Image your system with free Macrium

Scoop said:

Laptop: I ran into one of those things where I forgot about Drivers so I had to burn another ISO using my Laptop PC instead of the Desktop PC. I'm using the WinPE 3.1 version burn.

I perform all of my images from the boot CD, outside of Windows.

With the non-Free versions you have the choice of either WinPE 3.1 or 4.?
I am sure that you will have that choice with the Free version, either now or in the future.

The two different versions are based on two different downloads from Microsoft,
and USB3 drivers are NOT part of the original Microsoft download but ARE part of the latest.

I only had USB2 capability until I added a PCI Express card with USB3 Ports and installed drivers from a mini CD.
Macrium had to add the USB3 driver from my installation when building the next WinPE 3.1,
but when I selected the WinPE 4.? download the USB3 drivers were already part of that download.

You may find that whatever drivers you need to add to WinPE 3.1 will already be present in 4.?


Amongst the advantages of NOT using the Boot CD to create an image is the fact that the backup is smaller so takes less time to create,
and also less time to duplicate on another external drive.
The reduction is due to VSS NOT including the content of my 8 GB Pagefile.

kado897 said:

Volume Shadow Copy "freezes" the contents at a point in time. Any changes to files after that are done so that they don't affect the "snapshot". This allows Macrium (and any other backup program) to make a backup from the "snapshot" while other work is continuing.

Thanks for the explanation of this :). I had thought this was how it worked but wasn't sure if I was understanding the terminology.

alan10 said:

With the non-Free versions you have the choice of either WinPE 3.1 or 4.?
I am sure that you will have that choice with the Free version, either now or in the future.

The two different versions are based on two different downloads from Microsoft,
and USB3 drivers are NOT part of the original Microsoft download but ARE part of the latest.

I only had USB2 capability until I added a PCI Express card with USB3 Ports and installed drivers from a mini CD.
Macrium had to add the USB3 driver from my installation when building the next WinPE 3.1,
but when I selected the WinPE 4.? download the USB3 drivers were already part of that download.

You may find that whatever drivers you need to add to WinPE 3.1 will already be present in 4.?

Amongst the advantages of NOT using the Boot CD to create an image is the fact that the backup is smaller so takes less time to create,
and also less time to duplicate on another external drive.
The reduction is due to VSS NOT including the content of my 8 GB Pagefile.

Thanks. The Free version does include that choice during the ISO build dialog, ver 3 or 4 PE.

I'll try ver 4 when I burn another Rescue CD. That sounds like what happened earlier when I boot the 3.0 CD. The "missing driver" dialog box said that it was a USB driver.

I'll run the next dull-disk backup from the installed program instead of the CD.

Thanks again all from a novice "imager" for your info here.

I'm confused... I always get a prompt telling me some USB drivers are missing, do I want to continue, when I restore a backup. I always click continue without drivers and whatever Macrium installs works just fine. Are you saying that shouldn't happen, surely if a driver is missing Windows automatically looks for it next time it boots in any case? And yes I'm using the boot CD that I created to do the bootup if I need to restore a disk image (remembering to modify the BIOS to boot up by default from CD ROM).

mjf said:

It may be that you need to load USB 3 drivers. Here is the process for Windows imaging.
Problem recoverying from backup via USB 3.0 external drive
Macrium should allow you to load the drivers after you boot the pe disc. I incorporated the drivers into my Macrium pe disc easily because I used WAIK to create the pe. This is how you do it
Problem recoverying from backup via USB 3.0 external drive

Thanks for the info :) I read that DISM link page but it's over my head for now. I think I'm understanding the concept, installing the drivers, etc.

I read your forum link as well. I located my USB 3.0 drivers and copied them to my Flash Stick for future attempts at building the WinPE CD.

I burned another WinPE 4.0 CD but my Desktop PC won't boot to it. I'm not sure why but it's something that I'll look at down the road.

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Well, here's my first cloning attempt with the Free version. Unfortunately, it didn't work for me but I'll be working at this to see what happened and what I may have not selected correctly during the cloning setup screen.

Here's what I observed and my steps in setting up the cloning process:

- Cloning preparation on the Target HDD: Formatted and removed partitions on the "Target" HDD with Gparted. I do this to simplify the selection in any cloning tool so as to easily determine the empty Target HDD when selecting the target HDD in any cloning tool. (I've done it this way for a couple of years with Acronis cloning with no issues).

- Booted up the PC with the Macrium WinPE 3.1 Rescue CD. I wanted to do this to compare Macrium with Acronis (booting from Rescue media vs cloning from the tool on my system HDD).

- Cloning setup: I dragged and dropped my 2 partitions, the "Sys Reserved" and the main partition to the "Destination" Target HDD.

- I looked at the options before clicking "Finish" (that begins the actual cloning process).

- I checked the "Intelligent Sector" option vs the "Forensic" option after reading the option details. I chose this option to shorten the cloning time.

- Clicked the "Verify File System" option.

- Clicked "Finish" to start the cloning process. All ran without error. Elapsed time: 1:25 . When I clone with my Acronis (2011 ver) CD, the elapsed time takes 00:40 . No concern about that, just was curious as to the difference in elapsed time.

- After cloning process completed, I shut down the PC and removed my Source HDD, keeping the Target HDD installed. I have 2 hot-swap SATA Racks in my Tower for fast HDD installs during cloning. I kept the Target HDD installed in the same SATA slot.

- Tried to boot up on the Target HDD. Got the "Hardware change Detected, can't load Windows...." messages after the POST.

I checked the usual things, BIOS HDD detection, Boot Order. All looked ok. The Target HDD is included in my BIOS list, etc.

I also installed the Target HDD in the same slot as my Source HDD is always installed, to eliminate any issues with BIOS or Sata Controller confusion (slot change detected, etc). I only tried this since some members over at the Acronis Forum recommend this cloning practice, ie, install the cloned Target HDD in the same SATA slot as the Source HDD.

After a few tries, ie, "F8" key - Boot Order List, etc, I shut down the PC and re-installed my Source HDD. All ok there.

I attached the un-bootable Target HDD to my PC via my SATA/USB Adapter cable to look at the contents in the Target HDD. All my data is there but there must be something amiss within the "Sys Reserved" partition which I expected since it won't boot.

The Sys Reserved partition is marked "Active".

I did see one item in the Sys Reserved partition, a notepad item. Here's the contents of the file. File name is rescuepe.log.

Contents of the file ↓

Macrium Reflect Boot Log
------------------------
Started 11/17/2013 4:15 PM v5.2.6433


I'll give the cloning process another try soon.

I looked at my Device Management screen, attached here, to look at the details. The Target HDD (cloned with Marcium Free a little earlier is "Disk 3" F, G in my Management list.

[edit addition]

I forgot to mention something that I observed in the "process status" Macrium screen as it was cloning.

I noticed something like this displayed that was referencing the Target HDD in that screen:

?\\volume xxxxxxxxxxxx where "xxxxxxxxxxx" appeared to me to be a Registry value, similar to what I see with most Registry keys.

Whew! That's a lot of work! Here's how I clone a drive.

1. Plug the destination drive into the swap bay or external dock (depending on the computer I'm using). No need to format or otherwise prepare the disk; Reflect will take care of that.
2. Fire up Macrium Reflect.
3. Select the Source drive (I select the entire drive) and select Clone.
4. Select the Destination drive (ditto).
5. Start the clone. All the settings (Verify and Intelligent Sector) are already set and don't need to be set each time.
6. Go to bed and let the program do all the work.

Lady Fitzgerald said:

Whew! That's a lot of work! Here's how I clone a drive.

1. Plug the destination drive into the swap bay or external dock (depending on the computer I'm using). No need to format or otherwise prepare the disk; Reflect will take care of that.
2. Fire up Macrium Reflect.
3. Select the Source drive (I select the entire drive).
4. Select the Destination drive (ditto).
5. Start the clone. All the settings (verify and Intelligent Sector) are already set and don't need to be set each time.
6. Go to bed and let the program do all the work.

I'm used to it (work) :) I like using Gparted so I've continued that way but I understand your point. I'm on an "island" with my approach :) but that's not related to my booting issue since as you mentioned, Macrium (as well as all cloning tools, I imagine) will do that step automatically when the process begins.

I think you may have mentioned the reason that my cloned HDD didn't boot. I didn't see a "Select entire Source Drive", etc , on the Macruim setup screen, I did click on both partitions but I'm familiar with what you're referring to, ie, "select entire drive", since Acronis has that option when one clones from their "select partions" dialog screen.

I'll try it again to see where I missed the "select entire drive/disk" option.

Make sure none of the partitions on the other drives are checked then just click on the box on the far left of the drive to be cloned. That will select all the partitions on that drive.

You may like working with Gparted but it's really unnecessary since Reflect is going to write over everything you did.

Lady Fitzgerald said:

Make sure none of the partitions on the other drives are checked then just click on the box on the far left of the drive to be cloned. That will select all the partitions on that drive.

You may like working with Gparted but it's really unnecessary since Reflect is going to write over everything you did.

Thanks, I know (Gparted). The main reason I do that is that it makes it almost impossible to clone in reverse since the cloning tool, whether it's Macrium, Acronis, or Clonezilla, will show that the Target HDD is empty during the Destination-select process.

It's more of one of those "early-days" cloning concerns that carried over for me to avoid cloning in reverse, which I've never done....so far