Can I move a HDD image to another HDD? And a few more questions...

leuce · 08 Feb 2016

whs said:

Macrium images can be moved. Windows images can also be moved, but you cannot find them any more because there is no browse function during the recovery. And you can make an image of an image. Just mount the VHD. See here how it's done...

Thanks, that answers just about all of my questions.

Bertison said:

Are Drive D and Drive F actually separate Hard drives, or partitions on one disk?

Sorry, I did not realise that this was important information. Drive C is an SSD. Drive D, E and F are partitions on a separate internal hard drive (5400 rpm, 2 TB). I also have external hard drives that I can use (USB 3).

The reason why I originally created the image on drive D was because I thought it would take much longer on drive F, and it was 5 AM after no sleep at all that night. But after taking a nap, I realised that I'm wasting valuable space on drive D (the fast end of the drive) and that it would actually make more sense to store the image on drive F (or... on an external drive).

I wonder if creating an image directly onto the external drive (USB 3) will be noticeably slower (or faster?) than creating it on the internal hard drive. I always thought that internal is faster than external.

EDIT: whs was posting whilst I was typing. Follow his advice.

Yes, I think that's a good call.

leuce · 08 Feb 2016

I do have two more questions:

Is the Macrium recovery disk generic, or does it fit a specific image? In other words, do I need to create a recovery disk for every image, or can I use a single recovery disk for all images?

And: can I create a recovery disk later (or again, if I've lost my original recovery disk)?

Thanks.

mitchell65 · 08 Feb 2016

leuce said:

I do have two more questions:

Is the Macrium recovery disk generic, or does it fit a specific image? In other words, do I need to create a recovery disk for every image, or can I use a single recovery disk for all images?

And: can I create a recovery disk later (or again, if I've lost my original recovery disk)?

Thanks.

The Macrium Recovery disc will restore from any Macrium backup but the latest version of Macrium requires the latest version of the Restore disc. Older restore discs are not compatible with the latest version of the backup software.
You can create a new Restore disc at any time, just check the "other tasks" tag in Macrium

leuce · 08 Feb 2016

mitchell65 said:

The Macrium Recovery disc will restore from any Macrium backup, but the latest version of Macrium requires the latest version of the Restore disc. Older restore discs are not compatible with the latest version of the backup software. You can create a new Restore disc at any time, just check the "other tasks" tag in Macrium.

Thanks for this helpful answer.

mitchell65 · 08 Feb 2016

Just one other point. When you create a backup you have the opportunity of veryfying the image. This is well worth doing just in case the backup gets corrupted during compilation.
Incidently I have one restore disc that I use on four different Win 7 machines.
I think reading through this thread again that we can safely say that overall Macrium Reflect is the favoured backup software.

ThrashZone · 08 Feb 2016

Well that's news I thought the WinPE recovery media was only good for the machine it was created on :/

mitchell65 · 08 Feb 2016

You had me worried there for a minute or two! I was sure that I had used the same recovery disc on all my machines but thought I would double check.
I keep a dedicated Ext HD for all my backups. It has the dedicated drive letter "Y". This is recognised on all four machines as the Y Drive. I tend to give external HD's a dedicated letter near the end of the alphabet to save Windows changing the letter everytime I have a card reader in use. This way it can have the same drive letter on all machines. The Y Drive has four folders one for each of the machines. I tried the recovery disc in my main machine with the Y drive attached and the recovery disc found the backup folder and files for the main machine. I then attached the Y drive to my laptop and used the same recovery disc. This time it found the folder and backup files for the laptop.
So I was happy that it did work OK. The only point I would make is that all four machines have the latest version of Macrium Reflect and the recovery disc is the new version that is compatible to that version! I don't know if the same applies to the older versions.

ThrashZone · 08 Feb 2016

Nothing wrong with having extra copies :)
After my disk burner eat my 7 pro disk I don't trust it anymore or disks for that matter as the only way to recover or install anything.

mitchell65 · 08 Feb 2016

I have in fact got three copies of the Restore disc, I just had to be sure that it didn't matter which one I used, they would all be interchangeable!

remm · 08 Feb 2016

I was also surprised back when, to find the Macrium WinPE recovery (which I created on a memory stick) worked on both my laptops (Toshiba and Acer) and not just on the one it was created on. Incidentally, it was the same for my Paragon recovery stick... so I get the feeling that's how they are in general.

IAC I can't believe older recovery media won't work with BU images made from newer versions of the program! Not coding in backwards compatibility seems ridiculously stupid for a BU program!! How many people are going to discover this at the worst possible time!?!! Guess I better find out if I updated MR after I created my last recovery sticks!

(And herein lies the benefit of reading threads even when you don't think there is anything new for you to learn.)