Solved Image your system with free Macrium

[whs]

The picture will tell you the story.

 

[bigmck]

I have used Macrium for over a year. It was storing my system and data partitions fine. But when I suddenly needed to RESTORE the system back, it explained me instead why it was not possible. Well, in that type of software, exactly this operation is crucial. All else is secondary. If that does not work, the whole piece of software is useless. That is why the question I am asking is: Have you ever RESTORED? The sofware that gets approval in that particular point from good many people can possibly be of any use.

I have restored my OS multiple times with no problem. Macrium is the best there is.

 

[kado897]

Hi 0jh and welcome to Seven Forums. Yes I have restored Windows many times using Macrium. It would help if you could say what the message you got was.

 

[alan10]

To answer your initial question - Macrium has never failed me.

Regardless of whether using Macrium or any other imaging software,
you are NOT able to restore an image to an unbootable system unless you can boot it
You really need to prepare in advance by having a Bootable Recover CD or Flash Drive holding software that can restore an image to the HDD/SSD.

This will ensure that if your HDD breaks down, you can instantly replace it with an new and totally empty HDD/SSD and restore your backup image and solve all your problems - ASSUMING you keep your images on a separate HDD, preferably an external HDD which may survive a small fire in the main computer case.

It is very advisable to ensure that your recovery device can actually boot into the system before you need to actually restore.
Test this whilst your computer still works,
because NOW is the time to use the internet and ask for help if your BIOS needs configuring.

I expected Macrium Reflect to restart into wPE or Linux so as to replace the partition but nothing like that happend.

I am disturbed by your uncertainty of "wPE or Linux"

When running under Windows there is NO WAY of Macrium using Linux.
Instead :-
If restoring the system partition C:\ you may a restart and then "Macrium-RAM" will delete C:\ and restore C:\ - where "Macrium-RAM" is my term for executables that Macrium places in RAM before the restart.
If restoring a non-system partition, such as D:\ or the 2 GB test suggested in post #699, there will probably not be any restart unless that partition holds a file which Windows considers to be "in use".

Your final test to prove readiness for disaster is the use of your Boot Recovery CD/Flash to actually restore your 2 GB test partition. This should prove that you have all the USB3 drivers and anything else which just possibly might be needed for your specific computer.

If you are using USB3 then Linux CD may well fail,
but the WinPE is much more likely to succeed on first attempt,
and if WinPE fails it is feasible to add the specific drivers that are needed - ASSUMING you do it now whilst the computer works.

All the above assumes that your images are valid.
It is advisable to consider your backup incomplete unless you have validated it upon creation,
and personally I prefer to precede restoration with a validate to be sure the backup file has not been over-written since creation, but I have never yet encountered this problem.

 

[0pTicaL]

I just noticed version 5.1.5496.0 is out with GPT support and it allows users to create Windows PE Rescue Media? Are my eyes tricking me?

*edit* - nvm, still requires a long download


Where can I find the winPE image for 5.1 or does the one for 5.0 work with 5.1? I remember downloading the winPE image from here a while back ago…

 

[LittleJay]

Where can I find the winPE image for 5.1 or does the one for 5.0 work with 5.1? I remember downloading the winPE image from here a while back ago…

Have a look at the first page of this tuturial. whs was generous enough to provide a link to his skydrive where you can downlaod the winPE image.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/73828-imaging-free-macrium.html

 

[whs]

If you don't find it in the midst of the tutorial, here is the Skydrive link for the .iso - and it works with older and newer versions.

 

[0pTicaL]

Little Jay, whs thanks for the reply.

I did a test image on my HP laptop, it has two 5400rpm hdds and I make a backup (85GB) onto the 2nd hdd. I am currently in the recovery process and it's taking a very long time, it's been over 30mins and it's only 45% finished. I am still using Acronis 2010 (the last known stable version I know of) and it does not take as long.

Was there something I missed during the image creation process? I'm trying to move away from Acronis as I do not know which version is stable that supports GPT.

 

[alan10]

Little Jay, whs thanks for the reply.

I did a test image on my HP laptop, it has two 5400rpm hdds and I make a backup (85GB) onto the 2nd hdd. I am currently in the recovery process and it's taking a very long time, it's been over 30mins and it's only 45% finished.

Not enough information.

Is 85 GB the size of the *.mrimg image backup file ?
How does that size compare with the Acronis *.tib image backup files ?
By "Recovery Process" do you mean you are using the Macrium Reflect WinPE Boot Rescue CD to RESTORE the system drive ?

N.B. Macrium and Acronis use different terminology,
but they have similar capabilities by different names.
The backup :-
can ignore free space with all its deleted files and is faster ;
OR it can include all Free space with all its deleted files and takes much longer.

 

[whs]

Appr. 1 hour for 85GBs sounds a bit slow. But I cannot really tell. All my systems are on SSDs and I image to eSata or USB3 attached fast spinners. That takes less than 10 minutes for appr. 30GB (my data is on another partition).

But the time it takes to make an image should not really matter a lot because you can run it in the background and do other things in the meantime.

 

[kado897]

One hour is about right for 85GB if the backup device is USB2 attached.

 

[whs]

Keith, if I understood that right, they were imaging to an internal 5400RPM HDD. But 1 hour may still be right because of all the traffic on the Sata bus and the slow disks.

 

[kado897]

You may be right Wolfgang. I don't have any experience of SATA to SATA internal drives. The USB2 drives I use are limited by the USB transfer rate.

 

[0pTicaL]

Appr. 1 hour for 85GBs sounds a bit slow. But I cannot really tell. All my systems are on SSDs and I image to eSata or USB3 attached fast spinners. That takes less than 10 minutes for appr. 30GB (my data is on another partition).

But the time it takes to make an image should not really matter a lot because you can run it in the background and do other things in the meantime.

The recovery process took 2hrs 48mins. That is way too long.

Not enough information.

Is 85 GB the size of the *.mrimg image backup file ?
How does that size compare with the Acronis *.tib image backup files ?
By "Recovery Process" do you mean you are using the Macrium Reflect WinPE Boot Rescue CD to RESTORE the system drive ?

N.B. Macrium and Acronis use different terminology,
but they have similar capabilities by different names.
The backup :-
can ignore free space with all its deleted files and is faster ;
OR it can include all Free space with all its deleted files and takes much longer.

– mrimg file is 58.4GB
– in Acronis I can choose compression ratio
– Yes, I am using the WinPE Rescue ISO burned to CD that whs was nice enough to share

Somehow I'm thinking I did not ignore free space and deleted files, but my mrimg file is only 58.4GB and with the WinPE recovery disc I did not notice any recovery options.

You may be right Wolfgang. I don't have any experience of SATA to SATA internal drives. The USB2 drives I use are limited by the USB transfer rate.

One hour is about right for 85GB if the backup device is USB2 attached.

Here's the funny thing, it was actually faster when I used a 1TB external USB 3.0 drive for recovery (took ~47mins) and the drive was connected to a USB 2.0 port because the laptop does not have USB 3.0 so transfer speed was limited by bus.

Don't know why SATA to SATA is slower, very weird…

 

[kado897]

My C drive is around 90GB. It creates an image of around 40GB and takes about 55 minutes to a usb2 attached drive. I would guess that Wolfgang is correct about the cause of your slowness.

 

[0pTicaL]

My C drive is around 90GB. It creates an image of around 40GB and takes about 55 minutes to a usb2 attached drive. I would guess that Wolfgang is correct about the cause of your slowness.

That's why I decided to copy the mrimg to my internal SATA drive, hoping the recovery time will be faster but it ended up taking almost 3hrs.

 

[whs]

The recovery process took 2hrs 48mins. That is way too long.

That is definitely too long. But if I read that right, that was not on the system you specified in your user profile. The slowest recovery I ever had on a modest laptop was about 30 minutes.

 

[kado897]

Hmm. I wonder if there are problems with the disks.

 

[alan10]

Somehow I'm thinking I did not ignore free space and deleted files, but my mrimg file is only 58.4GB and with the WinPE recovery disc I did not notice any recovery options.

Here's the funny thing, it was actually faster when I used a 1TB external USB 3.0 drive for recovery (took ~47mins) and the drive was connected to a USB 2.0 port because the laptop does not have USB 3.0 so transfer speed was limited by bus.

Don't know why SATA to SATA is slower, very weird…

The free space and compression options are determined when you create the backup,
not when you restore.

The WinPE Recovery Disc however can create backups and may well allow options for the creation.

SATA to SATA is very fast for me.
My 55 GB SSD has 11.4 GB in use
Macrium produced 6.13 GB *.mrimg image backup in 244 Seconds on my secondary internal HDD
and even more amazing
it takes only 58 seconds to compare that 6.13 GB plus another 0.5 GB of a two subsequent differential files
with the 11.4 GB in the current SSD,
and produce a third differential of only 164 MB.

I find it suspicious that SATA to USB2 is faster than SATA to SATA.
N.B. Some USB3 drives claim to gracefully fall back to USB2 speed when on a USB2 port.
Some perhaps are less graceful and fall back to USB1.

I suggest to test SATA to SATA you copy a very large file from your system HDD to the backup HDD,
and measure with a stop watch - or a sundial

P.S.
It took about 3 minutes for the WinPE Rescue to read the 6.13 + 0.5 + 0.164 GB and restore my SSD.

 

[0pTicaL]

That is definitely too long. But if I read that right, that was not on the system you specified in your user profile. The slowest recovery I ever had on a modest laptop was about 30 minutes.

Would it have anything to do with me deleting the volume beforehand? I wanted to test if the program works on a empty volume so I popped the Windows 7 install disc and deleted the volume before I performed a recovery.

Something I didn't mention, when I booted off the WinPE disc it asks me to load drivers, are there any drivers that need to be loaded before the recovery process?

Hmm. I wonder if there are problems with the disks.

Could be a possibility.

I just imaged c: again to my secondary internal HDD and it took 22mins. Approx ~85GB and the resulting mrimg is 58.3GB.