Imaging with free Macrium


  1. lehnerus2000
    Posts : 4,049
    W7 Ultimate SP1, LM19.2 MATE, W10 Home 1703, W10 Pro 1703 VM, #All 64 bit
       New #1310

    Lady Fitzgerald said:
    I'm completely missing something here (or I'm just not awake yet). Why would anyone not want to restore the MBR? When I image my boot drive or partition (depending on the machine), I image the C: and MBR together as one image so, when I do a restore, I restore both. It's not like the tiny, little MBR is going to noticeably add to imaging and restoration times.
    Once I had an OS image with a dodgy MBR saved in it.
    The MBR had somehow become corrupted between imaging one of my 3 operating system (XP, W7 & LM) and the others.

    You can imagine my confusion when I was testing my PC with the restored images, as the order they were restored affected whether or not my PC would boot.
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  3. Lady Fitzgerald
    Posts : 9,600
    Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit
       New #1311

    lehnerus2000 said:
    Lady Fitzgerald said:
    I'm completely missing something here (or I'm just not awake yet). Why would anyone not want to restore the MBR? When I image my boot drive or partition (depending on the machine), I image the C: and MBR together as one image so, when I do a restore, I restore both. It's not like the tiny, little MBR is going to noticeably add to imaging and restoration times.
    Once I had an OS image with a dodgy MBR saved in it.
    The MBR had somehow become corrupted between imaging one of my 3 operating system (XP, W7 & LM) and the others.

    You can imagine my confusion when I was testing my PC with the restored images, as the order they were restored affected whether or not my PC would boot.
    Any OS image can be of a corrupted OS. That's why it's a good idea to keep several images so you can go back until you get a good one.
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  4. kado897
    Posts : 10,455
    Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit Service Pack 1
       New #1312

    I agree. It's the same with the 100MB System partition. Why wouldn't you backup and restore along with C.
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  5. whs
    Posts : 26,210
    Vista, Windows7, Mint Mate, Zorin, Windows 8
    Thread Starter
       New #1313

    Lady Fitzgerald said:
    I'm completely missing something here (or I'm just not awake yet). Why would anyone not want to restore the MBR? When I image my boot drive or partition (depending on the machine), I image the C: and MBR together as one image so, when I do a restore, I restore both. It's not like the tiny, little MBR is going to noticeably add to imaging and restoration times.
    When you restore a data partition, there is really no need to restore the MBR.
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  7. LaurieD227
    Posts : 133
    Windows 7 Professional 64 bit SP 1
       New #1314

    Lady Fitzgerald said:
    I'm completely missing something here (or I'm just not awake yet). Why would anyone not want to restore the MBR? When I image my boot drive or partition (depending on the machine), I image the C: and MBR together as one image so, when I do a restore, I restore both. It's not like the tiny, little MBR is going to noticeably add to imaging and restoration times.
    Yes, if I am imaging any or all system partitions yes I would absolutely restore the MBR

    I'm trying to work with a data partition that as far as I know does not contain an MBR, I was afraid that I might accidentally add an MBR here that I didn't want to have.
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  8. LaurieD227
    Posts : 133
    Windows 7 Professional 64 bit SP 1
       New #1315

    DavidE said:
    Looks like whs is offline right now, so i'll try and help.
    When you click on Next in your screen print you'll get to the window where you can click on Advanced Options, and there choose to not restore the MBR.
    The default is to restore the MBR, you have to select Do not replace.

    Attachment 353963

    That's the piece I was missing - I just didn't see that tiny link at the bottom of the Window.

    Thanks!!
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  9. LaurieD227
    Posts : 133
    Windows 7 Professional 64 bit SP 1
       New #1316

    Okay, I completed testing my use of Macrium
    - created test image
    - restored test image
    - found the option for restoring the MBR (thanks, DavidE)

    By the way, Wolfgang, your Macrium WinPE ISO performed perfectly as far as I can tell - thanks again!!
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  11. whs
    Posts : 26,210
    Vista, Windows7, Mint Mate, Zorin, Windows 8
    Thread Starter
       New #1317

    LaurieD227 said:
    Okay, I completed testing my use of Macrium
    - created test image
    - restored test image
    - found the option for restoring the MBR (thanks, DavidE)

    By the way, Wolfgang, your Macrium WinPE ISO performed perfectly as far as I can tell - thanks again!!
    I am glad that worked out for you including the WinPE from my OneDrive.

    I'm trying to work with a data partition that as far as I know does not contain an MBR
    Partitions do not contain a MBR. The MBR is a feature of the disk and sits in the first 512 bytes on the disk. It's main purpose is to point to the active partition on the disk which contains the bootmgr.

    The boot sequence is BIOS > MBR > bootmgr in active partition > OS
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  12. LaurieD227
    Posts : 133
    Windows 7 Professional 64 bit SP 1
       New #1318

    whs said:
    Partitions do not contain a MBR. The MBR is a feature of the disk and sits in the first 512 bytes on the disk. It's main purpose is to point to the active partition on the disk which contains the bootmgr.

    The boot sequence is BIOS > MBR > bootmgr in active partition > OS

    Well, given the fun I've been having with system files showing up on a data partition, I wasn't sure what would happen if I said 'restore MBR.'

    Does this mean that the restoral of my F Partition would have restored the MBR on the physical drive that contains it if I said Yes to that option?

    Also, now that all 3 partitions on the same physical drive have been converted from Primary Partitions to Logical Drives (so now my C Drive is the only Active partition or drive), would Macrium still offer to restore the MBR when I restore any of them?
    (I assume the answer is Yes because the MBR relates to the physical drive not the specific logical drive within the extended partition, but I want to be sure I understand.)
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  13. lehnerus2000
    Posts : 4,049
    W7 Ultimate SP1, LM19.2 MATE, W10 Home 1703, W10 Pro 1703 VM, #All 64 bit
       New #1319

    Lady Fitzgerald said:
    Any OS image can be of a corrupted OS. That's why it's a good idea to keep several images so you can go back until you get a good one.
    Sure. :)

    I do have backups of backup of my personal data, but these were new images that I had just created so that I could swap my setup to a new HDD.
    Once my new HDD was setup I was going to create a new set of images.

    In this case the actual data was OK, just not the MBR section (that section was OK on the other 2 OS images).

    Once I figured out which image had the dodgy MBR, I just deselected the "Restore MBR" option on that image.

    whs said:
    When you restore a data partition, there is really no need to restore the MBR.
    Agreed.

    Also if you are imaging to a new HDD (with a different layout) you don't want to replace the new MBR with an old one.
    Last edited by lehnerus2000; 27 Mar 2015 at 19:22. Reason: Quote Added
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