Imaging with free Macrium

ICIT2LOL said:

mjf said:

I recently bought a couple of Kingston 16GB USB 3/2 (DT100G3) from an Australian supplier (MSY) for $10 each. Maybe they aren't the fastest flash drives but pretty cheap. The 32GB is $18 I think.
The problem I have is I don't think my motherboard allows native booting to USB 3. So I'd check that you can boot to a USB 3 before spending too much.

mmm I might zip over and see them MJ as the new laptop is all 3.0 ports and Wolfgang I tried out the HD tune app and I see what you mean by the speed difference in that my SSD came up in excess of 430Mbs and the stick a really terrible 11Mbs. So I shall have to get the other 3.0 stick.

I had a quick look and I definitely should have bought the SanDisk Extreme 16GB at $20 - they blitz the Data Traveller - I didn't do my homework
UserBenchmark: SanDisk Extreme USB 3.0 16GB SDCZ80-016G

But again make sure you can BIOS boot from a USB 3 port. If you need to boot with it plugged into a USB 2 port then I don't know what performance you'll get. But at $20 live dangerously.

mm MJ I just been on that site and I tried getting a 32GB 3.0 stick (SanDisk) and found the costs of shipping to be really excessive for such a small item - $13+ that made the total $40+ so have not got it - for the time being anyway.

However I must admit the specs on that drive were impressive being claimed at 120Mbs

ICIT2LOL said:

mjf said:

I recently bought a couple of Kingston 16GB USB 3/2 (DT100G3) from an Australian supplier (MSY) for $10 each. Maybe they aren't the fastest flash drives but pretty cheap. The 32GB is $18 I think.
The problem I have is I don't think my motherboard allows native booting to USB 3. So I'd check that you can boot to a USB 3 before spending too much.

mmm I might zip over and see them MJ as the new laptop is all 3.0 ports and Wolfgang I tried out the HD tune app and I see what you mean by the speed difference in that my SSD came up in excess of 430Mbs and the stick a really terrible 11Mbs. So I shall have to get the other 3.0 stick.

Yeah, that is a slowpoke transfer rate. But even more important is the access time. Wjat was that on the stick ??

Btw - it is MBs and not Mbs. that HD Tune shows.

Hmm well the only thing the HD Tune shows me is transfer rate now what that means to me is what rate the data is going back and forth??

You have to let it run to the end - you have no patience, LOL

Yep you are right Wolfgang I am a bit gung ho with most stuff though you will be glad to hear not at work LOL!!

I actually left it running thinking it was probably going to be around what it would result in.

Anyhow I have just bought a 16GB 3.0 SanDisk Extreme which is claiming up to 120MBs read although it didn't give the write rate - at a reasonable price too. So as soon as I get it I shall be up and firing on all six cylinders LOL!!

PS I just noticed too that the CPU usage is -1 %?? how can it be less than 1??

Forget the CPU usage thing. I never knew what that means. It seems to be a random number.

And don't get too held up with the read/write speeds. Good speeds are helpful but what really counts is the access time. And 3ms is too slow. It should be 1ms or less. SSDs are typically 0.1ms. Just to give you a perspective.

1. Yes the Macrium system images are just a big file. You can have as many of them plus other data as your HDD has the capacity for.
2. I don't think so. If you could it would be the last thing I would do since DVD image storage is unreliable and slow. An external HDD or perhaps another internal (not a partition on the OS drive) HDD is really the only way to go. Some may suggest a large flash drive as an option but not IMO.