup to a folder on K: (if there's space). It might eliminate one or two things, although wouldn't be much use as a backup. Another thing to try would be safely removing then unplugging the K: drive altogether, and trying something like the original backup.

But I admit I really don't know the answer. @simrick do you have any more ideas?

The only other thing I found was some software called VSSTrace which is part of the Windows Software Development Kit, which might perhaps give more helpful error messages on whatever is going wrong with VSS. (I'm assuming VSS is the problem because I believe both System Restore and Macrium use it, and the error code started with VSS_.) But it's too late for me in this timezone to look at that today.