Windows 7: Image your system with free Macrium

What do you mean by "acknowledge" ?
If you mean it cannot use them I am sure you are wrong.

There is always the possibility that a particular computer, such as yours, might have a special need that Linux does not provide.

One previous difficulty that could be overcome with WinPE was use with USB3 connected HDD's,
But that problem has been resolved for WinPE.
Linux may be another matter.

x64 Rescue CD only means that you have to run it on a x64 enabled system. But you can image/restore any partition with it.

There is no "MBR partition". The MBR sits on the first 512 bytes of any HDD. If you mean the system partition (that is the partition which contains the bootmgr), you have to image it too. It will not automatically be imaged when you image C:\ (only Windows imaging does that automatically).

If you want to get rid of the system partition, you can move the bootmgr to the C partition. Then there is no more need to image the system partition because it has become useless.

On my PC, the external HDDs didn't appear in the location list (I couldn't browse to a backup image).

I could only access HDDs that were locally installed or available via a network.
In that case, I simply used a Linux Live CD to copy the files from the external HDD to one of my other internal HDDs.

It only ever happened once (I haven't tried it since).
I have made two updated Recovery discs since that incident (and had at least 2 motherboard upgrades), so it may not be a problem anyone anymore.
It may have been an earlier version of Macrium (v3?).

There may be a way to open a Terminal and manually mount them, but it isn't obvious to me.

The Linux rescue CD has always been problematic in locating external USB2 attached drives, you can sometimes get it to work by shutting everything down completely before booting into the rescue CD. The WinPE version is much better.

I definitely tried:

• Booting with the external HDD connected
• Connecting the external HDD after booting

It made no difference.

Was the external connected via USB2 or USB3 ?

It was a USB2 HDD connected to a USB2 port.
My latest MB is the first one I've used that has USB3 (a single port).

Hi,

It is bizarre how the Linux option just won't work for some hardware. Prior to using the WinPE option, I used the Linux rescue CD/USB many times to restore from different USB2 drives and even a networked Thecus NAS. The common item amongst these systems was a Gigabyte motherboard....but I can't say for sure that this is why.

Regards,
Golden

Golden -- That has got to be the strangest Avatar I have ever seen.

Does the macrium .iso available here image 64 bit systems? I've just installed Windows 7 64bit and a little clueless if I have to use 64 bit imaging programs??