Solved Image your system with free Macrium

[mjf]

I verify on rare occasions when I'm bored. I'm guessing any problems would be down to hardware issues which would show themselves in other ways.

 

[SIW2]

Have any of you looked at ocster recently.

Been a while since I checked it out.

They are doing a giveaway atm ( don't worry, you can reinstall it later in spite of initial appearances)

Giveaway of the Day - free licensed software daily. Ocster 1-Click Backup 2 - Backup as it should be: one click to set up, automatic afterwards.

I have only had a very quick look , it seems to be a mixture of clunkiness and a few good ideas.

If you want to give it a try , there is a tedious online registration process.

Fortunately, they send an email which can be used to reinstall any time , and you can download the trial version from their site which will accept your key.

They also have a giant boot media download over 500mb. Bit ridiculous, there is probably a way to make your own pe to avoid that. Haven't had time to try that yet.

Backup format is vmdk which is handy.

 

[Bellzemos]

Hello again!

I finally got some spare time and tried the Macrium Reflect Free! I found out it's easier to use that it seems (I don't really like the GUI so much, but I like the functionality a lot). As a side note, I discovered that it's background service is absoultely unnecessary if you're not scheduling backups so I disabled it and all's working fine.

I made a full image backup (all 3 partitions off my HDD), it took about twice the time it used to when I was doing it with the Windows 7 integrated image/backup solution. I set it to verify files before creating the image. After the image was created I verified it using the Verify Image (red shield with a tick) under Image Restore tab. Verification took quite some time again and it said the file is OK. Then I browsed it and tried some files which opened nicely. I guess that means the image is working and won't let me down. Is it enough to just verify it next time instead of browsing it and stuff? This is quite a time consuming procedure, even though I'm only making a full HDD image once a month.

Anyway, I also made a rescue CD - Win PE, 64-bit version (does that mean I can't use that CD to restore a 32-bit computer?), then booted from it but it couldn't find my USB 3.0 HDD - until I disconnected if from the USB 3.0 port and connected to USB 2.0 port. Then I searched for the USB 3.0 driver and found it and it recognised it too. But if my internal HDD dies and I get a new one there won't be any drivers on it. Ah, in that case I'll just restore from an USB 2.0 port.

Another thing concerning speed. As I said, I made a full disk image (hidden system partition + C partition + D partition), 193 GB alltogether. So I created the image on an external USB 3.0 HDD and it took 1,5 hour to do it. Transfer rates were from 43 MB/s to 35 MB/s when writing to the external HDD. Isn't that kind of slow for an USB 3.0 drive?

All in all I like Macrium Free, I changed some settings too (no compression etc.), I hope it will serve me well. And I apologise but I will ask this again as it's very important to me (and I can't test it right now) - are you 100% sure that Macrium Reflect Free is able to restore to a smaller drive (in my case there's 193 GB of data taken off a 500 GB HDD - so can I restore all three partitions worth of 193 GB to a new 250 GB drive)?

Any comments, suggestions, warnings etc. are much appreciated!

Thank you very much for all the help!

 

[mjf]

My perspective.
You will only have full confidence when you restore a system image and the operating system partition in particular. Doing a system image restore to a spare/new HDD with the others unplugged is the acid test - does it boot ok.

Imaging every partition may be ok once when it takes 1.5 hours but generally your OS partition should be imaged more regularly and if it takes much more than 30 min I find it unacceptable. There are other ways to backup more static data partitions.

Macrium provides some substantial compression that Windows inbuilt image does not and I have found it at least comparable in speed. I have found Macrium image restores can take a fair bit longer depending on the actual size of the partition.

 

[whs]

I also made a rescue CD - Win PE, 64-bit version (does that mean I can't use that CD to restore a 32-bit computer?),

That is correct. But most PCs can do 64bit today. Only very old PCs may be 32bit only.

Isn't that kind of slow for an USB 3.0 drive?

USB3 is slow, try eSata, that is faster. But it also depends how fast your HDD can feed it.

are you 100% sure that Macrium Reflect Free is able to restore to a smaller drive (in my case there's 193 GB of data taken off a 500 GB HDD - so can I restore all three partitions worth of 193 GB to a new 250 GB drive)?

It used not to be possible, but now they say it is possible. I think several guys have dome that already.

But even if it does not work, it is not a real problem. All you do is mount the image, shrink the mounted drive with Partition Wizard to the size you want and reimage the shrunk mounted volume.

Here are my transfer rates and the time it took to image my 38GB C partition. I made that image just now to show the data. But I am never worried about the time it takes to make the image. I just 'hide' Macrium and go on doing other things. I also never do any verifies and after appr. 100 restores I never had a problem - knock on wood.

 

[Britton30]

I can confirm you can restore an image from a large drive to a smaller one with no problems. When creating the image you can click on Advanced
options and select Intelligent Sector Copy. This includes only drive sectors in use in the image. I have used Reflect to take my whole OS and programs from a 500GB HDD and restored to a 64GB SSD, but I had only 35GB used.

 

[whs]

Thanks Gary for confirming that. I had no occasion to try that yet.

 

[SIW2]

Yes, they have all been doing that for quite a while, Aomei, Paragon, Drive Snaopshot, Partition Guru, etc.

If you are going to restore to a drive smaller than the source used space, the trick is to use a program that excludes files/folders you select. I think only paragon and partition guru have free versions which do that. Paragon takes a while building an exclusion list. I have no idea what paragon is doing, because partition guru gets on with the imaging immediately. Pguru is for advanced users, though.

 

[mjf]

Anyway, I also made a rescue CD - Win PE, 64-bit version (does that mean I can't use that CD to restore a 32-bit computer?), then booted from it but it couldn't find my USB 3.0 HDD - until I disconnected if from the USB 3.0 port and connected to USB 2.0 port. Then I searched for the USB 3.0 driver and found it and it recognised it too. But if my internal HDD dies and I get a new one there won't be any drivers on it. Ah, in that case I'll just restore from an USB 2.0 port.

USB 3 is fine. To load the drivers manually:
http://www.sevenforums.com/backup-r...p-via-usb-3-0-external-drive.html#post1640570
It may be a little different for you but the principle is the same. Windows inbuilt and Macrium allow you to load the drivers manually.
Store the drivers on a USB flash drive and install them manually just before a restore.
They can be incorporated into the Macrium pe resore CD/USB.

The speed difference over USB 2 is ~x3. If you have a USB 3 ext HDD and USB 3 ports use them.

You can fiddle around with this exercise until the Macrium rescue CD/USB recognizes the USB 3 drive without risk.

 

[SIW2]

@mjf,

You might to try this:

Win7pemaker-advanced-version

 

[lehnerus2000]

Another thing concerning speed. As I said, I made a full disk image (hidden system partition + C partition + D partition), 193 GB alltogether. So I created the image on an external USB 3.0 HDD and it took 1,5 hour to do it. Transfer rates were from 43 MB/s to 35 MB/s when writing to the external HDD. Isn't that kind of slow for an USB 3.0 drive?

That seems about right to me.

I can image/restore at ~3 GB/minute to ~4 GB/minute using internal HDDs.
External HDDs will be slower.

 

[alan10]

I also made a rescue CD - Win PE, 64-bit version (does that mean I can't use that CD to restore a 32-bit computer?),

That is correct. But most PCs can do 64bit today. Only very old PCs may be 32bit only.

In my view that is an exceptionally dangerous assumption.

A 32 bit application can run on a 64 bit Windows 7 system.
A 32 bit WinPE can be loaded into 64 bit wide RAM and restore an image read from a USB serial external drive to restore through a SATA or IDE interface to your internal drive.

A 64 bit application uses 64 bit wide RAM and uses 64 bit wide instruction codes to can reach beyond the addressing limits of a 32 bit system.

64 bit WinPE needs only a few hundred MB of RAM to execute,
but has the capability of addressing more than 4 GB of RAM.

It is more than probable that when Macrium runs on a full blown live 64 bit Windows system it will use 64 bit wide instruction codes,
and when Macrium creates WinPE it is unlikely to restrict itself to 32 bit wide instruction codes,
and your 64 bit WinPE CD will be unable to load 64 bit instructions into a 32 bit wide RAM.

What is safe to assume is that a 32 bit WinPE will successfully restore an image to a 64 bit system.
I have actually used an old WinPE created under 32 bit XP to restore 64 bit Windows 7 images.

 

[alan10]

I think verify checks the hash total. What else could it be doing.

I'm thinking mounting the image and comparing to the original. Verification takes too long to just be checking hash totals. It takes almost as long to verify the image as it does to make it.

Actually there is no single hash checksum - there are thousands of them.
I think the checksums are computed and embedded in the file every ? MBYte
(Macrium have published the interval but I cannot remember).

It is VERY WISE when restoring to select the image file and NOT restore until you verify.
Your image file might be corrupted and it would be sad to have the restore operation first erase C:\ and then restore the first half of your Windows and then abort, leaving you with an UN-bootable system.

N.B.
If a backup is corrupted and you really want to restore regardless of corruption,
there is a simple registry fix to disregard errors,
and perhaps you could create a WinPE CD that would restore a corrupted image.
I truly hope to never be in that position.

Regards
Alan

 

[Bellzemos]

Thank you for all the comments, it seems I'm doing things right.

There's a thing though - since I used Reflect I have WmiPrvSE.exe running in the background all the time. I never had that before. I googled it and it says it's a process that's used in the enterprise environment - but I am a home user. What's that about? Can I disable it?

 

[whs]

Right click on it and see whether the path is C:\Windows\System32\wbem - if yes, then it is OK and legit.

 

[Bellzemos]

The path is right and the file is legit, I tested it at VirusTotal. The thing is it wasn't running before I used Macrium. So do I have to have this process running all the time to use Macrium once a month?

 

[whs]

No idea - and it is not really 'running'. It is just sitting there doing no harm. Why would you want to muck around with it.

When you eliminate it, the best that can happen is that you save a few bytes in RAM - the worst that can happen is that you brick your system.

 

[mjf]

Another thing concerning speed. As I said, I made a full disk image (hidden system partition + C partition + D partition), 193 GB alltogether. So I created the image on an external USB 3.0 HDD and it took 1,5 hour to do it. Transfer rates were from 43 MB/s to 35 MB/s when writing to the external HDD. Isn't that kind of slow for an USB 3.0 drive?

That seems about right to me.

I can image/restore at ~3 GB/minute to ~4 GB/minute using internal HDDs.
External HDDs will be slower.

An update on speed.
I just imaged 47GB to one of my external USB3 WD 1 TB MyBook Essentials HDDs and it took 10min 21 secs. Also, the ext HDD had ~230MB free. If the HDD had been empty the image time would have been lower.

 

[whs]

That is about in-line with the times I am seeing => 7.4 min for 38.4GB. But we have our systems on SSDs. That may make a difference.

 

[lehnerus2000]

Interesting

There's a thing though - since I used Reflect I have WmiPrvSE.exe running in the background all the time. I never had that before. I googled it and it says it's a process that's used in the enterprise environment - but I am a home user. What's that about? Can I disable it?

I don't have that service (WmiPrvSE.exe) running constantly on my PC.

I get a few instances (4 - 7) of WmiPrvSE.exe, if I run hardware monitors (e.g. Speccy or SIW.exe).