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

 

[mjf]

Yes all I wanted to do and what I thought would be easy would to access the My Music library in the image and copy / paste it to the C: drive library.

If you are having issues here try mounting using the pe DVD/ISO not directly through Windows. But then I'm unsure why would have problems copying from your own account.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Yes MJ I have been having a few problems with the main machine (Ivy Bridge) for some time and this is the last thing that is not happening.
I suppose in all reality I should save the libraries as separate entities on the external and I would not have this issue.

I also thought buying the full version (x4) for the machines would give me a that little more leeway with what I can do with the program but it seems not eh?

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Yes all I wanted to do and what I thought would be easy would to access the My Music library in the image and copy / paste it to the C: drive library...

The difficulty you're experiencing accessing parts of your backup could have been avoided if you didn't keep your libraries on the C: drive. Since I have only a 128GB SSD in my desktop rig, I obviously have to keep my data on another drive other than C:. But, even though my notebooks are one drive wonders and so have 500GB SSDs in them, I still keep my data on a partition other than the C: drive.

While imaging is the best (and pretty much the only practical) way to backup your system files, it's not really the best way to backup data files because of the time it takes to make an image and the difficulty of accessing only a portion of your backup. Since I keep my data on a separate drive or partition (depending on the machine), I'm not limited to just imaging to backup my files. I still image my C: drive/partition but I use a folder/file syncing program (FreeFileSync but there are other good ones out there, such as SyncToy) in mirror mode to backup my data. Folder/file syncing is much faster than imaging since, once the initial backup has been made, the only files that get written or deleted from the backup drive are those that have been added, changed, or deleted from the source drive. Besides being faster, folder/file syncing essentially makes a duplicate of the source drive that will easily allow you to copy files from to paste elsewhere.

Edit: I forgot to mention that, by keeping only system files (OS and programs) on your C: drive or partition, your system images will be much smaller, thus being faster to make and restore and will take up less room, allowing you to keep more of them.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

...I also thought buying the full version (x4) for the machines would give me a that little more leeway with what I can do with the program but it seems not eh?

I personally believe having the full version is worth the expense (I also have the four license package) but, sadly, not for the reason you were hoping for. I especially like the boot menu recovery option that allows me to restore my C: partition without having to dig out a recovery CD or USB stick (yeah, I'm that lazy). If you prefer imaging over folder/file syncing, you might want to look into the File and Folder Backup option (although I feel that would entail more work but, then again, you may have reasons I'm failing to see).

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Absolutely Jeannie I did try that with a secondary drive but I found getting the music to play through WMP for example was an exercise in futility. That included any other data like Documents too.

My current SSD / primary drive is a 250GB EVO and it holds more than enough for what I muck around with and I often wonder how one would fill say a 1TB drive with data because that is an awful amount of stuff and excepting I suppose business people what on earth do people keep? If it is photos and documents then they must be into photography big time or programs that are very large. Personally I don't like large drives because of the issue with losing large amounts of data if the drive goes south.

 

[kado897]

If you include the external drive folder with your music in the Music library then WMP will have no trouble finding it as it uses the libraries to define what shows up.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Absolutely Jeannie I did try that with a secondary drive but I found getting the music to play through WMP for example was an exercise in futility. That included any other data like Documents too.

My current SSD / primary drive is a 250GB EVO and it holds more than enough for what I muck around with and I often wonder how one would fill say a 1TB drive with data because that is an awful amount of stuff and excepting I suppose business people what on earth do people keep? If it is photos and documents then they must be into photography big time or programs that are very large. Personally I don't like large drives because of the issue with losing large amounts of data if the drive goes south.

I don't use WMP since I found everything about it to be an exercise in futility (to put it politely) and much prefer using MediaMonkey.

As long as one maintains good backups (I'm positively anal about that), losing large amounts of data from large drives really isn't an issue. If a drive goes south (and it has happened), all I need to do is recover my data from one of the backups (I essentially backup my backups since even backup drives can fail). It may take longer to recover such large amounts at once but I can just let it run overnight if it happens. The convenience of the reduced weight a single drive has over multiple drives more than outweighs the inconvenience of restoring a large backup (and, at my age, reduced weight is huge).

I don't consider myself into photography big time but I do take a lot of pictures when I travel and I always take them at the highest resolution possible to make editing, enlarging, etc. easier, which means the files are pretty large (although not as large as raw images would be).

I rip my CDs to larger mp3s than most people to avoid unacceptable compression losses and also rip to .wav so I can convert to other formats in the future, should I ever want to, without adding additional losses. I also scan the CD liner notes to keep in each album's folder. I eventually plan on destroying all my CDs to save space (the main reason for ripping to .wav). Accessing my music on my computer is so much easier than handling well over 500 CDs.

Many people keep their movies on their computer, something I need to start doing soon since I'm drowning in DVDs, to save space and for convenience. That can really eat up space.

I keep my personal home office as paperless as possible by getting digital receipts and statements whenever possible and scanning all other paper, then destroying the originals (other than the handful documents that require keeping originals).

I no longer buy dead tree books (colorful euphemism for paper books), preferring e-books, and have scanned over half of my existing dead tree library to PDFs to save space and for convenience (my scanned books take up more room than conventional e-books). I'm an avid reader and eventually reread my books (having a short memory span does have advantages at times).

 

[kado897]

Scanning my dead tree books would be major exercise I have collected a couple of thousand over the years. I no longer buy new ones though preferring e-books or even audiobooks these days. I too attempt a paperless office. It tends to be just government agencies that insist on paper these days.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Scanning my dead tree books would be major exercise I have collected a couple of thousand over the years. I no longer buy new ones though preferring e-books or even audiobooks these days. I too attempt a paperless office. It tends to be just government agencies that insist on paper these days.

I'm lucky; the only paper I have to have to hang onto are my birth certificate, Social Security card, the one lone stock I own half a share of, and property titles. Curiously enough, it's the government agencies I deal with (not many, thank God!) that are most likely to prefer digital over paper.

You are so correct that scanning dead tree books is a huge chore (I also have over two, maybe even three, thousand dead tree books). I've been at it, off and on (mostly off ), for several years but I am well past the halfway mark. I bought a high speed ADF scanner (Fujitsu ScanSnap s1500) just for that job that has also proven useful for paperwork reduction.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Yep well this has been a useful learning exercise if nothing else and I shall keep the Music separate on the external as I am more of a muso than piccy person even though I have six cameras only because I am a compulsive buyer of certain things

The WMP I just use for ripping CD's for the car as when I want quality audio (bit fussy with that) I would use the stereo.

But I am going to try the Ubuntu method I mentioned earlier as it has been really good at getting data off even "dead" drives.

 

[whs]

But I am going to try the Ubuntu method I mentioned earlier as it has been really good at getting data off even "dead" drives.

I made myself the uptimate tool to recover files from dead systems. See here - there is also a demo video.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Wolfgang that is SO impressive and if I have it right where you took pictures from a Windows drive and pasted them into the stick - I can open the image drive and do the same with the music or documents etc??

Now being a rather simplistic person (with computing) can I take it I cloud use say a 32GB stick for the Mint mate ( I have used a bootable Mint before but I just found the Ubuntu so simple to do this using with a USB to SATA adaptor forma drive lying on my desk) - that is to say copy / paste Music from the image drive to my Window's OS drive (SSD). If so then this has got to be so much easier to recover data from a secondary back up data drive than what I have read and not really understood in other tutorials.

What I do like is the features the Mint has on board too. Just one thing I guess and I am sorry for being a bit obvious one has to use a browser other than IE and I would like to know which you advise to use as I didn't really like Chrome when I tried it once.

There are a lot of things I could ask you about ie the Blu tooth function and how it works on nay machine does it need a special driver for the Mint Mate system??

In any case I shall be trying this out at the weekend well Xmas and Boxing day after I have fixed a friends laptop as I have no one coming round relatives and partner all away and it is nice to be quiet sometimes eh?

 

[Anak]

But I am going to try the Ubuntu method I mentioned earlier as it has been really good at getting data off even "dead" drives.

I made myself the uptimate tool to recover files from dead systems. See here - there is also a demo video.

Hi Wofgang!

May I have your permission to download this utility?

 

[lehnerus2000]

Firefox

What I do like is the features the Mint has on board too. Just one thing I guess and I am sorry for being a bit obvious one has to use a browser other than IE and I would like to know which you advise to use as I didn't really like Chrome when I tried it once.

Linux Mint comes with Firefox.

Firefox runs a lot better on Linux Mint, than it does on Windows.

 

[whs]

Wolfgang that is SO impressive and if I have it right where you took pictures from a Windows drive and pasted them into the stick - I can open the image drive and do the same with the music or documents etc??

Now being a rather simplistic person (with computing) can I take it I cloud use say a 32GB stick for the Mint mate ( I have used a bootable Mint before but I just found the Ubuntu so simple to do this using with a USB to SATA adaptor forma drive lying on my desk) - that is to say copy / paste Music from the image drive to my Window's OS drive (SSD). If so then this has got to be so much easier to recover data from a secondary back up data drive than what I have read and not really understood in other tutorials.

What I do like is the features the Mint has on board too. Just one thing I guess and I am sorry for being a bit obvious one has to use a browser other than IE and I would like to know which you advise to use as I didn't really like Chrome when I tried it once.

There are a lot of things I could ask you about ie the Blu tooth function and how it works on nay machine does it need a special driver for the Mint Mate system??

In any case I shall be trying this out at the weekend well Xmas and Boxing day after I have fixed a friends laptop as I have no one coming round relatives and partner all away and it is nice to be quiet sometimes eh?

I am glad you liked the little demo. Here are the answers to your questions:

1. You can use a 32GB stick. You will just have a smaller data partition than I have on the 128GB stick. You will end up with appr. 25GB of data partition which is still enough for normal recoveries. Use a fast USB3 stick (if possible). That will make booting faster. Once booted, a USB2 sticks works pretty nicely too, but it is slow initially.

2. The standard browser in Mint is Firefox. But you can also easily get Opera and Chromium (the open source version of Chrome).

3. Bluetooth works great. Drivers are automatically there. No action required.

4. Let me know how it goes and if you have further questions, I will be glad to help.

 

[whs]

But I am going to try the Ubuntu method I mentioned earlier as it has been really good at getting data off even "dead" drives.

I made myself the uptimate tool to recover files from dead systems. See here - there is also a demo video.

Hi Wofgang!

May I have your permission to download this utility?

Of course you can download it. But it is not a 'utility' but a tutorial.

 

[Anak]

I made myself the uptimate tool to recover files from dead systems. See here - there is also a demo video.

Hi Wofgang!

May I have your permission to download this utility?

Of course you can download it. But it is not a 'utility' but a tutorial.

Thank you, my error.

 

[whs]

No big deal. I just wanted to make sure you know what you are downloading.

 

[Anak]

No big deal. I just wanted to make sure you know what you are downloading.

When I saw tool I equate that with utility and when I looked at it I knew it was a tutorial, but darn-it utility stuck. I think I have what Lady Fitzgerald has, Senioritis.

 

[whs]

I think many of us have Senioritis. What should I say. I am one of the oldest and hardest hit around here. LOL