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#31
Ron, Macrium Free is free, there is no cost involved. There is a paid version, but the features are not necessary for doing basic backups and restores. You need to read the tutorial, and set it up for a basic image backup. There's nothing to download there, it is just a tutorial, a manual, here on Tenforums. The setup of Macrium for a backup will ask what you want to backup (all partitions) and where to back it up to (the WD drive).
In particular, in your case, this is probably the choice you will want. In the tutorial, Part Three, under 2)....
Choose the blue highlighted option. This partitions required to backup and restore Windows.
On your WD drive, create a folder for the backups to reside in. You can call it anything you want. Such as Macrium Backups or My Backups. That will be the destination you will tell Macrium. Reason I suggest creating the folder is to keep the backups isolated from anything else you may want to put on that WD drive.
Just follow the instructions for a basic full image backup. No need to get fancy right now. The tutorial is written for virtually all combinations under lots of different circumstances and setups. It is very thorough, you just need to follow those instructions that pertain to you and your setup.
It is important that you choose the Verify option when doing the backup. Yes, it will add a little more time, but will ensure the backup is usable when and if needed. If you needed to do a restore, that would be the wrong time to find out it was a corrupt image. That is a rare, rare occurrence, but it has happened. Not from the Macrium itself, but from hardware failures not caught. The verify helps tremendously to avoid that.
The Rescue Media is also important and takes little time to prepare. It gives you a tool to use if the OS is not bootable. That's the short version. More to it.
Please try to set it up simply, not a lot of bells and whistles to start. That can come later. Important part right now is to get you a working backup. At present, you have none. That is not good.
Look forward to hearing from you.
TC
Last edited by f14tomcat; 26 Jun 2018 at 15:43.