Can Macrium restore an MS System Image?

Somewhere I saw someone state that Macrium can restore MS System Images. Anyone know if it can?

I can't ask on their forum as you can only register after you buy the product and I tried emailing their contact - sales@macrium.com but the emails bounce as spam. Not very potential customer friendly but I haven't given up on them yet.

I backup all seven computers (win 7, 8.1 & 10) at least once a month so I've got a slew of backups for each. They are all MS system images. I recently ran in to an issue that forced me to to clone an HD instead of restoring like I intended. I used the free Macrium program to do that and thought I'd give them a shot.

BUT, I don't want to lose my old stuff. Particularly some significant points such as the initial install, last backup before say upgrading my 8.1 laptop to 10. Stuff like that.

spokey said:

Somewhere I saw someone state that Macrium can restore MS System Images. Anyone know if it can?

I've never heard the slightest thing about that and would be astonished if it were true.

spokey said:

Somewhere I saw someone state that Macrium can restore MS System Images. Anyone know if it can?

No, it can't. Truth be told, even the MS recovery sometimes cannot restore one - that's one of it's most common failings and why the MS system imaging is a deprecated feature.

Microsoft said:

System Image Backup (SIB) Solution
We recommend that users use full-disk backup solutions from other vendors.

Features removed or Deprecated in Windows 10 Fall Creators Update


But if your only option is to restore a system image that the MS imaging cannot restore, then I'm told it can be done manually as a last resort.

Finally i am able to restore my system image backup. And for anyone who is struggling to restore there system image backup created using windows inbuilt utility then i recommended you to use the method given on the top post on 5th page in the link give below.

How to restore system image backup - post #26

spokey said:

BUT, I don't want to lose my old stuff. Particularly some significant points such as the initial install, last backup before say upgrading my 8.1 laptop to 10. Stuff like that.

I used to use MS imaging for my System Two in my specs below. It's a test machine with multiple images I can restore, all versions of W10 from 1507 up to 1903 plus W7. Do what I did when I switched over to Macrium, restore each MS image, then make a Macrium image of the restored PC.

You don't even need to install Macrium to make an image, if you boot from the Macrium recovery usb that can make images as well as restore them.

and why the MS system imaging is a deprecated feature.

Evidence that your claimed issue is the reason?

The OP shouldn't have any difficulty restoring from .vhd(x). The problem is most often between the chair and the keyboard.

However, if the OP really wants, he can mount the .vhd(x) and make an image of the mounted drive with something else, or copy the contents to the target.

Thanks to all for the responses

I was afraid of that as I couldn't find any way to pick a system image in the macrium restore area but figured it was no harm in asking.

Thanks Bree for his good suggestion. Guess all those restore / backup to macrium will take awhile, but is a solution and might force me to 'prune' some of those backups down to the ones I really might need.

I haven't had any real restore problems with MS. I think maybe 2 over the last 10-12 years. The recent one had to do with restoring an old laptop that I had converted to Linux. I had trouble restoring that I think due to grub being the loader.

The only other one was pre-system image with xp when I couldn't restore after a mother board swap (actually same laptop around 2010 or so).

[edit]
And yes, I'm aware I can mount the backup and copy any files I want. I do resort to that from time to tiem.

spokey said:

Guess all those restore / backup to macrium will take awhile, but is a solution and might force me to 'prune' some of those backups down to the ones I really might need.

Be careful what you do with the ones you keep. I found from (bitter) experience that moving or renaming anything other than the WindowImageBackup folder was a good way to break restore's ability to recognise and restore an image. Whatever you do, do NOT put W7 an W10 system images in the same WindowImageBackup folder, that can make the W10 images disappear from the list of available images to restore.

I haven't had any real restore problems with MS. I think maybe 2 over the last 10-12 years....

I've done lots for my test machine, as long as you do not try anything too clever with renaming it works reliably.

And yes, I'm aware I can mount the backup and copy any files I want. I do resort to that from time to tiem.

The link I gave earlier will take you to page 5 in this thread where a method is described by rwb1012 not only to mount the images, but to successfully manually restore a working system from them. You may (hopefully) never need it, but it makes interesting reading.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...?auth=1&page=5

I backup all machines to a USB HD. First thing I do is to run a script to remove security so windows doesn't bitch and moan about drilling down in explorer, renaming, moving around etc.

I move the backup to a directory for that machine and that version (e.g. folders indicating backups of win8.1 & 10 for my main laptop). Then I rename the WindowsImageBackup folder to something like -
"WindowsImageBackup - <machinename> - yyyy-mm-ff - hhmmdd - label" where label might be something like "pre aug upd". I then create a txt file named "WindowsImageBackup - <machinename> - yyyy-mm-ff - hhmmdd - label.txt" . In it I have the machine name again, the version/type (e.g. windows 10 pro x64) and any info I want to be able to refresh on at some later date such as "prior to installing mysql" or such.

When I restore, I move the backup folder & txt file back to the root and rename the backup back to WindowsImageBackup. Usually, when all is done, I'll move the two files back to the sub directory and rename the WindowsImageBackup back to the tagged name.

So far the system is working.