Windows 7: Macrium corruption / boot disc questions

A couple questions regarding macrium reflect 5 free edition

1) I just did a new image of all my drives, I also created both linux and windows pae recovery discs prior to doing it. The image is being held on an external WD usb3 drive. I am using Windows 7 home edition 64 bit

What I forgot about was, that I had some new ram on order that should be arriving in a day or so. I will be adding this ram to my computer. Currently 2 of the 4 slots have the current sticks, the new sticks will be placed in the open slots. So I'm not replacing the old ram, just adding additional ram.

If I add this ram, is this going to corrupt my current image if I would need to repair my system?


2) I would like to test my recovery discs, but I'm a little confused as to the proper way of doing it. I have made sure my bios are set to boot from the cd as the first option. I have seen tutorials on how to recover using a recovery boot disc. But I can't find any that shows you to just test the recovery disc.

I in NO way want to accidentally tell it to make the recovery, I just want to make sure it will boot and see if while in the boot, macrium can see my image. What confuses me is how I escape out once I determine the image can be seen?



If any one can give me some real specific steps or point me to a tutorial I would appreciate it. Consider me a complete newbie when it comes to using boot discs.

Hi

Your system will automatically detect new RAM on each boot so this will not affect your current image. Basically it will do this for all new hardware and will have no problem unless new drivers need to be installed that are not part of Windows already - with RAM it has no problem - assuming that the new RAM is compatible and does not exceed the limit that the system might have.

This is a link to Macrium imaging -

Imaging with free Macrium

Note the remarks about USB 3.0 devices. I don't have any experience with these yet.

I have used Macrium Refect Free 4.2 with the Linux boot disk and have had no problems restoring images but all my images are on internal disks. If you can go through the whole restore process and locate the required image then it should restore OK. There is usually an option to back out before committing to a restore as the last step.

Hope this has been of some help.

surely adding additional ram does not affect on images you have made. and above you have way to test. just boot with the disk, wait till macrium loadz with it. then browse for your images and open them in fro the browse window(opening wouldnt do any harm). then you can select restore image to check whether restore is working and loading. you can check any available options until you see finish button. even tough you click on that, macrium will pop up a window and ask you to continue or cancel.

I use WinPE 3.0 disk. and can't remember for sure that there is or not a option to beowse your image while on disk. check it. that way you can be sure(not 100% because nothing is 100%, macrium is very reliable unless in worst scenarios and very bad luck ) of that your Disk is working properly. regards.

Thanks pin cushion and suspect008 for your input. Yesterday I purchased a program called Acronis which has awful customer support. First the program didn't recognize my one of my 2 external drives, than I was unable to boot from the rescue disc because my keyboard or mouse will not work once the boot occurs, and even more misery their system report crashes the program everytime it is generated. I've been on the phone for at least 3 hours and still no resolution. I cannot recommend any of these programs that utilize these linix based discs if your working in a windows environment. I'm really not a computer guru, and all I wanted was an easy way to make an image, and insure I wouldn't lose my data and have to reload the countless programs and utilities I have. But I have no faith in any of these software based backup programs anymore. Macrum didn't work because I had the free edition and was using a 3 TB USB3 drive. Sorry for the rant... but I'm just tired and looking forward to another call from India

Ive found Macrium (free) 5 to be extremely hassle free.

i took the liberty of creating the WinPE recovery disk rather than using their linux versions. It requires a 1.7Gb download but it was worth it in terms of the hassle free recovery 'just working'.

I read a lot about acronis before deciding to try out macrium first. Many people comlain about its buggyness over the last 4 or so years. However some very senior members here like it and use it.

i guess its about understanding the tool you have and how to get the most out of it (and its limitations).

Ill stick with Macrium till it cant do what I need.

Matt

Hi HarleyNut,

As an alterative, you might consider burning the rescue/recovery ISO to a bootable USB flash drive - it operates in exactly the same way as a CD/DVD.

This tutorial will guide you through that process, including all the setps required to test the rescue USB, but not to accidently perform the recovery:

MACRIUM REFLECT - Create Bootable Rescue USB Drive

To escape once you see the image, simply click CANCEL in the Macrium broser, and your PC will reboot itself as normal.

Post back if you have any questions.

Regards,
Golden

Could I ask a question regarding these Windows PE recovery discs... I am having this exact same problem happen when using the Macrium recovory disc as well as the Acronis windows PE recovory discs

-On the windows PE I stick the disc in.... I get a message that says press any key to boot from CD...I do that.... but it never actually boots from the cd... it just goes right into regular windows 7... There are no lights flashing on the optical drive after it tells me to press any key.... I assure my bios are set to boot from the opticla drive as first priority

This happens with both Macrium and acronis. Any thoughts on what I can do?

Can you read a normal CD or DVD in the drive?

Is the data lead still plugged into the back of the drive?

Just trying to rule out the silly...just sounds a bit odd if the drive light isnt even on when trying to boot from the dvd drive.

Does it make any sounds? Mine makes pretty distinctive sounds when it spins up and starts to read.

Matt

The dvd works fine, burned a number of discs today even, files can be read ect... there is definitely nothing wrong with the optical drive.

When you stick the boot drive in there is a light that flashes and you do hear some intial spinning but as soon as you reach the point where it tells you to press any key to boot from CD... the lights don't flash or any sounds and the spinning goes away. It just immediately starts to load windows in the typical way.

Awhile back I turned off the autostart feature for my optical drive...could this be causing any problems with continuing to boot from the optical drive? I can't even remember the location or how I went about turning it off it has been so long ago.

It sounds like your rom deck is ok. To further check it and eliminate it as a problem. Find a disk you have that is bootable. Say a Win 7 repair or install disk or any bootable installation disk and try booting from it. If you can boot then the problem lies in the rescue disks you are creating. It might be that some how the boot.wim file is not correct.

I would recommend that you make a test disk with this tutorial.

Windows PE Disk - Create