Make a rough calculation of the image size---50 or 60 percent of your occupied space.
If occupied space is 200 GB, figure maybe 120 for the image.
Figure you might want to keep 2 or 3 images. Say 400 max total. No need to keep 5 or 6 for most people. Make a new image monthly and delete the oldest.
If your external is 1 TB, maybe you are crowding it. If 2 TB, maybe not. I don't know the size of your external.
My external drive's size is 250GB.
I thought that each image update would take the place of the previous one. But I'll keep in mind that it doesn't work that way.
I'll just delete all files on the drive and assume it'll work. I just wanted to clean it all up of old junk before putting the drive to its new purpose.
You have control over whether you want older images to be automatically deleted---via Macrium menus.
I do it all manually with little or no "automation".
You should probably make sure you have "cleaned up" C before imaging it--to make the image size smaller if for no other reason.
And it's good to run a virus and malware scan before imaging. You wouldn't want to restore an infected image.
Personally, I find it extremely convenient, however. My internal hard drive fails. I can:
1. Look for my Macrium Reflect recovery flash drive among all the other USB flash drives around here. Boot the computer from it, then plug in the external hard drive and restore the image from it. ---or---
2. I can just plug in my external hard drive, boot from it, and restore the image.
I prefer option 2. You do have to manually create the bootable partition on the external hard drive, however.
NavyLCDR, on later thought, I agree, having that ext HDD be bootable would be an additional help when crisis hits.
Me too! I like having it all together as one package so that the external HDD will boot itself rather than rely on a separate flash drive for the purpose. If I had the HDD, but the flash drive failed or got lost, then I'd be outta luck.
I may have to wait a bit to try all this out though. Last night, I copied the installation file from my flash drive to my laptop and attempted to install it, only to find out that it wanted to do a 101MB download. Since I don't have internet at home, I couldn't install it. I'll have to find a Wi-fi hotspot to go to so I can do the download. I'm really surprised a download is needed. I thought the installer would simply install the program.
What you downloaded to your flash drive was just the Download Agent. What you should have done immediately after downloading it was to run it, set the 'Save to' folder to your flash drive, and unticked 'run installer directly after downloading'. That would have downloaded the installer you could run without needing an internet connection.
"...That would have downloaded the installer you could run without needing an internet connection."
Bree, you got me interested in learning something new! How does that happen without the internet connection?
It's simple really, when you go to the Macrium page to download Reflect Free what their link downloads is a small web installer. When run it will download the full install package and run it automatically to install Macrium. After the install, most such web installers will tidy up and remove the downloaded package.
The Macrium Web installer has a selectable option to just download the full package to a folder of your choice. This is the stand-alone package that can install Macrium without further need for the internet. I was suggesting the OP should have done this when they had the chance, then used the full install package later when they got home.
Ahhh, I should have remembered that process! I've been saving some of the full MR installs,. Thanks for the reminder!
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