About to use Macrium

[EchoX860]

I did the whole "diskpart" thing and am now installing SP1. My question is, would it be better to install SP1, as well as my Programs, THEN use Macrium. I'm reading the tutorial now, and I was curious on which is better. Here is what I currently have installed

Norton AV (latest Updates)
Comodo Firewall (latest Updates)
SP1 (in progress)

Is it better to do it there, or install my other programs first (CCleaner, Defraggler, among others)

 

[SIW2]

I would make an image after setting up and installing everything.

If/When you muck something up in the future - put the image back on.

Macrium is fast - so if you are the cautious type- you could do one now as well - before installing SP1 - in case that goes belly up - not likely though.

 

[pparks1]

I image right after install, activation and windows update installations. This way, I can, if I want, snap back to a clean vanilla install and start from scratch.

Then, periodically, I run an image so that I can restore from some type of disaster quick and easy and get back to where I was if I chose to do so.

You can probably not have too many images, disk space is relatively cheap.

 

[Mark Phelps]

I'm probably overly cautions as I recently completely reinstalled a Win 7 PC from scratch -- and made eight MR backups in the process. There was a LOT of customization involved, which took hours and hours to do.

So basically, once I got a bunch of stuff done, not wanting to redo it again, I made a backup.

Now that I've done the complete reinstall, along with reactivation, I'm saving only the most recent backup.

And while it sounds like a lot of time to spend 10 minutes doing each backup, that was after doing several hours of work each time. So, in all, I wasted about an hour -- not much when you consider I've spent most of the last five days working on this!

Also -- one thing to know about with MR. If you have the paid version and you use the option to add the WinPE Recovery Boot option, when you do a subsequent restore, your PC will NOT boot. You will then be able to boot into the MR recovery mode and repair the boot -- but it will then wipe out the MR recovery boot option in the process.

I've seen this happen twice now and can confirm that it is a "bug" in how it works. So, when you download the WinPE file, be sure to save it off somewhere because you can only download it once for free. Also, be sure to burn the WinPE boot disk. Comes in very handy to do repairs.

 

[kado897]

I
Also -- one thing to know about with MR. If you have the paid version and you use the option to add the WinPE Recovery Boot option, when you do a subsequent restore, your PC will NOT boot. You will then be able to boot into the MR recovery mode and repair the boot -- but it will then wipe out the MR recovery boot option in the process.

I've seen this happen twice now and can confirm that it is a "bug" in how it works. So, when you download the WinPE file, be sure to save it off somewhere because you can only download it once for free. Also, be sure to burn the WinPE boot disk. Comes in very handy to do repairs.

That's useful to know. I didn't take that option. I have the WinPE version on a bootable USB and I have a backup of the of the file.

 

[Mark Phelps]

Update: I reported the "bug" to Macrium support -- and they claimed that I must have messed with the "active" flag to cause this problem.

But ... I did NOT mess with any flags, and I've seen this happen now on two very different PCs, with different setups and different versions of Win7.

In BOTH cases, however, they had the MR Boot option installed.

So, as far as I am concerned, this is a real "bug".

 

[SIW2]

You may be right, Mark.

Mahmoud (easybcd) has warned macrium winre boot can cause bcd issues.

 

[EchoX860]

Alright. Everything is set, I have 14gb of used HD space. I put in one DVD, and it says it's completed. Do I need another DVD, or did it put all 14gb on one 7gb DVD.

I hit "Create a backup image of Entire Disk or Selected Partitions"
I left everything a default. Compression was Medium, Backup type was Full. I hit "verify" though.

 

[SledgeDG]

If it didn't request another DVD then the whole backup must have fit.
50% compression seems plausible to me (my ~290GB Disc backed up into a ~150GB mrimg file.
The over all compression of course depends on the kind of files you have. But if you reach a border line like you (the backup just fits on 1 DVD) it might be opportune to set the compression ratio to max.
At 14 GB the time factor isn't that significant yet.
If you're unsure,if the operation finished OK, just start Macrium and check the log file. And if that doesn't convince you, mount the image and browse through it folder by folder

-DG

 

[EchoX860]

Seems to be working. One last question, if I never need to use this. I just pop the DVD in, and it'll work

 

[SledgeDG]

I leave the answer to a more experienced Macrium user.
I have the image on an external hard drive and have to boot from a linux based cd/DVD first.
So I don't know if your DVD is boot able and contains this linux boot block or not.

-DG

 

[mickey megabyte]

it should be ok at that sort of size - especially if you haven't saved the swap and possibly hibernation files along with the image.

there's only one real way to find out though!

you can't trust a backup program until you know it works.

maybe now is a good time to put it to the test?

 

[kado897]

The backup DVD is not bootable you need to create a Macrium recovery DVD to boot from. In other tasks in MR click create a rescue CD and follow the steps in the wizard. It should not be the same DVD you made the backup to. I would suggest that after you create one test that you can boot from it.

 

[mjf]

Alright. Everything is set, I have 14gb of used HD space. I put in one DVD, and it says it's completed. Do I need another DVD, or did it put all 14gb on one 7gb DVD.

I hit "Create a backup image of Entire Disk or Selected Partitions"
I left everything a default. Compression was Medium, Backup type was Full. I hit "verify" though.

The need for a separate Macrium boot disk has been answered. The linux boot disk works fine for me and most others I gather. So I suggest you make one and check that it boots ok.
You can also use the Macrium pe capability that comes with the Hiren's Boot CD (V13). But the linux boot CD/DVD should be fine.

I gather you are backup up to DVDs (DL at that?). Most people agree that DVDs are not a good image backup medium. A relatively cheap external HDD would be better.

 

[kado897]

Alright. Everything is set, I have 14gb of used HD space. I put in one DVD, and it says it's completed. Do I need another DVD, or did it put all 14gb on one 7gb DVD.

I hit "Create a backup image of Entire Disk or Selected Partitions"
I left everything a default. Compression was Medium, Backup type was Full. I hit "verify" though.

The need for a separate Macrium boot disk has been answered. The linux boot disk works fine for me and most others I gather. So I suggest you make one and check that it boots ok.
You can also use the Macrium pe capability that comes with the Hiren's Boot CD (V13). But the linux boot CD/DVD should be fine.

I gather you are backup up to DVDs (DL at that?). Most people agree that DVDs are not a good image backup medium. A relatively cheap external HDD would be better.

I totally agree that HDD is preferable. Also I had problems with the linux rescue disk not seeing my HDD reliably. The WinPE one is much better.

 

[EchoX860]

Umm I don't know what any of that means. But to test it, I'm put it in, and it had me assign it a Drive Letter "I", Do I just click and drag the folders that are in the Macrium backup to my Local Disk folder since in my Macrium backup there are the same folders that are in that folder "Program Files" "Program Files x86" and so on.

 

[SIW2]

Now I can't understand what you are saying.

I would guess - as you say "it" assigned a letter - that you have mounted an image you already made?

You can copy anything you like out of the mounted image - if that is the question.

No point in copying out stuff you already have - you would only do that to replace something you had damaged or deleted.

 

[mickey megabyte]

also Echo, if you tell us exactly which bits you don't understand, maybe we can help you to.

 

[kado897]

Umm I don't know what any of that means. But to test it, I'm put it in, and it had me assign it a Drive Letter "I", Do I just click and drag the folders that are in the Macrium backup to my Local Disk folder since in my Macrium backup there are the same folders that are in that folder "Program Files" "Program Files x86" and so on.

Please read this tutorial by whs and view the video.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/73828-imaging-free-macrium.html?filter[2]=Backup%20Restore