Image your system with free Macrium

I format the drive and mark it active prior to installing, no reserved partition them, it's a part of C:\. As I understand, the reserved partition is needed only if Bitlocker is used since it holds the encryption key.

I'd still keep system reserved if I was multi booting to the same drive. Then like some others I would prefer to multi boot to a separate internal drive using the BIOS. The last PC I built for someone I didn't bother with system reserved.

I would think it is possibel although I have never done that. Check whether Macrium sees the ide drive. Just start Macrium on that system and see which frives can be seen.

Bellzemos said:

Is there anyone here who tried migrating a system image using Macrium Reflect Free from a SATA drive to a PATA (IDE) drive or vice versa?

This Macrium video shows it being redeployed to an IDE drive (see 1:54). If you click the YouTube icon in the lower right you will find a load of their videos.

Correct - but why don't you try it with a little test partition. I always have a little 2GB test partition with some data for such trials.

I am afraid there won't be many people around here who have used Macrium on IDE disks.

Bellzemos said:

Sure, but isn't redeploying only available in the paid version? I'm asking about the free version.

Yes, I understand that. It was to point out Macrium will work with IDE/PATA drives, it doesn't care.

Yes try it, nothing to lose, knowledge to gain. the worst that can happen is you can't restore to the IDE drive in which case you will be where you are now. :)

I don't have a board with IDE headers or I would give it a test.

Bellzemos said:

Sure, but isn't redeploying only available in the paid version? I'm asking about the free version.

The redeploying of the paid version refers to dissimilar hardware, such as after replacing a MOBO. If you are only changing HDDs in the same machine, the free version should work just fine.