I have an external 4TB drive but some of the space is taken by other things. I have about 1.5TB free.
now, can this drive be used for the Macrium reflect image or does Macrium need an empty, dedicated drive? Is the image an ISO type image where, in a disaster recovery situation, you have to boot off that drive?
Just make a folder on that drive and direct your backups to it. Keeps it all separate.
No, you would not boot from it, it's storage for the images only. You would boot from the Recovery Media, either a Thumb or DVD, or the Boot Menu option if you set that up. Then, just browse to that backup folder and choose it for restore, and go.
what do you mean by "Recovery Media"? I mean the Win10 PE I made onto the flash drive?
My boot drive is 1TB in size. How much space does Macrium Reflect need therefore to accommodate that?
Yes, the flash drive. You would boot from that to restore the image from the external drive. Fairly straight forward.
Backup and Restore with Macrium Reflect | Tutorials
Space wise, it does depend on how big the OS is, but Macrium will by default compress the image about 60%. My OS and supporting partitions total about 32GB, and create a 17GB backup image. So you can get a feel from that with a little math how much space you would need and how many images you can store. 4TB is a lot of space. I generally store 12 images with no issues at all. You have plenty of space.
Your boot drive is 1TB, but it's the size of the OS and supporting partitions that counts. Macrium will not back up unused space.
This needs to be clarified, as the process is not all that clear.
First, you have to create a bootable flash drive with the Windows PE found here:
Windows 10 Recovery Tools - Bootable Rescue Disk - Windows 10 Forums
I did the above and it fits onto a 16GB USB flash drive and boots.
Only *then* do you run Macrium Reflect image making feature. And if you don't have a rescue boot disk, you cannot use the Macrirum image, correct?
I've had Macrium Reflect for years but never did contemplate the image making feature, I usually just cloned the drive from primary to clone boot drive.
That's partially correct. Cloning will create a huge image the size of the whole boot drive. Imaging is way, way smaller. and much, much faster. Plus you can keep multiple copies going back in time. Cloning is generally used for a transfer of an old drive to a new one, not for daily'weekly/monthly backups.
And you are correct....if you don't have some bootable media for Rescue/Restore, the backup images are basically useless. It's a 2 way street. Macrium backup to create, Rescue Media to restore.
The other thing that I wonder about, Macrium Reflect image process recovers the operating system but of course not your personal files in ~/Documents that can be significantly larger than 17GB. So the point of the image is to boot an operating system and recover it. And deal with the data later.
I hardly ever suffer data loss. Usually the damage is on the operating system level, or the EFI partition and such.
I get it..so you create an image, it's not an ISO image but in Macrium Reflect format and you still have to actually recover the machine via some other mechanism to get the the prompt or to some preloaded environment to access ME image.
Let's say I suffer catastrophic operating system failure, major files deleted.. okay, I boot off the Win10 PE flash I have. Then what?
That depends on what partitions you choose to include in the backup image. If your personal files are on C: with the OS, they will automatically go with the image. If on a separate partition, just include that also with the backup definition, and they will be saved. They could be restored separately from the OS.
Your link was to Kyhi's recovery drive. Yes, it does include a version of Macrium but you don't have to use that. In fact, it's probably better to make your own (latest version) bootable media.
Macrium itself has the tools to create it's own bootable rescue drive. 'Create Rescue Media...' is in the 'Other Tasks' menu. With Macrium 7.2 you can choose between making the WinPE media (requires a download from Microsoft) or the new WinRE media (no download required). Click the Rescue Media Builder's 'Advanced' button to choose PE or RE.
You can add the rescue media to your Windows Boot menu, create an ISO of the recue media and/or (if you plug in a usb flash drive) make a bootable usb rescue drive. I have Macrium in my boot menu and on a usb to cover all eventualities.
Quote