MACRIUM REFLECT - Create Bootable Rescue USB Drive

DavidE said:

MDRI said:

I have win 7 installation + Installed program with KEYS (Eg Msoffice etc) + user documents.

How much space is used in your Users folder (user documents) ?

I and many others store User data on a different partition/HD than the [C] drive.
My [C] partition for the OS and installed programs is less than 50 GB.
My "Data" partition for "user documents" always ends up hundreds of GB's.

If I saved Data on the [C] drive, system image backups would take a lot longer, and i could only keep a few "System Backup Images".

I don't make many "System Changes" so a monthly system backup image of [C] is all i usually need.
If i make significant changes, i create a backup image as needed.

Data (Documents) can change daily so i want to keep those changes more often.
I don't use system images for "data" backups.

That's a good point. Separating your documents, photos and videos from the Windows partition makes complete sense. You can include these separated folders into the respective libraries so that they are easy to find.

This will make your images much smaller and you can make them less frequently. I use FreFileSync for backing up my data files it is much more convenient. The link for FFS is in my sig. Do a custom install and watch the options as it will try to install OpenCandy which you don't really want.

I'm not really an expert in partitioning but you should be able to split the 600GB partition during the reinstall. 150GB should be more than enough for Windows and any programs you have which leaves 450GB for a data partition.

As I say I'm not an expert on partitioning but if Disk 0 is an MBR disk then you have used all four of it's allowed basic partitions so It will be difficult to do without destroying the existing partitions. That's a shame.

That's correct.

It doesn't make any sense to write the image to the partition that you are imaging, Although you can continue to read and write to the partition it's asking for trouble to do too much. In fact for the best security you should not only image to a separate partition but to a separate disk so that you still have the image if the disk fails completely,

It's true that the file and folder backup is missing from the free version. Although I have a paid version I don't use it myself. I prefer to use a dedicated F&F backup solution. FreeFileSync is my preference (link in my sig) although they have now gone over to the dark side and Open Candy is in the installer. An alternative is Synctoy from Microsoft. https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/down....aspx?id=15155

kado897 said:

...In fact for the best security you should not only image to a separate partition but to a separate disk so that you still have the image if the disk fails completely...

To add to that already excellent advice, that separate disk should be an external one that gets connected to the computer only when updating backups. Using an internal disks increases the risk for loss or corruption due to hardware failure (such as a PSU blowing up and frying the disk), user error (such as accidental deletion), and/or viruses or other malware.

That said, I save my System images to an internal drive for convenience when restoring an image but I also back up that drive to the teeth (a total of five backups) using FreeFileSync.