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Macrium Reflect (Free 5.0.4118): need help on "recover partition"
I'm trying to recover just my WinXP partition (O, when viewed from Win7) out of a "system image" produced by Macrium Reflect Free (5.0.4118). That image copied both Win7 (C) as well as WinXP (O) in my dual-boot environment, because it is O which is the "active" partition and C where Win7 lives. I was running WinXP originally and installed Win7 as a second OS, hence my partitions and configuration.
Anyway, the creation of the "system image" went fine (two weeks ago).
I now have a need to restore just my WinXP partition, which is something I had believed was possible. I don't want to restore both WinXP and Win7. I only want to restore WinXP.
So I booted to the standalone Rescue CD and tried to follow the wizard. I had previously looked at (and had printed) the "how to recover your PC using the Linux Rescue CD - Part II" article on the Macrium Support Knowledgebase, so I thought this would be easy. Wrong.
(1) First problem... all of the screenshots in the article are NOT what the free 5.0.4118 program produces. Maybe the article was written for a prior program version or the for-money version, but it certainly is not what the program looks like now.
(2) I was able to extrapolate what the article told me I would see and what I was to do, to the current dialog screens put out by the current program, without too much trouble. However the results of doing what it told me to do were not what I would have expected.
(3) I was able to "locate image", by navigating their Explorer view to the proper drive and folder in which my "system image" lives. I then selected that file in the upper-right corner of the presentation, and sure enough in the lower-right corner of the presentation I saw the two partitions which were contained in the backup... namely both C and O. Perfect.
However I didn't know whether I should select the O partition in that lower-right corner, or if selecting the partition (from within the image) that I am wanting to restore will come on the next screen. What should I do here? The article suggests I should not do anything except except select "the correct partition image in the right window and click 'next'" but that wording is terribly vague.
Nevertheless I decided simply to select the image file itself (in the upper-right corner) and not select the O partition from the O and C shown in the lower-right corner. Then NEXT.
(4) I was then shown the "partition selection" screen, which for some reason only showed O listed... even though both O and C were actually in the image file, and I hadn't selected just O in the lower-right corner. So why was only O shown and not both O and C? I would have then un-checked C, but I still want to know why both partitions which are in that image file are not shown in this selection list for me to choose from???
Anyway, since O was presented and that was the partition i wanted to restore, I left it checked and pushed NEXT.
(5) I was then shown a "target selection" screen, which listed two of my three hard drives. I don't know why the third drive was not shown.
Nevertheless, the true location of O (which is where I wanted this restored system image to go, right over the existing O partition in exactly the same place on exactly the same drive) was on one of the two drives that were listed.
So I checked that drive and pushed NEXT. Again, I simply want to restore the O partition from that image file to exactly the same (and still current) O partition on exactly the same hard drive that it was and is still resident on. No change to anything... just restore that O partition.
(6) Well, the next screen gave me something else than what the tutorial article showed me I would receive. In fact it seemed to suggest that the target drive for the restore was NOT the drive I'd just checked... but instead was a different drive. In fact, it happened to be the very drive on which the Macrium backup folder lives inside of which is this image file that I'm trying to use to recover from.
Surely this is wrong. Something is very very wrong here, and is certainly not helped by the completely different screenshots in the tutorial article than what the program currently puts out.
Anyway, I decided to cancel my way out of this... since something was seriously wrong. I'd already gone through this very process earlier in the day and not noticed the inconsistent contents of screens, and just blindly went ahead. Well, it ended up destroying two of my hard drives (including the one with my backup and image files) before I discovered the disaster.
Fortunately, I was able to use Partition Wizard ("partition recovery wizard") to recover the three partitions on one of the destroyed drives. And the other drive had somehow been forced "offline" because of a "signature collision with another disk". This time I was able to use DISKPART to bring the drive online, and thankfully there was no data lost in the five partitions on that second drive.
So... miraculously... the super-damage done by [my misuse of] Macrium Reflect trying to restore just my O partition actually caused me zero loss of data. Thankfully.
And that's why tonight I found that knowledgebase article, and decided to try it a second time... being very careful to look very closely at everything, and not to let it go ahead unless I was sure.
Well... it seems to be a 100% total failure. Was I supposed to first delete that O partition from the drive, to make it unallocated free space, before specifying that drive? Is that why even though I checked that drive it didn't show me that drive in the next screen which seemed to be a "confirmation" dialog screen?
Or, should I have been able to restore O from the image directly over the existing O on the same drive, and not have to first delete it?
I've never had any problem in the past two years using Win7's "system image" functionality, either creating the image or restoring the image. But since I'd read Macrium Reflect could selectively restore partitions from within the image file it took, and also compressed its output to use less space, and also allowed an "ID" in each image file so that I could have more than one image on a drive... I decided to give this product a try.
But so far, this first attempt at trying to restore a partition from within that image file has been a 100% total disaster!!! The program simply does not work as documented and described. Or, I'm making the wrong assumptions in trying to adapt the old documentation to the new program.
Can somebody who's an "expert" on this latest 5.0.4118 please help me? Macrium has a policy that the free product is NOT SUPPORTED, so I can't ask them for help. And I'm certainly not going to buy a product which is dangerous and not functioning correctly in its free version, so I'm in a Catch 22.
I can easily revert to using standard Win7's "system image", despite its inflexibility and lack of versatility... because IT WORKS!!! I would certainly like to restore my O partition from the Macrium image if I could, but I can live without it if I can't.
Can someone please tell me how to use this program???
Many thanks.