Zero stars for Macrium

Hello all,
I have got off to a very bad start with Macrium Reflect 8 Home edition

I signed up for the trial version, received an email with following text - (where ***** is the unique registration code they supplied)


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Find out more here: Unique Registration Code - Knowledgebase 8.0 - Macrium Reflect Knowledgebase

To complete your registration and start the download, please click the following link.
Macrium Software | Error Downloading

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So far so good. I downloaded and installed the software, then used it to create a system image of my Dell e6420 (which at the moment is working just fine).

Now I want to do an experiment to see if I can restore the machine after first reformatting the hard drive.
So I went to this site

Macrium Software | Restoring a System Image with Macrium Reflect

and watched a completely useless video - which didn't cover installing on a new or reformatted disk.

I then went to the contact link at the bottom of the webpage, clicked

"Submit a technical support ticket" and got to a login or sign up page. AND I CAN'T GET PAST THIS PAGE

I can neither log in or sign up. I thought perhaps my registration code would be a password but it seems not to be, the "Forgot your password?" link sends me an email with instructions for setting a new password, which I do, but their system still won't accept it, so you can imagine that I am not too impressed with Macrium. If this is an indication of what their tech support is going to be like, then they can keep their software.

My experiment was going to be to first reformat the HDD, so it's wiped completely, and then to restore the machine to what it is now from the Macrium system image.
(What if the hard disk had failed, so that I needed to restore to a new HDD? Would that be possible - I don't know.)

But I can't begin without some tech support from Macrium, and I can't login or sign up.

Unless someone can tell me please, exactly how I should proceed now with my experiment?

Thanks for any help forthcoming,
Posslpussl

PosslPussl said:

.... exactly how I should proceed now with my experiment?

The tutorial below has screenshots from Reflect v6, but the process hasn't changed much in v7 or v8.

First you need to make the rescue USB or CD so you can boot from that to do the restore (Part Two of the tutorial). Then boot from that to be able to do the restore (Part Five).

Backup and Restore with Macrium Reflect | Tutorials

My experiment was going to be to first reformat the HDD, so it's wiped completely, and then to restore the machine to what it is now from the Macrium system image. (What if the hard disk had failed, so that I needed to restore to a new HDD? Would that be possible - I don't know.)

Yes, you can restore to a new HDD, in fact for your experiment I'd recommend doing that rather than wiping your current HDD if you have a spare HDD available. It is very easy to swap out the HDD on your Dell Latitude E6420. See page 29 of its Service Manual here:

https://downloads.dell.com/manuals/a...nual_en-us.pdf

Macrium v6 through v8 (even earlier versions) has a freeware edition with the capability of full imaging and restoration without the need to trial or purchase. If you decide later to purchase for the "full" edition, you can then just buy the registration code. I have one (1) purchased copy of the full edition for incremental backups of images on my main machine. My 2nd backup machine just has the freeware edition.

As Bree comments, there are many utubes and manuals to show the simple steps for imaging and restoring without using the Macrium help line. There are full tutorials on sevenforums here.

You must make a bootable Macrium USB disk for Restore ... this is on the drop-down menu "Other Tasks - Create Rescue Media".

And again as Bree commented, do your first restore test on another HDD, not your current fully working disk. Fully agree with your idea to test this image-restore action, as you need to trust this, but a 1st-up go is better done without risk to your curremt work disk.

Thanks for your replies Bree and ian50.
Here's where I am at the moment. I've made the Macrium rescue disk - actually I chose the .iso file option and then burned it to a DVD, the burn verified ok.
So now I have a .iso and a DVD,. and a system image of my e6420 made earlier, which is sitting on an external USB HDD.

Now I'm about to to format the e6420 HDD, and then what? I don't know how to proceed from here.

I suppose I'll have to boot from the optical drive, but then how is it going to find the system image? Where will that have to be located?
I'm puzzled - help please?

Thanks, Posslpussl

PS - ok so it might be risky attempting to recover to my existing HDD, but if the restore fails and I'm left with a dead machine, I still have the last resort option of reinstalling windows 7 from my OEM disk. That will be a pain, but with a bit of luck it won't be necessary.

Thanks SIW2 - it seems Posslpussl may have been about to do what we had advised against as yet.

@Posslpussl

Do you have another disk that you can test on, apart from your e6420 HDD ?

- - - Updated - - -

@Posslpussl

There is another non-risk way to at least examine the image that you've made so you can see that all the files etc are there.

With your USB disk with image attached to your PC, open Macrium and click the drop-down Restore menu. You'll see a choice "Explore Image". When you click that, the programme will find your new image on the USB connection, assign a drive letter and open a virtual disk of your image in Explorer for you to examine.

The programme will not let you delete or damage any of the files on this virtual disk, so don't worry unduly about that. Just satisfy yourself that all the needed files are there in your new backup image. That should help on your first go here.

When you're done, the same drop-down menu then offers "Detach Image". Click this and the virtual disk will be removed from RAM (your backup image on the USB remains untouched, of course).

Thanks for your replies SIW2 and ian50.
I tried both those method for viewing the system image, they both worked ok, the system image looks just fine.

(To create the macrium rescue disk, I chose the .iso option, then I burned the iso to a DVD with Windows Disc Image Burner.
Then I booted from that DVD and was able to look at the system image on the external HDD, as you suggested SIW2.

So now I'm ready to test this Macrium software.
But a real test would be restoring from my system image onto a brand new unformatted empty HDD. I haven't got one of those, so how to emulate one?

Does anyone know anything about DBAN?

It seems I download the iso file, either burn it to DVD or create a bootable usb using Rufus, and then boot from whichever.
And when it's finished, the HDD is completely erased and unformatted, and I'm ready to reboot with the Macrium rescue disk and my system image

Will Macrium restore onto this "new" HDD? Or am I likely to end up with a dead machine?

Comments please - is it a good idea or not?

Thanks,
Posslpussl

Thanks SIW2 for reply. I've done a successful Macrium restore onto existing HDD, I even managed to change some partition sizes in the process. (The very small system active partition - only 55MB - was preventing Windows from creating its own system image. Well its now 100MB so maybe Windows will be able to create its system image. I haven't tried that yet, in the meantime I'm sticking with Macrium)

But - I still want to know how a Macrium restore would go if I were to have a HDD failure, and had to restore to a brand new disk.
I do not want to go and buy a brand new disk and fit it to the machine, partly from cost, and partly because I'm having enough trouble with software, without messing about with hardware as well.

So my question is - how to I get my existing HDD back to the state in which it left the factory? I mean the Hard Disk factory, before it was ever installed in a machine. Ie unformatted, no partitions, no anything.

So far I've come across nothing except DBAN - any better ideas?

Thanks,
Posslpussl