MACRIUM REFLECT - Create Bootable Rescue USB Drive

kado897 · May 24, 2015

I suspect you are correct but why would the CD work on that PC?

tobymeister · May 24, 2015

Thanks for the replies. I appreciate your help. Your advice helped solve the problem.

To answer Wolfgang's question: I tried your ISO download last week, but I couldn't get it to boot. As a result, I decided to install Macrium Reflect Free 5.3.7299 (which I believe is the current version) and use it to create the Rescue media. Macrium's default choice for the Rescue media was WinPE 3.1 (although I could have chosen 4.0), so I accepted its selection. Bottom line... my Rescue media is Macrium 5.3.7299 / WinPE 3.1.

It is, indeed, a mystery why the Rescue CD worked on all three (3) PCs, but the Rescue USB stick worked on only two (2).

I experimented with the mouse and I think it was the problem. I tried a different mouse in the problem PC (Dell) and, voila, the Rescue USB stick worked properly. I swapped mice again, reattaching the original mouse to the Dell PC, and guess what.... the Rescue USB stick is now working! It must have been a fluke, one time problem.

Although my problem seems to be solved, I'm going to experiment a little bit more and I'm curious:

When the Macrium WinPE Rescue media is created, does Macrium pull hardware drivers off the PC that creates the rescue media.... drivers that are specific to that PC? (In my case, a Windows Vista PC.)

Or, does the Macrium WinPE use a standard set of generic Microsoft drivers, provided by WinPE itself.... drivers that are non-specific to the PC that creates the media?

If the hardware drivers are provided by WinPE itself, would WinPE 4.0 contain more, and possibly newer, drivers than WinPE 3.1? Maybe I should have chosen WinPE 4.0 for the rescue media.

Thanks again for your help.

kado897 · May 24, 2015

I'm not sure about the free version but the paid version does extract specific drivers from the PC it is built on. I guess there are also generic drivers and if so WinPE 4.0 would be newer. The Macrium V6 (not free) now offers WinPE 5.0 which is Windows 8.1 based as the recommended version.

MDRI · Aug 30, 2015

Guidance to use rescue media USB on un-bootable PC

Thanks for providing this tutorial for this community. I found Macrium Reflect Free (Version: 6.0.753 (21 July 2015)) for download.

I downloaded/installed above Macrium to working PC. It asked me to create Macrium Reflect rescue media on CD, DVD, or USB stick upon installing on working PC. I created a rescue media USB.

I have a laptop that has booting issue with black screen. It is a long story. I like to create a HDD image, before doing clean win 7 install.

Shall I use this rescue media USB for any pc (including my un-bootable laptop) or it is tied to my working PC that has its Macrium Reflect Free?

Thanks for sharing.

DavidE · Aug 30, 2015

I use the same rescue media for different PC's/OS's.

kado897 · Aug 31, 2015

The only thing to worry about on other PCs is drivers. Try it and see how it goes.

MDRI · Aug 31, 2015

Thanks for your reply. I will keep you posted on this. I am trying to fix the issue reported in my thread

Win 7: Black screen on boot up, before login screen? Sorry guys. It is a long thread with various suggestion. I am thinging of opening a new thread for this image backup/clean install of win 7.

I found an option in Macrium Reflect Free for fixing windows booting problem. I used this option for my issue.

My Z580 is looping with "LENOVO" logo during booting now. It is not passing this stage.

Did any one face this situation ?

What type of image work to secure the win 7 installation + Installed program with KEYS (Eg Msoffice etc) + user documents?

Is it whole HDD, Partition by Partition or User folder by user folder (I mean Admin, Local account1, Local account 2 etc)?

What are the advantages to use Macrium Reflect Free instead of Windows 7 built-in image options?

Will Windows 7 repair CD able to recover using Macrium Reflect Free images?

Thanks for sharing.

kado897 · Aug 31, 2015

Four things

1. The Macrium CD I believe just front ends the Windows built in boot repair utilities so if they don't work it is unlikely the MR CD will.
2. The Windows recovery CD will not restore a Macrium Image. You need the MR recovery CD for that.
3. There is an option in MR to backup all needed partitions to recover the Windows installation. This is usually the C: drive plus the 100MB system partition if you have one but some OEMs may include others.
4. MR is much more flexible that the built in Windows Imaging. You can chose which partitions to back up and you can also do differential backups which are much faster and smaller than full backups. There is no restriction on where you place your images. As far as Windows is concerned they are just files. It is also easy to mount the image files to extract individual files if needed. I'm sure there is much more but that is enough to go on with.

MDRI · Aug 31, 2015

Thanks for your reply.

I have win 7 installation + Installed program with KEYS (Eg Msoffice etc) + user documents.

I want to have mechanism to recover (win 7 installation + Installed program with KEYS (Eg Msoffice etc) + user documents) if there is win 7 failure.

Will backing up C: drive plus the 100MB system partition & OEMs MR image do the job?

Thanks for helping.

kado897 · Aug 31, 2015

If your user documents are on your C drive then yes an MR image will allow you to recover everything on that partition at the time of the backup.

DavidE · Sep 1, 2015

MDRI said:
I have win 7 installation + Installed program with KEYS (Eg Msoffice etc) + user documents.

How much space is used in your Users folder (user documents) ?

I and many others store User data on a different partition/HD than the

 drive.
My [C] partition for the OS and installed programs is less than 50 GB.
My "Data" partition for "user documents" always ends up hundreds of GB's.

If I saved Data on the [C] drive, system image backups would take a lot longer, and i could only keep a few "System Backup Images".

I don't make many "System Changes" so a monthly system backup image of [C] is all i usually need.
If i make significant changes, i create a backup image as needed.

Data (Documents) can change daily so i want to keep those changes more often.
I don't use system images for "data" backups.

kado897 · Sep 1, 2015

DavidE said:
MDRI said:

I have win 7 installation + Installed program with KEYS (Eg Msoffice etc) + user documents.

Click to expand...

How much space is used in your Users folder (user documents) ?

I and many others store User data on a different partition/HD than the drive. My [C] partition for the OS and installed programs is less than 50 GB. My "Data" partition for "user documents" always ends up hundreds of GB's. If I saved Data on the [C] drive, system image backups would take a lot longer, and i could only keep a few "System Backup Images". I don't make many "System Changes" so a monthly system backup image of [C] is all i usually need. If i make significant changes, i create a backup image as needed. Data (Documents) can change daily so i want to keep those changes more often. I don't use system images for "data" backups.[/QUOTE] That's a good point. Separating your documents, photos and videos from the Windows partition makes complete sense. You can include these separated folders into the respective libraries so that they are easy to find. This will make your images much smaller and you can make them less frequently. I use FreFileSync for backing up my data files it is much more convenient. The link for FFS is in my sig. Do a custom install and watch the options as it will try to install OpenCandy which you don't really want.

MDRI · Sep 1, 2015

Thanks for your suggestions. As I mentioned earlier, I am going to do clean install on my laptop. I posted the OEM DISKMAP in my thread Win 7: Black screen on boot up, before login screen? Post # 90

I find System (d:\) 200 MB Windows_7 (OS) ( c:\) 653.44 GB & my Lenovo_data (e:\) 25.47 GB. Lenovo says, if I change the partition configuration, it will make built-in Lenovo recovery unusable.

I like the idea of adopting infrequent system changes and frequent data changes in image backup strategy.

How do I re-structure my DISKMAP to have effective periodical image backup without disrupting built-in Lenovo recovery?

Thanks for sharing/helping.

kado897 · Sep 1, 2015

I'm not really an expert in partitioning but you should be able to split the 600GB partition during the reinstall. 150GB should be more than enough for Windows and any programs you have which leaves 450GB for a data partition.

DavidE · Sep 2, 2015

MDRI said:
I posted the OEM DISKMAP in my thread Win 7: Black screen on boot up, before login screen? Post # 90

I'm not an expert, but it would help the experts if you post a screen print of your current disk management in this thread.
Follow the instructions in this tutorial, maximizing and re-sizing everything so people here can see what you have:
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/274797-disk-management-post-screen-capture-image.html

MDRI · Sep 2, 2015

Thanks for your reply. I posted the OEM DISKMAP in my thread Win 7: Black screen on boot up, before login screen? Post # 90

As per your request, I am posting it here.

kado897 · Sep 2, 2015

As I say I'm not an expert on partitioning but if Disk 0 is an MBR disk then you have used all four of it's allowed basic partitions so It will be difficult to do without destroying the existing partitions. That's a shame.

MDRI · Sep 4, 2015

I find,

Macrium can't image backup files/folders with free version and can't save the image to the same partition it is imaging.

Is it a limitation? What is the workaround?

Thanks for sharing.

kado897 · Sep 4, 2015

That's correct.

It doesn't make any sense to write the image to the partition that you are imaging, Although you can continue to read and write to the partition it's asking for trouble to do too much. In fact for the best security you should not only image to a separate partition but to a separate disk so that you still have the image if the disk fails completely,

It's true that the file and folder backup is missing from the free version. Although I have a paid version I don't use it myself. I prefer to use a dedicated F&F backup solution. FreeFileSync is my preference (link in my sig) although they have now gone over to the dark side and Open Candy is in the installer. An alternative is Synctoy from Microsoft. https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=15155

Lady Fitzgerald · Sep 4, 2015

kado897 said:
...In fact for the best security you should not only image to a separate partition but to a separate disk so that you still have the image if the disk fails completely...

To add to that already excellent advice, that separate disk should be an external one that gets connected to the computer only when updating backups. Using an internal disks increases the risk for loss or corruption due to hardware failure (such as a PSU blowing up and frying the disk), user error (such as accidental deletion), and/or viruses or other malware.

That said, I save my System images to an internal drive for convenience when restoring an image but I also back up that drive to the teeth (a total of five backups) using FreeFileSync.

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