Macrium Reflect Restore problems

payware (and some freeware) offer a few more features - such as reflect can save and restore your image files to/from a network location, for example.

and do you need payware, now that you have established that macrium reflect free works for you?

Thanks again guys, Hopalong that looks like a good strategy I think I will start out by following that until I know if I want anything else.

Hopalong X said:

.......My storage hard drive is 640GB internal so room is not a problem so why not use it....
Mike

While what backup software one would use and what strategy one would employ can depend upon the individual needs, his usage, requirements, whims and fancies, by virtue of the fact that an internal HDD is always on and hence likely to fail much earlier than an external HDD which is plugged in/run only when necessary, cannot be disputed.

Whether internal or external, catastrophic failures can always happen and this totally unpredictable happening can by no means be cited to put them on an equal footing for the backup. One has to only consider what will happen in the normal course.

I always retain one copy of the latest backup on another partition of the internal drive while the external holds atleast the last three. If one fails, I always have one on the other.

For the simple reason that the reads and writes on a CD/DVD/BD can be questionable, these should be avoided. Do not believe that your recovery CD is always going to read right.:) Make an ISO image of it and back it up too on your external drive if you are not using boot from ISOs method. The bootable pendrive - yes, I periodically check that I can run the recovery module from it so that at no time I am left in the lurch.

Do not believe that your recovery CD is always going to read right. Make an ISO image of it and back it up too on your external drive if you are not using boot from ISOs method.

Good idea

I encountered a similar error message to the OP.

No problem, I have my CD which boots fine. Except it will only give me the option of looking at drive c: or drive d: (DVDRW) for the relevant image.

That doesn't help, the image is on a logical drive (j:).

I've managed to restore all my other partitions but I'm stuck where c: is concerned......I did try and use the Macrium support forum but they seem to only want to give advice to people who've bought the product.

Fair enough but it doesn't help the rest of us!

I copied the image over onto the c: drive and tried again but no joy.

Any advice?

Many thanks.

A couple of very important things to keep in mind before creating a system backup. One, you want a second internal or external hard drive. (DVD's are too slow and not as handy for an entire system backup). Secondly, you want to make certain that your C: Drive is free of infections before installing your backup software. Run two or three different anti-malware programs (malwarebytes.org) is a good place to start. If you find infections, don't bother to clean them. Reinstall your system, your programs, and get all Windows Updates manually (a much faster process then waiting for them to automatically download and install). Then make a Master copy of your C: Drive on a second hard drive.

I do this every week with computers around the world, Macrium is a good free product, but you do have to insert the recovery disk into your optical drive and boot to that disk.

On some computers, the boot screen will give you options to press a key and choose which device you want to boot from. Other's will have you press a key to enter BIOS to change your boot order. If you're lucky like me, I have an Acer that gives me 5 seconds to choose one of three keys, F12 allows me to choose which device I want to boot from, in this case, it would be my Optical Drive containing the Recovery Disk.

That's a lot of information I know, but as time goes by, this text tutorial will be convenient for you and others who are delving into the most important task all computer owners should do on a weekly, if not daily, basis. Backing-up the entire computer system.

Niceget said:

A couple of very important things to keep in mind before creating a system backup. One, you want a second internal or external hard drive. (DVD's are too slow and not as handy for an entire system backup). Secondly, you want to make certain that your C: Drive is free of infections before installing your backup software. Run two or three different anti-malware programs (malwarebytes.org) is a good place to start. If you find infections, don't bother to clean them. Reinstall your system, your programs, and get all Windows Updates manually (a much faster process then waiting for them to automatically download and install). Then make a Master copy of your C: Drive on a second hard drive.

I do this every week with computers around the world, Macrium is a good free product, but you do have to insert the recovery disk into your optical drive and boot to that disk.

On some computers, the boot screen will give you options to press a key and choose which device you want to boot from. Other's will have you press a key to enter BIOS to change your boot order. If you're lucky like me, I have an Acer that gives me 5 seconds to choose one of three keys, F12 allows me to choose which device I want to boot from, in this case, it would be my Optical Drive containing the Recovery Disk.

That's a lot of information I know, but as time goes by, this text tutorial will be convenient for you and others who are delving into the most important task all computer owners should do on a weekly, if not daily, basis. Backing-up the entire computer system.

Thank you for that but a generic copy-and-paste from a tutorial isn't going to be of much use I'm afraid.

Maybe I wasn't clear in describing my problem and I apologise if that is the case.

From the CD Recovery Disc, how do I get the program to "see" my drive j: which is where my c: drive image and xml file are saved?