Imaging with free Macrium

As mjf says, you must mark C as active when you restore. Replacing the MBR is a matter of choice - I always do. But any of your other partitions would not be active. Nor would it have any MBR.

bulajap said:

I plan on buying a new computer with Windows 7 Ultimate ( I currently have Windows XP). Do I need an external program like Macrium or Acronis True Image or does Windows 7 Ultimate have all of the tools in these external programs built into it?

thank you

Joe

Hello -

Windows has a built in program for imaging. But if you go over most of the material here; most of us prefer Macrium.


Thanks to WHS, nice tutorial.


Best regards,

Eldin

bulajap said:

I plan on buying a new computer with Windows 7 Ultimate ( I currently have Windows XP). Do I need an external program like Macrium or Acronis True Image or does Windows 7 Ultimate have all of the tools in these external programs built into it?

thank you

Joe

The problem with the Windows 7 imaging is that it always plays an act on you. You never know what it is doing and at the end you are always stunned. Besides it is very retarted when it comes to functions and options.

I have used and tried about 10 imaging programs (including the win7 one) in the last 4 years. My bottom line is the Macrium is the easiest to use, the fastest, the most reliable and I always know where I am with it. And it is free.

That cannot be said for many others - and especially not for Win7 imaging. But some people use it and were even able to recover. Others were less lucky. With Macrium I recovered about 50 times (many for demo in my classes) - and it has never failed.

LOL, I was sure mjf would rebutt. He is fortunate because he gets along with Win7 imaging. And he has one good point - try them both, or a few more even. Go by your own judgement, not ours.

@mjf, just for your info, I made many real system recoveries too - not just the little class excercises.. I srew up my system on average once per week and rather than chasing the problem, I just restore the latest image. That's why I image so frequently. For the data I rely a bit more on the shadows. You get a lot of data partition shadows into relatively little space. And since I install and uninstall stuff relatively frequently, I get a good collection.

It is intended for the average user as well who knows nothing about "MBRs", "100MB system reserved". To use Macrium with confidence you do need to understand these concepts or else you're winging it.

This is a fair point, although it is not quite as simple for the uninitiated as they think. I see that all the time with the people that use it. One of my instructor colleagues teaches the "average" users to use Win7 imaging. I could tell you many war stories how the average user gets along with it.