Great I have an external drive too, usb pop up toaster style. But I prefer to use my 2nd internal drive which is 1tb for keeping my images files. I have two methods for using Macrium, made one on a memory stick (bootable), and also made one on a dvd boot disk. One of my computers will not work with a bootable usb stick, only works using a dvd boot disk, my newer computer will work on either way. :)
Almost forgot to mention this, I have been using Acronis since 2006, have every version including the new 2016 version, that I just upgraded too. BUT now because of all you guys telling me about how good Macrium Reflect is, I have stopped using my Acronis and been only using Macrium Reflect...... all because of you folks!!! Thanks Guys :)
If you are talking about backup images and not a macrium boot image - yes. But you still need a macrium boot disc/USB. If you are talking about the macrium boot image, macrium won't let you create a boot menu with the files on a drive other than C, and will also not let you make a boot disk on an internal hard drive - only USB or CD.
imho,
It's best to have backups for system images (and data) stored on multiple devices.
I store data on a different partition than the [C] OS partition.
At least one backup device should normally be offline, only online when doing a backup or restore.
If any one device fails, another may still work for recovery.
I'm not a security expert, but anything always online could get corrupted with malware, from what i know.
If a power spike hits or a PSU blows up, any online device could get fried.
It's a personal choice for each user on how much they are willing to lose, and what cost is ok to recover the OS and the data, if the worst possible happens.
Best practice for backing up is the 3-2-1 method: 3 backups total, 2 on-site and one off-site.
The 2 on-site should be periodically swapped, so one is offline at all times. The off-site one can be cloud storage.
Crypto malware will hit all mapped drives on a system, including secondary internal drives, USB drives and NAS. Backup programs such as Crashplan do not show up in your filesystem with a drive letter, and so are immune from these attacks. They also have "versioning", so if you happen to back up a malware-encrypted file, you can restore a previous version.
Maybe I misunderstood/ misread, you're talking "Drive" not "Partition" right?The boot software is installed in C:\boot\macrium. If your C: drive is dead or corrupt you will not be able to boot to macrium. Below is the BCD entry. It loads the wim from the c drive into a ramdisk.
Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier {a2ad852b-738f-11e5-9ca5-e03f4984698a}
device ramdisk=[C:]\boot\macrium\WA10KFiles\media\sources\boot.wim,{ramdiskoptions}
path \windows\system32\boot\winload.efi
description Macrium Reflect System Recovery
osdevice ramdisk=[C:]\boot\macrium\WA10KFiles\media\sources\boot.wim,{ramdiskoptions}
systemroot \Windows
nx OptIn
detecthal Yes
winpe Yes
Of course I have the USB too if I need to redeploy to a new disk.
Being that(like most here in the forums know) I like theming and testing different 3rd party patchers, I have used the boot menu version a lot, after BSOD's and BsWc(Black screen White cursor). I have even had to crash the boot cycle 3 times to get into the UEFI recovery environment once and chose MR's recovery environment.
Note: I am not arguing, I am learning.
