Image your system with free Macrium

alan10 · 14 Sep 2011

I always use the randomly allocated default name which is reasonably consistent no matter how it is viewed.

Your chosen and specified file name appears as such with Windows explorer and sundry file managers,
but there are some image file selection tools in Macrium which may use the random default name,
and this makes life confusing.

Your hardware looks unusual :-
Disc 0 is maxxed out with 4 primary partitions, unless it is GPT
Disc 2 has no primary partition and 3 logical partitions on Disc 2.

I do not see how the above would cause a big slow down, but it has potential.

Yumi appears to be associated with Linux.
Free Macrium 4.2 has no WinPE but offers Linux.

Linux based drivers do not perform as well as Windows drivers, and may lack compatibility with your hardware.

When I used Acronis I found that restoring C:\ from an image backup took a similar time to the creation for images on a FAT32 partition,
but took perhaps 4 times as long if the backup was on a NTFS partition.
I deduced that Acronis used Linux drivers that were tolerably compatible with my hardware, but had massive CPU processing overheads when reading NTFS.

I do not know whether you are using Macrium original Linux drivers,
or whether YUMI is interposing its own.
Whatever the Linux, this could be significantly slower than "native Windows" in reading NTFS backup files and writing to your hardware.

I can raise questions but not give answers - sorry.

Alan

xxxdannyxxx · 14 Sep 2011

Interesting comments guys. Thanks

I don't think the disk configuration is an issue the reason for the four primaries on disk 1 was just for ease, I could I suppose change 2 at least to an extended partition but see no value really.The disk 2 is only used for backups so there was no need to apply primary partitions and logical gives me flexibility to create more if needed.
I see the point your making with YUMI but its my understanding lots of people use the multiboot app to add the recovery distro to the usb.
So like you say more questions than answers.
To cure my curiosity im going to move that image to the internal drive and run it again now I have a windows image as backup, see what happens

Danny

mjf · 14 Sep 2011

Again.
Macrium can be slow to reimage and is dependent on the size of the partition not just the imaged data.
Try an experiment if you like but don't just use tiny partitions.

Edit: to save endless posts.
I thought your main concern was reimage time???

Is your external HDD the one with one extended partition, 3 logicals?? Why do this as opposed to 3 primary partitions.
I don't know if this would add some additional overhead. The logicals within an extended partition are chained.

essenbe · 14 Sep 2011

Danny, it's been a while since I restored an image. I agree that the name should be shosen by Macrium and left that way, when doing the image, you come to a point where you can choose advanced options. One of the advanced options is comments where you can enter any comments you would like. During the restore procedure it will ask if you want to restore the MBR and the next screen is whether it is to be an active partition. Due to the fact I don't have a 100MB system reserve I choose no to the MBR and just restore C and make it active. I am assuming that asking if you want to restore the MBR is asking if you want to restore the system reserve. If that is true, you can restore the entire disk in one restore process. But, I really don't know as I don't use it.

xxxdannyxxx · 14 Sep 2011

mjf said:

Again.
Macrium can be slow to reimage and is dependent on the size of the partition not just the imaged data.
Try an experiment if you like but don't just use tiny partitions.

I do get your point and I'm not disputing it.I only started using Macrium a few months ago so it was just a shock it took that long to restore.All I can say is thank goodness I didn't just have 1 500gig partition.
I'm going to do a clean install tomorrow anyway so I'm just testing now but I ran the restore from a CD instead (same image)with the same result.I quit after half an hour at 5%

Yes my only concern is image time.I do quite a bit of playing so like to have an image I can boot quick from.
Will have a look at that disk though maybe primary drives would be faster I'm not sure

essenbe said:

Danny, it's been a while since I restored an image. I agree that the name should be shosen by Macrium and left that way, when doing the image, you come to a point where you can choose advanced options. One of the advanced options is comments where you can enter any comments you would like. During the restore procedure it will ask if you want to restore the MBR and the next screen is whether it is to be an active partition. Due to the fact I don't have a 100MB system reserve I choose no to the MBR and just restore C and make it active. I am assuming that asking if you want to restore the MBR is asking if you want to restore the system reserve. If that is true, you can restore the entire disk in one restore process. But, I really don't know as I don't use it.

Yes that makes sense. I would only want to do that though if I was having boot issues.In future if I use Macrium I will image the sysres after a clean install on its own then only image the C:/ partition, that way I can restore C:/ without having to worry about sysres which should never change anyway.

Danny

alan10 · 14 Sep 2011

If you do not also have a validated image of sysres then sysres is certain to be destroyed on your next disaster ! !

essenbe · 14 Sep 2011

Alan, I think you place too much faith in validation. Validation only means it is validated at the time you run it. I had the paid version of Acronis. I validated the backup each time I ran one. I consistantly received the message that the image was corrupted on restoration. For that reason, I do still validate the image, but put little faith in the validation. And I no longer have Acronis' paid version. But, I have never had that problem with Macrium.

mjf · 14 Sep 2011

Macrium stores backup sets. I always include the system reserved (100MB) as a partition in the set. When you pick the image set to restore just don't this partition in the set to restore.
It's a nuisance but for a single boot OS the system reserved can be rebuilt.

essenbe · 14 Sep 2011

The question about transfer speed came up. I have tests on different hard drives I have. Both USB's are the same drive, the eSATA is a different hard drive. These are the speeds I get. YMMV

Image your system with free Macrium-esata-usb-3-2.png

alan10 · 15 Sep 2011

essenbe said:

Alan, I think you place too much faith in validation. Validation only means it is validated at the time you run it. I had the paid version of Acronis. I validated the backup each time I ran one. I consistantly received the message that the image was corrupted on restoration. For that reason, I do still validate the image, but put little faith in the validation. And I no longer have Acronis' paid version. But, I have never had that problem with Macrium.

No, you misunderstood me. My faith is adequate but not excessive ! !

I ensure my backup is validated when it is created and should it ever fail validation I will make another backup. But never had a Macrium backup fail.

I do not validate before restoring.
I am confidant that if there is an error in the image file the hash checksum will signal corruption and the restoration will abort.
I readily accept that an aborted restoration is a disaster, but that is why I keep a few dozen of the latest image files on my secondary internal drive, and occasionally copy some to an external drive.

If you make a backup of a small partition you can attempt restoration to unallocated space.
If you use a binary file editor to first change the data in the image file I am reasonably confidant that Macrium restoration will abort.
I was merely responding to
"with no integrity check before or after"
which suggested a possibly concern that restoration had been corrupt but without warning.

Alan