You are correct. Macrium is ideal. It works well with Insider. People should do regular backups.
OP is currently working toward and learning the steps to accomplish all that.
Rescue Media is a crucial necessary step. That is the current topic.
cheers..............
I did two things:
1) Macrium Reflect disk image - ran for 1:25 hours and created a 401GB image on the external 4TB drive. That is the entire C:\ drive and I am not sure if it encompasses the entire disk, including EFI stuff. The source disk is 1TB but it's mostly empty.
2) Created two rescue flash drives, each time it ran for what seemed like 30 seconds.
I have not yet created a boot menu option, am thinking about that. What exactly would it point to?
an important step with (2) is to format the flash drive. I thought Macrium would do that and overwrite whatever is on there. But no. If it's full, it will run and fail to create it, so pay attention to the message. Only after I formatted it, did it work. That's on the 8GB flash I had.
I also had a 32GB flash I used to install Windows 10 Home when I installed Windows, and since I do not anticipate using it, I installed MR recovery stuff on it. Then it got confusing, it appears it only added it to the disk. So I reformatted the drive and reinstalled. It does work very fast. Now I have two recovery USB flash drives.
If you clicked the option to 'Create an image of the partition(s) required to backup and restore Windows' then it will include the EFI and any other necessary partitions. It will not include any partitions that are purely data partitions and not a necessary part of your Windows system.
If you choose to add a boot menu option, Macrium will create a C:\Boot folder, put the Macrium recovery environment in that, then add a boot menu option that points to it.
Yes, you do need to be aware that Macrium just adds the boot files to the usb. This can be useful, you may want to include tools of your own on the drive. Should you update Macrium in the future you would want to update the recovery drive too. Macrium will only replace its own files, leaving intact any other files and folders you may have put there....an important step with (2) is to format the flash drive. ... it appears it only added it to the disk..
Yes, Macrium will not format, nor ask to format, the thumb drive. As mentioned by Bree, when creating a new Rescue Thumb, always format it Quick, FAT32. Unless you have other stuff on it you want to keep. Best practice is to devote the thumb to Rescue use only to avoid corrupting/deleting the Macrium environment.
On the image you created....
It made a 401GB image from 1 1TB drive, which you say is mostly empty. The default compression ratio of 60% would bear out those numbers. 1000GB would compress to around 400GB. I'm wondering if you maybe changed the type of image copy from Intelligent Sector Copy to Make an Exact Copy. Exact Copy is the Forensic Copy, includes every sector, every byte, used or not. That would correspond perfectly with the 401GB from 1TB. May want to check how you have this set.
I am re-running it by selecting the above. Weird, it's taking far longer today versus the other time. ETA was 5 hours, yet the total amount of GBs seems to have gone up from 401GB to 439GB. Seems like the connection to the external drive is slower today.
Pardon, but I'm not clear what you changed. The Intelligent Copy is the standard way of doing it. The Forensic Copy is rarely used by regular users, if ever. It's not very useful to the avergae user, intended for Law Enforcement and such. I wasn't suggesting in any way you change to forensic, merely pointing out the option if you had accidentally chosen it. Notice on mine the Intelligent Copy is bulleted. Still cannot understand why you are getting a 400+GB image file from an "almost empty" 1TB source disk. Something is missing here. If you do not already have Tree Size Free, please download and install it, and run it on your C: drive. Post a screenshot of the results.
TreeSize Free - Quickly Scan Directory Sizes and Find Space Hogs
Also, post a screenshot of your Macrium definition file where it shows what partitions you have chosen to save. If you do not have a definition file set up, please post a screenshot of what the partitions are that you are saving when you choose whatever option you are choosing. A screenshot of what you are clicking to make the backup image would also be very helpful. We're running kind of blind here, and can't see what you are seeing.
Post a screenshot of the Disk Management display of that whole drive (the 1TB source drive).
Help with some pics of anything useful.
Thanks.
I think there must have been a problem with my drive. Likely nothing to do with Macrium. at the end, got an error.
Looking at settings, I have: Intelligent sector copy.
Are there any advantages to Forensic sector copy when cloning disks?
I booted off the cloned disks, everything seems to work. And they were created with the 'intelligent sectory copy", all this time I thought I had Forensic copy configured.
Both. I did a clone the other day and yesterday did an image, then re-did it with the "Create an image of the partition(s) required to backup and restore Windows. And that re-did took 5 hours and ultimately timed-out. I will attempt it again.
I am just looking through my settings now.
It should not take 5 hours to do a normal image backup. My OS and supporting partitions total about 32GB, and will back up AND verify in 3 1/2 minutes to a 16GB image.. Something is amiss.
Please re-read this post and do all of it that you can. Thanks.
Macrium Reflect image question - dedicated drive? - Page 4 - Windows 10 Forums
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