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

 

[whs]

Thanks Keith - sorry for the confusion.

Wolfgang : can we tempt you to build an updated ISO for us, please Sir?

I guess we are talking about Macrium 5.0.4870. I just updated my system and will update my Skydrive download site soon.

I have long been waiting for the USB3 support. Unfortunately I can only use it in November when I am back in Florida. On my systems here I have no USB3. One day I need to get a new box - LOL.

 

[Golden]

You are a scholar and a gentleman Sir

 

[whs]

You are a scholar and a gentleman Sir

You are too kind. I am just an old man that has nothing else useful to do. The chores the wife assigns to me are boring, LOL.

 

[whs]

My Macrium .iso download page in Skydrive was updated to version 5.0.4870. The upload took forever, but it seems to be OK now.

The size is 154MB and the download took me appr. 8 minutes. That beats the WAIK download which takes several hours.

 

[SIW2]

Nice of you whs.

BTW WAIK is different.

The SP1 supplement includes support for AFD.

I should be able to knock something up that will d/l the two winpe wims instead of the whole thing.

 

[eldinv]

Hello, whs -

I've been using Macrium now for two years and its been a life savor. Thank You for your video and your help over the years, its been very helpful.

I had a couple questions only because I haven't had to do this before. I plan on picking up a new drive tomorrow, my old drive is 1TB and will be replaced with a smaller 500GB drive.

I made an image of my old drive its only about 45GB worth of data, which will be saved on external drive. Tomorrow, can I add the new drive to my PC, connect my external and use the Linux recovery CD to restore that image to the new drive.

​

The old drive was 1TB
New drive 500GB

Only restoring 45GB of data, but this will save me loads of time if its at all possible. If so what do I do in the recovery process because this time it different since its a brand new drive.



Best regards,

Eldin

 

[Britton30]

My suggestion, and I've done this, would be to clone the 1T to the 500GB which will automatically resize the unused space to fit the 500GB. I did this and cloned a 500GB drive with 32GB of data to a 80GB drive.
I think an image would include the 1TB in total, but I may be wrong.

 

[kado897]

You will be better off using the WinPE recovery disk rather than Linux. The link to that is in whs's tutorial. You just need to burn it to a CD/DVD.

 

[mjf]

My suggestion, and I've done this, would be to clone the 1T to the 500GB which will automatically resize the unused space to fit the 500GB. I did this and cloned a 500GB drive with 32GB of data to a 80GB drive.
I think an image would include the 1TB in total, but I may be wrong.

I think this may be the case for the free version as well.
All you need to do to be safe is reduced your source OS partition to something under 500GB before making the image then resize the partition back to its 1TB. Partition Wizard will do this easily.
When performing an image restore I would only have your new HDD connected. Note that both your 1TB and 500GB will have the same disk signature and cannot be connected at the same time (disk signature clash).

 

[eldinv]

My suggestion, and I've done this, would be to clone the 1T to the 500GB which will automatically resize the unused space to fit the 500GB. I did this and cloned a 500GB drive with 32GB of data to a 80GB drive.
I think an image would include the 1TB in total, but I may be wrong.

I think this may be the case for the free version as well.
All you need to do to be safe is reduced your source OS partition to something under 500GB before making the image then resize the partition back to its 1TB. Partition Wizard will do this easily.
When performing an image restore I would only have your new HDD connected. Note that both your 1TB and 500GB will have the same disk signature and cannot be connected at the same time (disk signature clash).

Hello,

nice! I never thought about that. I can surely reduce the the size of the OS partition.

Now, when it gets tricky is when selecting the partition to image. Would I only select the OS partition to image?

If so then once the new drive is in and I'm doing the restore process, how would it successful restore since this new drive never had windows and will not have the system reserve partition?

Do you suggest I tick both the system reserve and the OS partition. When ever I restored I just restored the OS image and didn't have to worry about that system reserve.


Best regards,

Eldin

 

[kado897]

Macrium will allow you to modify the partition size when you clone.

 

[whs]

To be sure we are giving you good advice, I suggest you post a picture of your Disk Management. Only then we can seee things correctly.

 

[eldinv]

To be sure we are giving you good advice, I suggest you post a picture of your Disk Management. Only then we can seee things correctly.

​

 

[whs]

I would use the following approach:

1. Move the bootmgr from the 100MB partition to C. Then you do not need the 100MB system partition any more. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/209885-bootmgr-move-c-easybcd.html

2. Define a primary active partition on the total new 500GB disk. The commands are:

Diskpart
List disk
Select disk n (where n is the number that was given for your 500GB disk in List disk)
Clean
Create partition primary
Format fs=ntfs quick
Active
Exit


3. Reduce the C partition on your 1TB partition to 500GB or less (must fit into your newly defined partition on the 500GB disk). If that is not possible with Disk Management, use the bootable CD of Partition Wizard (last entry on the page).

4. Image the reduced C partition on the 1TB disk and restore it to the newly defined partition on the 500GB disk.

 

[LittleJay]

I guess we are talking about Macrium 5.0.4870. I just updated my system and will update my Skydrive download site soon. I have long been waiting for the USB3 support. Unfortunately I can only use it in November when I am back in Florida. On my systems here I have no USB3. One day I need to get a new box - LOL.

Thanks a lot mate!
I much prefer to use bootable cd's over installing programs on my PC. It keeps things less cluttered IMHO.

 

[kado897]

I would use the following approach:

1. Move the bootmgr from the 100MB partition to C. Then you do not need the 100MB system partition any more. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/209885-bootmgr-move-c-easybcd.html

2. Define a primary active partition on the total new 500GB disk. The commands are:

Diskpart
List disk
Select disk n (where n is the number that was given for your 500GB disk in List disk)
Clean
Create partition primary
Format fs=ntfs quick
Active
Exit


3. Reduce the C partition on your 1TB partition to 500GB or less (must fit into your newly defined partition on the 500GB disk). If that is not possible with Disk Management, use the bootable CD of Partition Wizard (last entry on the page).

4. Image the reduced C partition on the 1TB disk and restore it to the newly defined partition on the 500GB disk.

I would do it slightly differently.

Instead of step 3 when you restore your image with Macrium reduce the partition size there. Less steps to go wrong and you have your original working partition untouched in case of problems.

 

[whs]

Keith, did you ever restore an image from a bigger partition to a smaller partition? I thought that only works with the Pro edition and I vaguely remember that I had a problem with that a couple of years ago. But maybe the more recent versions of Macrium allow that. I never tried it.

 

[kado897]

No but I'm about to try it in a VM. I'll report back.

 

[kado897]

Well that was easy.

VBox VM with Win 7 X64 with a primary disk 25GB partitions System(100mb) and C(the rest) and a 25GB disk for the image file. The task is to move these onto a 20GB unallocated disk.

1. Image System and C with Macrium Free edition.
2. Shutdown.
3. Detach primary disk.
4. Create a new 20GB disk,
5. Boot the VM from the ISO supplied by whs.
6. Browse to and select the backup image.
7. Chose restore disk.
8. Select the 20GB disk to restore to.
9. Drag both partitions in the image to the new disk. Macrium automatically selects the size for the C partition.



10. Do the restore. Macrium automatically marks the 100MB partition Active.



11. Reboot the machine. This fails because the disks are in the wrong order in the boot sequence,This is probably a VBox thing.
12. Shuffle the new system disk to be first and reboot. Windows loads from the new disk and we have a working Windows 7.

 

[SIW2]

Yes, Macrium works well.

Only issue for the average user is lack of gpt support in free version.

I think the oem's will be churning out a lot of machines with those.

There are a few other annoyances for advanced users.