Imaging with free Macrium

   Information

This tutorial shows imaging with free Macrium Version 5.0. If you are still using Macrium Version 4.2, go to this Vimeo site where the tutorial of that version is stored.

The Video does not show the recovery part because I have no setup to screen capture it. But Keith (Kado) made this excellent recovery tutorial with text (but no sound) that he captured from a virtual partition.

   Warning

Note that the external disk to which you image must be formatted in NTFS. A disk that is formatted in Fat32 will accept an image, but the recovery programs cannot restore that image. You can, however, mount (open) a Fat32 image as VHD.

   Note

The production of the WinPE recovery CD (which is highly recommended) may take up to 3 hours because Macrium needs to download the 1.7GB WAIK (Windows Application Installation Kit). For your convenience I have uploaded a ready made .iso of the WinPE recovery disc. That can be downloaded in appr. 8 minutes which clearly beats the WAIK download. Once you downloaded and unzipped the folder, you can burn it directly to a CD with e.g. ImgBurn.

Here is the link to my Skydrive site.

Here is an alternate link from FileSwap (courtesy of Gary - Britton30)

I draw your attention to the fact that this WinPE CD can also be used to make images. That may be convenient in case you do not want to install Macrium on your PC.

This video tutorial explains the full cycle of the imaging process which is:

· Initial setups
· Image definition
· Image scheduling
· Image production

The imaging program that was used for this tutorial is free Macrium. But the basic principles are the same for other imaging programs although the user interface will be different.

This video runs for appr. 7 minutes.
There is a related thread on the Vista forum which gives a brief introduction to Macrium followed by a discussion.
You can download the free Macrium edition from here.

Note: If you have a problem with the loudness of the sound output of the video, check the "Loudness Equalization" box in your Playback device. It is under the 'Enhancements' tab.

Related Tutorials

---

• How to Create a System Image Backup in Windows 7
• How to Do a System Image Recovery in Windows 7
• How to Backup User and System Files in Windows 7
• How to Restore Backup User and System Files in Windows 7
• How to Restore your System with a Broken Windows 7 System Image
• How to Create a Bootable Rescue USB Flash Drive for Macrium Reflect

 

[joebots]

@MJF, I tired that again and again, from within Macrium free, using each version of the WinPE that is offered. The disc burned fine, but upon trying to boot from any of them, my system hangs after the "press any key to boot from CD" prompt. If I eject the disc I get the pale blue Macrium screen with nothing on it. I could at least boot from the CD I made using SIW2's disc. For now I'm just going to go back to using an older version of Acronis that I know works. I used it just this afternoon.

 

[joebots]

@WHS: I also was successful booting from WinPE iso from My Skydrive. When I tried to make an image with it today it crashed just as it began writing to my backup drive.

 

[whs]

Maybe something is wrong with the backup drive. This iso has worked 100 times. So the problem must be in your system.

 

[joebots]

Maybe so, but it worked fine with Acronis, this afternoon, and I didn't have to go crazy trying to get it to recognize my USB 3.0 ports. The main thing for me was to get a viable backup image ASAP as I just reinstalled my operating system, and I wanted to get it done before I installed a plethora of programs.

 

[whs]

Well, if Acronis works, then all is good. Acronis is a good imaging program too.

 

[mjf]

Maybe so, but it worked fine with Acronis, this afternoon, and I didn't have to go crazy trying to get it to recognize my USB 3.0 ports. The main thing for me was to get a viable backup image ASAP as I just reinstalled my operating system, and I wanted to get it done before I installed a plethora of programs.

Do you have a problem using Macrium if you use a USB 2 port. If no then it may be that your USB 3 drivers aren't being loaded. You should be able to load them manually.

 

[joebots]

Do you have a problem using Macrium if you use a USB 2 port. If no then it may be that your USB 3 drivers aren't being loaded. You should be able to load them manually.

Actually, yes, I do. I just discovered it yesterday morning. I was able to start Macrium from the WinPE iso that is on My Skydrive, and it detected my backup drive on the USB 2 port. I thought to myself "Great, I can image my drive, now. It will just be a little bit slower." Macrium went on to allow me to select the drives I needed to image, and the target drive on the USB 2.0. I gave it a name, and clicked "finish". . . it started to write to the target drive, and maybe 5 seconds later the program crashed. I turned the computer off, and tried again. Same result.

I believe Macrium doesn't like something with my hardware. I have had this system since I built it in 2009. My system specs are listed below. It's been rock solid, and well maintained. The only time it ever blue screened was when I was fighting problems with a Soundblaster Z card several months ago. That was with a Windows 7 install on a RAID-0 that lasted from December 2009 until a week ago, when I replaced the RAID-0 with a new PNY XLRS Pro 240GB SSD. I didn't want to image an install that was well over 4 years old, so I simply started fresh. In all those years I never had to restore from any of my backup images. I was just extremely lucky. The two Seagate 250GB 7200.10 drives that I RAIDed were purchased in 2007, and originally on my ASUS A8V Deluxe mainboard. They never faltered, and I used them every single day across two builds. You'd think in all that time I would have had a glitch that required restoring from an image, but it never happened.

By the way, Macrium works fine from inside of the true Windows 7 environment, after I boot the computer from the SSD. I can open up and explore my old saved images on the USB backup drive using the USB 3.0 ports. It's only when I create rescue media from Macrium itself, or use the two other solutions on this site that I have problems. The thing is, if I cannot boot from a CD, USB, or whatever, I have no way to recover from a catastrophic disk failure.

I'm sorry I got so long winded, here. It's 3:00 AM and I am beginning to ramble. Thanks for trying to help.

 

[mjf]

You're welcome even though you still have a problem. Think of 3am makes me tired.

 

[Britton30]

Joe you could have some left-over driver bit laying around causing issues. Have a look at Driver Sweeper link in my sig.

 

[joebots]

Joe you could have some left-over driver bit laying around causing issues. Have a look at Driver Sweeper link in my sig.

I'm not sure how. I just freshly installed Windows 7 on a brand new SSD. No new hardware has been introduced. If anything, I'm suspicious of the U3S6 add-on card that came with this motherboard. It uses NEC drivers for the USB 3.0 side, and Marvell drivers for the SATA III side, which I did install. They don't present any problems from within Windows 7, however.

I probably could have benefited had I used Driver Sweeper when I was having issues with a Sound Blaster Z card some months back. I had remnants of an old Soundblaster Audigy 2 PCI card all over my registry, and computer, which I tried to remove manually, but I probably missed some stuff. Creative Labs seems to have the worst uninstallers around. I never got the card to function properly, so I returned it within the 30 day window I had.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Wolfgang I have an OS that I asked Shawn about doing a system image recovery on as it has gone south or is on it's way. But that way has a limitation of only being able to do the image recovery if the drive that is bad is being repaired from a drive that is smaller than it.

Now all my Macrium images (approx. 6) are on a 500GB external and I have a C: 250GGB SSD drive.
My query is can I pick one of the images from the larger drive to repair the SSD?
Otherwise Shawn has advised a clean install and that is something I really want to avoid if possible.

 

[whs]

If the data in the images is less than 250GB (the SSD capacity), recovery should be no problem. The size of the disk on which the images reside is irrelevant - the size of the data is what counts.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

If the data in the images is less than 250GB (the SSD capacity), recovery should be no problem. The size of the disk on which the images reside is irrelevant - the size of the data is what counts.

Thanks Wolfgang I was rather hoping that would be the case

 

[bugmeso]

NEW major problem.... I have been using MR for almost a year and doing each update when advised. Now for the last week I try to clone my C drive to my F drive as I have done many times in the past. But lately I have been getting "clone failed". So, I have formatted the F drive, replaced the F drive with other H/D's I have...still no go. I even just installed a new F drive....same thing "clone failed". I now have uninstalled MR. And now I am looking for an answer, problem solver or whatever.
Possibly reinstall the a new "Free Macrium Reflect". Or search for another good cloning software program.
As I have mentioned in the past. I like the "clone" idea and always have. Although I have "imaged" in some cases, where I want install a new piece of software....and then I don't care for it. So I re-image back to before I install the new program.....then now foul, no harm done and no slush left behind.

 

[fr0zensphere]

Dear whs,

Sorry if this has already been asked and answered in this thread, or anywhere else. (I couldn't go through all 98 pages of comments.) I have a couple basic questions:

Why is my flash drive not visible in Macrium Reflect? I see on some other forums that MR intentionally does this because it doesn't want you to create images on flash drives? Hmm. But if I need to use the recovery CD to boot, and I only have 1 CD-ROM drive, then a flash drive is the most convenient choice to store an image! Or would I be able to take out the boot CD and swap in the disc containing the image once the software is loaded into memory?

In any case, is it possible to make an image on my HDD, copy it to a flash drive, and then apply the image onto the other PC from the flash drive?

Thank you!

 

[bugmeso]

Have you tried a portable external H/D? Instead of the flash drive.

 

[whs]

I have no idea why your flash drive does not work. I have made images on flash drives with no problem. But I have used large drives with 64GB and 128GB. Maybe your's is too small.

You can copy a Macrium image. That should work.

 

[fr0zensphere]

Oh really? That's odd. My flash drive is 32 GB. Smaller than yours but still definitely large enough for an image. I installed Paragon, and it detected the flash drive.

Yes, now that it's a new day, I brought an external HDD from home, and it's detected. But it's a strange problem.

 

[fr0zensphere]

Hmm, the rescue disk is not working (the WinPE one). I burned the .iso image provided in the link in your tutorial to a CD-R. When I try to boot off it, it begins to boot, the text says "Windows is loading file", the progress bar appears to go all the way across, and then it stops and nothing happens. I waited for like 5 mins. It's just frozen.

Also, the text is strangely at the bottom right of the screen, not in the middle. It was even cut off on the right until I switched to VGA input on my monitor and through the display menu forced the image to shift left as far as it could go. Any ideas on what the deal is? I'm going to make the linux disk now and see if I have better luck.

 

[whs]

Oh really? That's odd. My flash drive is 32 GB. Smaller than yours but still definitely large enough for an image. I installed Paragon, and it detected the flash drive.

Yes, now that it's a new day, I brought an external HDD from home, and it's detected. But it's a strange problem.

How much data is in the partition that you wanted to image.

But you seem to have more problems. If the WinPE iso from my OneDrive does not work, then you have either a corrupted download of the iso or the burning did not work correctly. Try ImgBurn.