Imaging with free Macrium

And here I am after all these years not knowing that the image and clone are TWO separate beings....

You learn something new everyday.

/\ /\ /\ what he said. I have been Ghosting for 20+ years and have had minimal problems. Not say without any problems but few compared to what others tell.

I did a clone today with Macrium Free...(on my wife's computer) I do maintain that also. And all looked like is was OK to me. The 1st time I saw a BOOT directory. But I did ask for it. Next I'll try an image. Some favor clone and some favor image. I will check out both.

bugmeso said:

And here I am after all these years not knowing that the image and clone are TWO separate beings....

You learn something new everyday.

This forum's a gold mine of info, that's for sure.

When I first got into full-disc backups, I was a little confused about the terminology, imaging, cloning, since they're sometimes used interchangeably in certain articles and posts around the 'net and that can contribute to the unawareness of the two activities being different from each other. However, (my take) when referring to a full-disc image and recovery, the end result is the same as a cloned HDD.

GrayGhost2 said:

I did not know that imaging and cloning existed. I have left all IT (until recently) to an IT tech. $$
This tutorial-thread will take some reading. But what a time saver. About every 12 months my web-dedicated laptop develops arthritic twitches (like now) and eventually stops all together (please not yet).

Embarrassingly I did nothing to maintain my PCs because I simply did not know why or how.
That is all changing since joining this forum.

Clean-install-day was/is a dread, with a day or two to load all my stuff and lots of tweaks.
Jumping in at the deep end, GregRocker is guiding me through a downgrade of Win8 to Win7, using an ISO file.
Once mastered this tutorial is my next task.

Believe me, you're far from being on an island about the cloning/imaging tools. Prior to a couple of years ago, I knew about cloning but hadn't gotten serious about learning the methodology and researching the various cloning tools that are available for home PC users.

There are a lot of upsides to maintain a cloning and/or imaging routine for me. It provides a fast recovery from all of these scenarios:

- HDD failure
- Malicious intrusion and all its effects
- Failsafe backup in the event of user error
- Elimination of any apprehensiveness from trying new things, ie, CMD line tools, or Registry change items.

Since periodic cloning was adequate for my basic recovery needs, I delayed researching the Imaging scene until recently. I like the idea of utilizing both backup methods and I'll be imaging periodically going forward.

Next stop, "Amazon" for a 3-4 Tb USB HDD to store a few images of my Desktop and Laptop . That's one of the advantages of imaging (my take), as I can store multi-PC images on one device.

kado897 said:

An image taken after you have got Windows set up to your specifications will save you days re-installing.

. That reason alone is why it pays off to image or clone with some kind of scheduled or routine basis.

bugmeso said:

/\ /\ /\ what he said. I have been Ghosting for 20+ years and have had minimal problems. Not say without any problems but few compared to what others tell.

I did a clone today with Macrium Free...(on my wife's computer) I do maintain that also. And all looked like is was OK to me. The 1st time I saw a BOOT directory. But I did ask for it. Next I'll try an image. Some favor clone and some favor image. I will check out both.

I haven't tried the cloning tool with my Macrium boot CD but I'll use it in a couple of weeks when I clone my system HDD.

I completed my "Recovery" step today from the full-disc image that I had run earlier. I'm still using the Macrium bootable CD, haven't downloaded the Free version to my HDD yet.

- Elapsed time: 4.75 hrs. The total was right what I expected after looking at the elapsed time after 5% completed.

- I booted up the recovered HDD and all went well. I put it though my usual "post-cloning" workout to test, launched the usual items, brower, my Outlook e-mail, a few programs.

The only thing that was a little unexpected was after the POST screen, I got the old "insert bootable media....", the BIOS telling me that I needed to go back into Setup and set the Boot Priority / auto-detect the newly-restored HDD.

It wasn't any issue but I had gotten used to not seeing that screen as it doesn't appear when I'm booting up on a newly-cloned HDD.

- Recovery setup: Macrium's interface is very easy and clear, for me, to understand the Recovery setup steps. It went smooth and I'd rate their interface as a .

It's superior to Acronis from a user-ease point of view but that's just my take on it after using both imaging tools on a limited basis.