Imaging with free Macrium

Thank you Thelma
It's just a tad confusing in the source and destination part creating an image
It's also the same in the restoring the image it seems

But once you get past that it's pretty easy default settings are good
I've been restoring these images at boot so it's a x-p like display of the reflect program recovery not shown here and yes for some odd reason the source and destination is reversed so that does need to be changed otherwise you'd over wright the image with what ever is on the messed up hdd/ sdd install

Luckily I do know the difference in source and destination

The second image I created
I used image disk instead of image this partition because there was the 100mb system reserved partition as well as C drive
I believe that is the way it's supposed to be done instead of the imaging each separate partition

First image there is only C drive so I could use mini tool to reduce the size of the C drive partition and just create an image of that partition all that you have to do is make sure that partition is the only one that has a check mark on it click on it and use the Actions listing under it and use image this partition follow the next screens... and search for and select the destination partition or disk folder where the new image will be place in.

Both these images are for a nuclear system restore kind of last resort to avoid reinstalling windows from scratch
The second one was on a system I've used for ever so it's not quite as clean as the clean install and loading programs/ updates and not a lot of other third party stuff so the image was only about 60-75gbs space used on a 100gb partition.

Indeed if you get stuck some where please say where :)

It's really quite consistent Mike. The Source is where you are copying from and the destination is where you are copying to.

So for a backup the source is the disk and the destination is the folder for the image file.


and for a restore the source is the image file and the destination is the disk where you are restoring to.


Oh and BTW there is a button on the left of the main screen which sets up a backup of all partitions Windows needs.

Mike and Keith, :):), thanks booth for your explications. This I am definitely going to try in the new year.

As I start with all this from absolute zero, I always first write down all the important words, even things like disk and drive and system and partition. Look up and write behind them the full explication. Then understand the meaning of what they do in the hole picture. Took me ages to find out what actually a motherboard is, now I know.

And from there on I read the instructions and explication, it works well for me. Moots confusing for me are still files and zip files and coping or sending or storing or finding them back.

For a long time I always confused Internet explorer with Windows explorer, an apple and a pear, but when you are dyslexic it looks the same. I have never really done a system backup and find Macrium Reflect terribly complicated, but I will get it under control I am sure .

Step by step, and with the help of some friends

Do understand what a backup is the other way around from a restore.

It's all very interesting!

Yep I used the image disk on the Acer image because the disks were close to the same size and it is a fail safe restore anyway
Once I get a 1-2 tb hdd and a new enclosure I'll get into space saving a little more :)

For what it's worth Thelma these were my first 2 images so don't feel like the lone ranger :)

I have V5 on most of my PCs. I have V6 (free) on one and I think the default check boxes are a little more confusing. What I have noticed is that running the V6 restore pe 5 CD takes a long time to get to an interface screen. However, the V6 restore has always gone fine.

Kind of interesting I tried to image win-10 pro last night and I did not get the prompt to create the recovery disk first after opening the program for the first time as I did on win-7 pro and home premium :/

Wonder what's up with that ?

Is this installed on Win10 or from bootable media? If the former it should prompt you.

Yes reflect was installed on win-10 but never gave the prompt

I selected create recovery cd but it seemed like it was writing the entire image to the cd so there was no way it would write a 75gb partition to it
There was a driver messed up it said I uninstalled on that and gave up for the night so I might try again tonight
I also uninstall reflect and see If I can cleanup it's install a little so nothing is remaining
But yes it acted differently for an odd reason I suppose it might be because the hdd I was using was connected with usb instead of sata like the first in win-7 ?

Might have to wait until I get another 2.5" hdd to image too this one was a larger 300gb hdd.

I image to USB attached drives with no problems. It sounds like your install or at least the PE part was corrupted. I always create my recovery "disk" on a USB stick. It seems more reliable than DVD. There have been some bug fixes recently in the Win10 PE creation area so it may be a bit flakey.