Windows 10: Windows 10 System Image Restore failure with some types of error.

Dalchina is absolutely correct. I have recovered 2 infected systems recently by restoring a Macrium image to each. That's why I mentioned that an external drive would be best, because you can disconnect it from the system when not in use. If your computer gets hit with malware, an encryption virus, or even a bad Windows Update, the image restoration is quite painless and fast. You just need to be sure you are not restoring an image that includes an infection. You can even mount your images to search for and extract files, if necessary. This comes in handy if you deleted a document, and eventually realise you need to recover it.

 

Terimakasih, thank you. Now i just have to learn how to do backup via macrium. Thanks for both of you. Hv a nice day

 

You're quite welcome.
Have a read of the tutorial - it's very good; step-by-step instructions.
Macrium Reflect - Backup Restore - Windows 10 Forums
Any questions, please ask.

 

Much appreciate sir!

 

Mr simrick, i have some question:
1) When i want to make a rescue media, the only driver that listed there is "USB xHCI Compliamt Host Controller", no network driver or anything looks like in KARI's thread. Is it normal? (I'm using and testing macrium on Asus transformer T100).

2) What is the difference between "Image Selected Disk" and "Backup Windows" below Backup dropdown menu. If i want to keep setting, files, apps such as antivirus, office, winrar, or any desktop app installed on C am i supposed to choose "Image Selected Disk" ?

3) What is "Edit the Plan for this backup" for? If i want to backup only when i want or need it, How im supposed to set the option there. And what i the meaning of "define retention rules" and "purge the oldest backup" ?

 

When Macrium creates the rescue media for you, it includes whatever drivers necessary for your system. The rescue media is unique to your system, and will not necessarily have the same list as shown in the tutorial. I wouldn't worry about it.

Image selected disk (all partitions) will be what you want, since Backup Windows may leave out partitions such as "OEM Recovery". Not to complicate things, but, technically, once you have all partitions on the disk backed up, it's possible to only image the C partition (where the Operating System resides), because the others don't change. But, let's not go there right now. We want to image the entire disk - every partition, so that if we need to, we can re-image your disk and it will be exactly like it was, with all settings, applications, etc. intact.

Once an instruction set is made telling Macrium what/when/where to create the backup, it can be modified in the future, should it be required.
The instruction set can be "scheduled" to run automatically, recurring at a certain date/time, or only run once. If you save the instruction set, you can go to it, right-click and select Run Now, to run it at your leisure.
Definition retention rules in the instruction set tell Macrium how many images to save. If you tell it to save 8 images at any given time, it will then remove the oldest backup when it sees 9 images have been completed.

Hope that helps!

 

Your explanation is just awesome. So easy to understand. Bless you.

 

Mr Simrick, when i want to backup disk using macrium this is shown. What im asking is what are those "non C:, D:, E:" disk like:
1) Recovery (None) NTFS Primary 305.6 MB used
2) NO NAME (None) Fat32 (LBA) Primary 25.2 MB used
3) (None) Unformatted Primary 16 MB used
5) (None) NTFS Primary 18 MB used



I believe at first i got this laptop i only made 3 partition C D E with one more partition called Recovery. So do i have to delete it? Or let it be? If i can delete some of it i will add the space they are using now to D:

 

Hi, with Macrium you have an easy option for Windows:
Click Backup, Click Backup Windows.

All the relevant partitions are selected.

Create separate images for other data partitions or disks.
(Backup, Image Selected Disks).

Once you have your first base images on (e.g.) an external USB disk, you can subsequently create differential images (faster, smaller). This is obscure... click tab Backup Definition Files, Rt click the relevant XML, click Differential

Trick to make sure your external USB disk is always allocated the same letter- change its drive letter to e.g. M in Drive Management.

 

Hello Dalchina,
But i do want to keep all the apps i've installed too. And btw i do want to understand what i've asked before. If those partition can be deleted i want to delete them.

 

Hi.
When you first got the laptop, and you made C, D and E, the other hidden partitions were there as well - they just don't show in File Explorer. (There can even be unallocated partitions which will show in Macrium and not in Disk Management or File Explorer.)

If you check the box to "backup partitions required to restore Windows" and just have a look, you will see which partitions are absolutely required for the operating system to be restored by Macrium. However, it will *not* select partitions required to use the recovery function to restore Windows using your Manufacturer's hidden recovery partition. Yes, there is a difference.

You have quite a lot of storage space available on D and E; the few MB you might gain by deleting unnecessary partitions and merging them, in my opinion, is not worth the trouble or the risk, as any time you mess with partitions, you run the risk of losing data if you're not very careful and don't know what you're doing.

Dalchina is correct about the Macrium differential image option. Just remember, differentials/incrementals have dependencies, and if one in the chain fails, you could be in trouble. I prefer to make full images, and verify them during creation, to be safe. I also keep about 8-12 at any given time, depending on how large they are and how much room I have available on my external drive. It's your choice which you prefer to run though.

You could run a couple baseline full hard drive images, (all partitions), and just save those for catastrophe (failed hard drive). Then, run separate images on C, D and E, on a regular basis, because they are the ones that regularly change. That way, if your operating system gets borked, (from a bad update?), you'd have an image only for C, which you could restore, and not have to do anything with D & E.

Hope that helps.

 

Thank You, Dalchina and Simrick. Im so grateful because both of you patiently give the explanation to such a newbie like me. I understand most of the part of your explanation. But, im still confused about this part:

"Just remember, differentials/incrementals have dependencies, and if one in the chain fails, you could be in trouble. I prefer to make full images, and verify them during creation, to be safe. I also keep about 8-12 at any given time, depending on how large they are and how much room I have available on my external drive. It's your choice which you prefer to run though."

I lost at the "chain" you mentioned there. And how is the proper way to make the chain not fail.

so i just need to check which one is needed by windows by just looking at partition(s) showed in "creating an image of partition(s) required to backup and restore windows" and then choose differential method for those partition. and what do you mean by 8-12 at any given time. do you mean you always make 8-12 exact copy of an image backup at one time ?
Sorry for troubling both of you

 

The "chain" refers to something other than full backups.
See in Part 4 of the tutorial:
Macrium Reflect - Backup Restore - Windows 10 Forums

So, if any of these in the chain are bad, your restore is jeopardized. Images can fail. That's why you need to have several (redundancy).

Here's what I would do for your system:
I would make two complete images of the entire hard drive (every partition), and store those away for safety. Then, I would create a recurring full backup for C, D and E. I would schedule this to run automatically, at certain time intervals, (once a month, once a week, etc.), and I would include in the instruction set how many copies to retain at any given time. I would also tic the box to auto-verify when the image is made, so I can be assured I get good images. If you only want to backup C once a month, D every 2 weeks, and E weekly, then you would make 3 different instruction sets for automatic backup. So, if your hard drive ever completely failed, you could go back to one of your original full hard drive images of all the partitions, restore that to a new hard drive, then mount the most recent images for the C, D & E partitions, and restore those individually, to be fully up-to-date.

 

Perhaps this, in Part #5 of the tutorial, explains it a little better than I can:

And here is the Macrium support article on it:
How backup sets are created and maintained - KnowledgeBase - Macrium Reflect Knowledgebase

.

 

So, basically what i need here is full backup. My conclusion from your explanation of full backup is "it is the safest method but can't bbe updated with only the changes happen after it's backed up like differential and incremental backup. And it's gonna take more space than differential or incremental backup on my storage. But it is not using "chain" so the failure risk for a newbie like me will be more reduced. so "full bakup" method is just like windows version of system image backup. Am i right sir?