Macrium Reflect Free vs Windows System Image

[ignatzatsonic]

I have four hard-drives from some old dead computers, mostly XP units, possibly one may be a Win 7; does it matter what OS had originally been on the disc ?

What is on the disk should not matter at all. Whatever is on it will be wiped out by the image restoration process, so be sure to use a drive that has nothing of value to you on it.

Confirm that the drive will boot from the restored image and that it appears to be identical in functionality as the original drive.

 

[BuckSkin]

I won't be able to do this in the very near future as I have about fifty other things going on, but I am definitely going to play around with this experiment as soon as time allows.

 

[SIW2]

If you didn't back up the system partition, make sure the restored windows partition is marked active.

 

[BuckSkin]

If you didn't back up the system partition, make sure the restored windows partition is marked active.

And how do I know if it is marked active ?

Thanks.

 

[mjf]

It appears you are using a Dell PC that has recovery partitions etc. It may be best that you provide a system disk management screenshot (full screen) of your PC. It may be that you should image not only
"Create an image of the partition(s) required required to backup and restore windows" under Macrium
but recovery partitions as well initially
Disk Management - Post a Screen Capture Image

If you want a complete copy of your original drive then you probably need a disk the same size as your original. You can do this by cloning the whole drive or imagining each partition.
For on going imaging you just select "Create an image of the partition(s) required required to backup and restore windows". You could just try this option first on a test drive and see if you can boot. It may not give you the recovery partitions. This will include the active/system partition.

Give it a go as long as your test HDD has no valuable info on it.

 

[BuckSkin]

This is a shot of the DELL that I have made both Windows and AOMEI images of.

I had a look at the other identical DELL and the information is almost word-for-word the same.

That Transcend (I: ) is an external hard drive that I dis-connected prior to creating the images.

There are a few sections below those pictured that said no media or no data or somesuch, so I left them out of the shot.


On EDIT: If it is not including the restore partition in the images, would I not need to provide that volume with a letter?


EDIT again: I was wondering where all those smilies were coming from; when I typed (C-colon-) I was getting (C

 

[ignatzatsonic]

I doubt if recovery partitions should have a drive letter.

The only thing I see wrong is that the external I drive is marked active. The only drive that should be marked active in your case would be C. You might be able to remove the active flag in Windows Disk Management--I can't recall.

You may have to use Diskpart to remove the active flag.

Here are instructions:

[How to] Make partition Active or Inactive using DISKPART › Knowledge Base

I'm not sure if the recovery partition should show as having 100% free space as it does in your pic.

You don't need to include the recovery partition in your image file UNLESS you want to be able to use that recovery partition after any image restoration--in other words, it's not needed for general operation. Any home built PC will not have a recovery partition. If you are satisfied with using Aomei for recovery, then the recovery partition is kind of superfluous.

However--maybe Dell would demand that the drive be in original condition for any warranty claim??

Or maybe there is some other reason you might want to restore to "factory" condition as opposed to some later date?

If either of those things is a possibility, then you would need to include the recovery partition. If you wanted, you could make a one-time image containing ONLY the recovery partition and thereafter just make an image of C alone.

 

[BuckSkin]

Concerning the external hard-drive, it is plugged into the same USB port that it always has been and was always letter (H: ) prior to me using EasyBCD to relocate the boot manager.
Relocating the boot manager provided the letter (E: ) to the previously unlettered System Reserve, and the external hard-drive then became (I: ) which has caused me a bit of confusion in my image editing and organizing programs.

I have no idea how or when it became marked as active; I try to always remember to disconnect it whenever poking around within the brains of this thing.


I am glad that you guys seem to know about all of this stuff as, the more I learn, the less I realize that I know....

Thanks.

On Edit: What is the significance of that drive being flagged as active ?


EDIT again: I just had a look at disk management on the other DELL and the external hard-drive connected to it is also flagged as active.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

The active partition is normally the one from which the PC boots. I'm not sure how the external became active in your case--possibly because the backups you made with Windows Backup were stored there?

 

[BuckSkin]

The active partition is normally the one from which the PC boots. I'm not sure how the external became active in your case--possibly because the backups you made with Windows Backup were stored there?

No; the system images are stored on a separate NTSF-formatted external drive that is currently dis-connected.

On EDIT: Tomorrow, I will connect one of these drives to the other two computers, both HPs, and see whether they show as active or not.

 

[mjf]

Your partition structure looks like it has been changed from the original.
The system reserved is 47MB and it should be a minimum of 100 MB. Also it isn't active and it looks like you are booting through the active drive. As commented by someone else your "Recovery" partition is empty.
If you disconnect I: I don't think your system would boot.

Simply put everything looks like it's in a bit of a mess.
I'd be backing up data on C: and getting hold of Dell system restore disks if you don't already have them. Dell used to pretty good in this area and you may even be able to get clean install disks.

 

[RolandJS]

"...For what it is worth, if the DVD is not already in the tray and I then insert it, pressing ENTER does not respond; at this point it says to retry boot press F1, which I did and everything then worked..."
I have the same thing over here about USB-booting; if there is no USB bootable stick in at least one usb port, then there is no choice in my desktop's F12-choose-boot-device menu.

 

[BuckSkin]

Here is disk management from the same unit posted earlier, except without the external hard-drive connected.



This one is the other identical Dell with a different external hard-drive connected.



This one is an HP G56 laptop with external hard-drive connected.



This one is an HP desktop with external hard-drive connected.



Note that in every case the external hard-drive shows as Active.
All of these computers will boot and/or restart regardless of whether any external hard-drive is connected or not.
I have no idea as to why the external hard-drives show as Active; every external hard-drive we own are identical Transcend 1TB; one of our Transcends is NTSF formatted and has only system images stored on it; the other Transcends are used for storing photo images; this Active Primary Partition business may be a Transcend thing.


Thanks for reading.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

It should be easy enough to remove the active flag using Diskpart.

 

[BuckSkin]

It should be easy enough to remove the active flag using Diskpart.

What are the CONs of just leaving things as is ?

What are the PROs of removing the Active flag ?

Do I do this Diskpart business one time when external hard-drive X is connected to computer Y; and then the fix carry over to whichever computer hard-drive X may be connected to; or, will I have to do this on each and every computer with each external hard-drive ?

Thanks so much.

 

[mjf]

I should have looked more carefully. Your C: drive is system active so you are probably booting through it.
I don't know what purpose the 47 MB primary is serving and why it is labeled system reserved.
I remember once have an external marked active and it made no difference to me but I think it is best to remove the active flag.

 

[BuckSkin]

"...For what it is worth, if the DVD is not already in the tray and I then insert it, pressing ENTER does not respond; at this point it says to retry boot press F1, which I did and everything then worked..."
I have the same thing over here about USB-booting; if there is no USB bootable stick in at least one usb port, then there is no choice in my desktop's F12-choose-boot-device menu.

Thanks; I like your Ben Franklin quote.

 

[BuckSkin]

The only thing I see wrong is that the external I drive is marked active. The only drive that should be marked active in your case would be C.
You may have to use Diskpart to remove the active flag.

Well, I am most happy that we had this discussion about my external hard-drives showing up as Active.
As predicted, one of our computers decided to let that be a problem; funny thing is that it does not seem to affect any of the others at all.
I had to do a bit of detective work to make sure that was the culprit and it sure enough was.
If the external hard-drive was connected and the computer had been shut-down, upon starting it again, a black screen would say "operating system is missing".
I could click ctl-alt-del and it would then go ahead and start.
The silly thing would restart with no trouble at all.
So, I shut it down, unplugged the external hard-drive, let it sit a spell, and turned it on; minus the ext. hard-drive, it quickly booted and went right into Windows.
I gave it a few minutes, shut it down, waited a bit, and turned it on again; it fired right up and went right into Windows.
I shut it down again, re-connected the ext. hard-drive, and tried again; it stopped at the "operating system is missing" notice.
I hit ctl-alt-del and it booted into Windows.

So, I came to this thread on the hunt of the Diskpart information; then, I had to search for some instructions on how to use command lines; most of the help sites assume people know a lot more than they do.

I finally got it figured out and used Diskpart to make the external hard-drive Inactive.

Now the computer boots right up, with or without the external hard-drive.


All of that being said, I would like to know why all of our external hard-drives show as active regardless of which of our computers they get connected to.

All of our external hard-drives are identical 1-TB Transcend; and, if I have done anything that would make all of them show active, I have no idea what it would have been.


My logical reasoning mind assumes that the Diskpart change that I made only applies to that particular external hard-drive when it is connected to exactly the same USB port.

I have not yet experimented by trying any of the other USB ports to see if it remains inactive or shows as active.

Also, I doubt the fix remains with the external hard-drive when it gets connected to a different computer.

Does my reasoning seem correct ?


Thanks so much for you guys patience and understanding and all the help in getting this situation resolved.


This thread sure has wandered astray from my initial question, but that was definitely to my advantage..

Thanks for reading.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

I think you'll just have to experiment to see what's cooking, and use the Diskpart technique you learned as required.

I do wonder if using Windows Backup is possibly the cause. For laughs, you might remove the active flag with Diskpart and then use Windows Backup to back up that particular PC to that particular external to see if that turns the external back to "active" status. It's a weird application so something like that wouldn't surprise me at all.

 

[mikeybinec]

I'd like to add to this my recent experience about using the built in windows imaging software.

Last week, I booted my Win 7 Ultimate machine and was presented with:

\windows\system32\winload.exe

Windows cant verify the digital signature of this file 0xC0000428

Running Win repair three times finally cleared the winload error but created a new issue in that
the loginui, userinit, and winlogon complain about msctf.dll missing

So I hooked up my external HD and restored the image..It was idiot proof and flawless--well except I had to get a bunch of updates, but everything was there. First time it ever happened to me and I was thrilled

Regards