Question re MR7 Rescue Media and System Image

RichardC said:

Can the windows 10 Rescue Media created by Macrium be on the same USB thumb drive as the system image. I've got them on two separate usb's. The rescue media is on a usb formatted fat32. The full system image is on a usb formatted ntfs. My question is can both items be on the same usb? If so, does it matter how the usb is formatted. I checked the system backup image and it includes the ESP partition in fat32 and the c drive partition in nfts. If you could have both on the same usb, should the rescue media partition be the 'active' partition? Any advice would be much appreciated.

Yes - you can have both on same drive but if you do that use option to split image into a maximum of 4GB sections as partition needs to be fat32.

You can mark the fat32 partition as active - not needed if a uefi pc.

You can partition the usb drive now and have second partition as ntfs if you prefer.

storageman said:

I found this software that states it will build a boot drive partition and create a data partition behind it. I have never tried it.

Link -> http://www.pendrivelinux.com/yumi-multiboot-usb-creator/

That is no longer needed - windows 10 now supports multiple partitions on a flash drive.

RichardC said:

I successfully partitioned a 125gb flash drive with a 16gb partition in fat32...

That's a remarkably generous size @RichardC, the Macrium PE10 environment is only a few hundred MB. My 32-bit one is 195MB, 64-bit can't be much more...

... and a 99gb partition in ntfs. Windows recognized the flash drive as a disk with two drives ... Unfortunately MR7 would no recognize it as such.

Macrium run from within Windows will be able to see the ntfs partiton because it is running in a windows environment that supports multiple partitions on a usb flash drive.

Unfortunately when booted from the Macrium PE it's running in a much older version of Windows that can only see the first partition on a usb. Open the command prompt and you will see that it's using build 10240, the original RTM from 2015.

If you can only see the first partition on the usb then the obvious solution is to put the large ntfs partition as the first partition, with the Fat32 boot partition at the end. You'll still be able to boot from it, even though it won't be accessible through a drive letter after you've booted from it. As you won't be able to see it, you might as well make it a lot smaller, say 1GB or less - just big enough to hold the Macrium PE.

I've tested that and it works.

PS: be prepared to wait an inordinately long time at the start of imaging while Macrium tests the disk write speed. The actual writing of the image (when it eventually starts) is a reasonable speed though.

Bree said:

That's a remarkably generous size @RichardC, the Macrium PE10 environment is only a few hundred MB. My 32-bit one is 195MB, 64-bit can't be much more...



Macrium run from within Windows will be able to see the ntfs partiton because it is running in a windows environment that supports multiple partitions on a usb flash drive.

Unfortunately when booted from the Macrium PE it's running in a much older version of Windows that can only see the first partition on a usb. Open the command prompt and you will see that it's using build 10240, the original RTM from 2015.

If you can only see the first partition on the usb then the obvious solution is to put the large ntfs partition as the first partition, with the Fat32 boot partition at the end. You'll still be able to boot from it, even though it won't be accessible through a drive letter after you've booted from it. As you won't be able to see it, you might as well make it a lot smaller, say 1GB or less - just big enough to hold the Macrium PE.

I've tested that and it works.

PS: be prepared to wait an inordinately long time at the start of imaging while Macrium tests the disk write speed. The actual writing of the image (when it eventually starts) is a reasonable speed though.

Clever solution!

I can see that working if a UEFI pc but would it work as legacy bios - probably I think provided the fat32 partition is marked active?


In fact, thinking about it, do you even need a fat32 partition in legacy bios as legacy bios could boot from an ntfs partition but UEFI cannot (unless bios permits that but not common)?

Something to test tomorrow :-D.

cereberus said:

Clever solution!

I can see that working if a UEFI pc but would it work as legacy bios - probably I think proviided the fat32 partition is marked active


In fact, thinking about it, do you even need a fat32 partition in legacy bios as legacy bios could boot from an ntfs parttition but UEFI cannot (unless bios permits that but not common)?

Something to test tomorrow :-D.

I actually tested it on a legacy bios system. Yes, I marked the small Fat32 second partition as active. I can't try it as an ntfs partition at the moment as it's still saving an image Even if a legacy bios can boot from ntfs, it would be best to stick to a second Fat32 partition to make the usb 'universal'.

Bree said:

I actually tested it on a legacy bios system. Yes, I marked the small Fat32 second partition as active. I can't try it as a small ntfs partition at the moment as it's still saving an image Even if a legacy bios can boot from ntfs, it would be best to stick to Fat32 to make the usb 'universal'.

Yeah. How did you create MR part. I remember trying something like this a while back and the Macrium installer got confused. I actually manually copied files from iso but run into same issue of not seeing ntfs. Never occurred to me to put ntfs first!