Image your system with free Macrium

groze said:

False alarm created by Spybot S&D old version (may affect the new Spybot S&D version as well) when creating a Macrium usb rescue boot flash drive. Had to disable Spybot S&D before it would let me create the Macrium rescue media.

Free Edition 64 bit
Build 7256



2/1/2015 4:31:46 PM Encountered and terminated Fraud.WindowsRecovery in C:\ProgramData\Macrium\Reflect\Windows AIK\Tools\amd64\wimserv.exe!

I haven't had a problem creating rescue media for MR while running Spybot S&D 2.4.

When I first installed Win7 on this WD 160GB SATA spinner hard drive and Gigabyte mobo in June 2013, I made a system image with Macrium.
The C: drive on which I installed Windows had originally been a dual-boot Win7-XP Home setup, and that means it had originally been partitioned by and with XP in mind: the start sector was listed as 63 according to Macrium.

This past week, I installed a new WD 10EZEX 512e (emulated Advanced Format) spinner drive to store data. Formatting this drive with Win7's Disk Management lists the start sector as 2048. I found that MiniTool Partition Manager can align SSDs and HDDs, so I did this with all my XP-formatted spinners, including my C: drive. Lucky me: no data loss, and everything runs a pinch faster! Now all my spinner drives are aligned by or for Win7.

My question though is this: If I needed to use my 2013 Macrium Reflect system image which has a start sector of 63, would it overwrite my present partition information with the now-aligned 2048 start sector? Or did I align myself out of having a useful restore image?

Please forgive the length of this post as well as my seeming ignorance.

I understand your question and here is what Macrium says:

Partition alignment and the Macrium Reflect cloning and restore function

To preserve the source partition alignment either...

Select the source partition check box(es) and click the 'Copy selected partitions' link.

Drag and drop the source partition(s) to free space on the target disk

To use the target partition alignment.

Note: This could be used to 'convert' and XP aligned partition for SSD alignment

1. Drag and drop the source partition to an existing partition on the target disk

Wolfgang, thanks much for that... but I can't drag and drop anything when I've booted my PC with Macrium's Linux boot disc. I've never needed the PE version. All I see there is a tick/check box to choose the image file I want to use as a source, and a tick/check box to confirm which drive is the target.
Maybe I'm overthinking this, and should just restore with the latest weekly image I have. If I really needed to reinstall with a 2013 image, I may as well go full-bore and reinstall Win7 from bare metal.

We recommend the use of the PE recovery disk. It is far more capable than the Linux one. There is a link to a pre-built ISO that you just need to burn to DVD in the notes at the start of this tutorial. Imaging with free Macrium

It doesn't take me all that long to let MR download Win PE. Even if it did, all I would have had to do would be to start it, then walk away for a while or go to bed. By downloading it the rare times I need it (such as when setting up a new computer), I'm assured of getting the latest version. Once I have a copy, MR keeps track of it so I don't have to download it again.

OvenMaster said:

Wolfgang, thanks much for that... but I can't drag and drop anything when I've booted my PC with Macrium's Linux boot disc. I've never needed the PE version. All I see there is a tick/check box to choose the image file I want to use as a source, and a tick/check box to confirm which drive is the target.
Maybe I'm overthinking this, and should just restore with the latest weekly image I have. If I really needed to reinstall with a 2013 image, I may as well go full-bore and reinstall Win7 from bare metal.

Why don't you download the WinPE .iso from my OneDrive and burn it to CD,

I'll take a look and see what the PE thingy is all about, Wolfgang, so thanks. So far, I've just used the simpler Linux version because, well, it just worked without any problems when I needed it most.

The WinPE is like an installed Macrium. You can do anything that can be done with the installed program. Write images, recover from images (full function), etc.