Macrium utilities and tools for imaging: large capacity pen drives

I've started on the quest for backup solutions again other than simple cloning. When you have a power out, everything can go. I had one such (and my fault too) where the backup routine from Ghost 11.5
(I think) was running. The target drive had everything except boot ability. I tried fixboot and fixmbr routines on the Win7 repair disk but nothing worked.


I suppose these things are unavoidable. How can a disk image stored to a pen drive restore the
Win7 System as did the old WinXP? That allowed Win installation to refresh while leaving the
content alone.

I'll have other questions along the way but Macrium seems to be preferred at Sevenforums.
Out on the net there are 2Tb thumb drives for 9 bucks. Is this for real? It sounds unreasonable.

I have an old guide for Macrium printed to paper from 2015. What is a good step by step guide
for Macrium free version from scratch? I now have a PC I can just experiment on as I learn the
system without taking my system down

An assortment of answers: More taste, less filling. I did not see all the replies to this.
I only see one entry as I write. Will catch up on it soon.

loninappleton said:

I have an old guide for Macrium printed to paper from 2015. What is a good step by step guide...

I use Macrium Reflect Free extensively, both for W7 and over on our sister-site Ten Forums.

Bree said:

... I've lost count of the number of restores I've done since I started using Macrium... It must be well over 100 by now...

How much do you trust Macrium Reflect? - Windows 10 Forums

Note that you don't have to install Macrium on a machine in order to image it. You can also make images by booting from a Macrium recovery usb. It's not just for restoring images, it can make them too.

For a full user guide to the current version, see:

Macrium Reflect v7.2 User Guide

RolandJS said:

"Out on the net there are 2Tb thumb drives for 9 bucks. Is this for real? It sounds unreasonable."
Avoid them, almost all of them, like FakeNews, FakeViews, are bigtime Fakes, engineered to lie to you, usage will out 'em as frauds.

I have a couple older and smaller Sandisk which are budget ones. Who is making the best pen drive
for the backup function which is critical?

Paul Black said:

Hi RolandJS,



If I understand you correctly, I use AOMEI Backupper Standard and have images of my OS stored on a USB. It re-images back in about 10 minutes!

I did in fact sample AOMIE not long ago. I forget why I reverted to the trusted Norton Ghost.
One thing I noticed during a recent HD meltdown was that AOMIE apparently stores drivers
at Startup even when the program has been removed. Is this the case? I would be hard for me

to find the exact driver name.


I may have to just continue with full clone backups. I also see Clonezilla up there that runs in
in the Linux shell. Again it was a long time ago that I tried that but I've not used it since even thouhg
I still have the old cd.


Setting up partitions confuses me. I'm not a programmer. A simple clone job avoids those
things I could botch while doing the operation. It's just me.