Solved Macrium Reflect

[bigmck]

I have Macrium and have restored with it a couple of times with no problem. What I am wondering is that if my HD were fried and I had to get a new one, would Macrium backup to a new formated drive just as easy?

 

[pparks1]

In my experience yes.

 

[mjf]

As long as you have imaged the OS (Boot) partition the answer is yes.
Even if you had, but lost the system reserved, it can be recreated.

 

[strollin]

If you get the paid version of Macrium it can clone an existing drive to new drive.

 

[mjf]

If you get the paid version of Macrium it can clone an existing drive to new drive.

The word "clone" has a lot to answer for. Why clone when you can do the job faster and much more efficiently with imaging.

 

[bigmck]

As long as you have imaged the OS (Boot) partition the answer is yes.
Even if you had, but lost the system reserved, it can be recreated.

Are you speaking of the 100 MB partition? My drive doesn't have one. I have however imaged the entire C: partition. That should have what I would need, don't you think?

 

[mjf]

As long as you have imaged the OS (Boot) partition the answer is yes.
Even if you had, but lost the system reserved, it can be recreated.

Are you speaking of the 100 MB partition? My drive doesn't have one. I have however imaged the entire C: partition. That should have what I would need, don't you think?

Yes, my reference to system reserved was the 100MB partition.
If C: is (system,active,Boot...) that should be all you need.

If you have a spare $50 stick a new HDD in and try it. Pick a HDD the same size as the one you have or larger.

 

[bigmck]

If you have a spare $50 stick a new HDD in and try it. Pick a HDD the same size as the one you have or larger.

I don't believe I have any spare money laying around, but I have heard that you folks "down under" are all wealthy. Let me give you my address and you can mail me a check.

 

[mjf]

If you have a spare $50 stick a new HDD in and try it. Pick a HDD the same size as the one you have or larger.

I don't believe I have any spare money laying around, but I have heard that you folks "down under" are all wealthy. Let me give you my address and you can mail me a check.

We have cheques and they're all overdrawn. We're part of the global village mess.

 

[strollin]

If you get the paid version of Macrium it can clone an existing drive to new drive.

The word "clone" has a lot to answer for. Why clone when you can do the job faster and much more efficiently with imaging.

Image and restore is a 2 step process whereas clone is a 1 step process. How is a 2 step process faster and more efficient? Why do you think the clone option is only provided in the paid version of MR? Could it be a desired feature that some people are willing to pay for?

 

[mjf]

If you get the paid version of Macrium it can clone an existing drive to new drive.

The word "clone" has a lot to answer for. Why clone when you can do the job faster and much more efficiently with imaging.

Image and restore is a 2 step process whereas clone is a 1 step process. How is a 2 step process faster and more efficient? Why do you think the clone option is only provided in the paid version of MR? Could it be a desired feature that some people are willing to pay for?

CLONING in my opinion
Pros:
1) "Simple" one step process. How often do you clone though?
2) People want it - why? Maybe marketing hype - Nice anthropomorhic name - gee it must be complex and pretty smart. It's actually just (generally) dumb bit copying.
Cons:
1) Need a full HDD of at least equal size to hold the clone. Blind copy rubbish and all.
2) Images are much smaller and many can be stored on cheap external HDDs.
3) Every appropriate image can make a new HDD. Same end result as a clone.
This allows greater flexibility.
4) Two step process but probably faster for moderate to large drives.

Edit: Cloning is free in the new Easeus V3 software. Also, the free Acronis for Seagate & WD.

 

[strollin]

Both cloning and imaging have their place. Cloning is most useful when upgrading from a working drive to a new (almost always larger) drive. Imaging is best for backups.

However, there is no way that imaging and restoring is faster than cloning. The clone and image will take about the same amount of time to do but in the case of cloning you are then done. In order to restore from that image you will either need to start the restore process from Windows which forces a reboot into DOS or Linux -or- you need to boot from a "rescue" disk. The restore then takes about the same time as imaging or cloning so at best it takes about twice as long.

Images are smaller because they are compressed but the same number of bits need to be read from the disk to image and same number of bits need to be written to the disk to restore.

 

[mjf]

If you want to clone of course that's an option some choose. Even from a working disk I choose imaging. It's simple and fast.
I don't know the answer to this one - if you cloned say a 1TB single partition disk does your cloning software read then write every byte of the 1TB as I thought it did? If so, that would have to be slow wouldn't it?