Macrium Reflect Free vs Windows System Image

Here is disk management from the same unit posted earlier, except without the external hard-drive connected.



This one is the other identical Dell with a different external hard-drive connected.



This one is an HP G56 laptop with external hard-drive connected.



This one is an HP desktop with external hard-drive connected.



Note that in every case the external hard-drive shows as Active.
All of these computers will boot and/or restart regardless of whether any external hard-drive is connected or not.
I have no idea as to why the external hard-drives show as Active; every external hard-drive we own are identical Transcend 1TB; one of our Transcends is NTSF formatted and has only system images stored on it; the other Transcends are used for storing photo images; this Active Primary Partition business may be a Transcend thing.


Thanks for reading.

ignatzatsonic said:

It should be easy enough to remove the active flag using Diskpart.

What are the CONs of just leaving things as is ?

What are the PROs of removing the Active flag ?

Do I do this Diskpart business one time when external hard-drive X is connected to computer Y; and then the fix carry over to whichever computer hard-drive X may be connected to; or, will I have to do this on each and every computer with each external hard-drive ?

Thanks so much.

RolandJS said:

"...For what it is worth, if the DVD is not already in the tray and I then insert it, pressing ENTER does not respond; at this point it says to retry boot press F1, which I did and everything then worked..."
I have the same thing over here about USB-booting; if there is no USB bootable stick in at least one usb port, then there is no choice in my desktop's F12-choose-boot-device menu.

Thanks; I like your Ben Franklin quote.

ignatzatsonic said:

The only thing I see wrong is that the external I drive is marked active. The only drive that should be marked active in your case would be C.
You may have to use Diskpart to remove the active flag.

Well, I am most happy that we had this discussion about my external hard-drives showing up as Active.
As predicted, one of our computers decided to let that be a problem; funny thing is that it does not seem to affect any of the others at all.
I had to do a bit of detective work to make sure that was the culprit and it sure enough was.
If the external hard-drive was connected and the computer had been shut-down, upon starting it again, a black screen would say "operating system is missing".
I could click ctl-alt-del and it would then go ahead and start.
The silly thing would restart with no trouble at all.
So, I shut it down, unplugged the external hard-drive, let it sit a spell, and turned it on; minus the ext. hard-drive, it quickly booted and went right into Windows.
I gave it a few minutes, shut it down, waited a bit, and turned it on again; it fired right up and went right into Windows.
I shut it down again, re-connected the ext. hard-drive, and tried again; it stopped at the "operating system is missing" notice.
I hit ctl-alt-del and it booted into Windows.

So, I came to this thread on the hunt of the Diskpart information; then, I had to search for some instructions on how to use command lines; most of the help sites assume people know a lot more than they do.

I finally got it figured out and used Diskpart to make the external hard-drive Inactive.

Now the computer boots right up, with or without the external hard-drive.


All of that being said, I would like to know why all of our external hard-drives show as active regardless of which of our computers they get connected to.

All of our external hard-drives are identical 1-TB Transcend; and, if I have done anything that would make all of them show active, I have no idea what it would have been.


My logical reasoning mind assumes that the Diskpart change that I made only applies to that particular external hard-drive when it is connected to exactly the same USB port.

I have not yet experimented by trying any of the other USB ports to see if it remains inactive or shows as active.

Also, I doubt the fix remains with the external hard-drive when it gets connected to a different computer.

Does my reasoning seem correct ?


Thanks so much for you guys patience and understanding and all the help in getting this situation resolved.


This thread sure has wandered astray from my initial question, but that was definitely to my advantage..

Thanks for reading.