System Image

OldMike65 said:

I Always use my DVD's cd's don't hold as much information. Also use a 3rd party program which I own, its not free. I use Acronis
backup software, have for years. I've already re-installed Windows 10, 5 times since 1st installing it. Plus I only make the complete backup when Windows has been running the most stable. I see no sense in putting it on any hard drive and wasting that space. Just my 2cents worth. :)

I have a 9TB RAID 6 disk strictly for OS and data backup images. OS images are around 40GB and 6 minutes to create, data images around 1TB and around an hour&half. I do not consider it wasted space. It has saved my skin enough times. Then again this has my professional work as a consulting software architect and developer, and tax, music, movies, mail, contacts ... hmm, that's a good chunk of my life! My 2 cents :).

Saltgrass said:

It has to be backed up on a physical hard drive other that the one the OS is on. A second internal, if possible, or external are good choices.
It can also be done on a Network location but that is a much slower process.

Not really

Macrium Reflect 37GB image to USB 3 External HD 4minutes 46s
Network NAS 6minutes 14s

Question: can you do specific file restore from the Macrium reflect images? I don't recall it way back when I was originally shopping for the software. How long have they been around?

topgundcp said:

Yes you can. Just double click on the backup image, a windows will popup and you can mount & explore as a regular folder. Use drag & drop to selectively restore any file(s) you want.

Thanks! I just checked out their web site. According to their descriptions, the free doesn't but the paid Home does. If I didn't have and like Paragon Hard Disk Manager this might be a nice alternative.

DJG said:

Thanks! I just checked out their web site. According to their descriptions, the free doesn't but the paid Home does.

I've been doing it on the free version for years. You can even mount the image file, and then share the resulting drive letter on the network.

Interesting. I'll check out the free version - nothing to lose. Well, maybe some disk space :)

DJG said:

Interesting. I'll check out the free version - nothing to lose. Well, maybe some disk space :)

I have a 1TB external USB that I have made bootable to the Macrium Free rescue program. It has 6 images from different computers on it. I can boot any of my computers from it and restore the image, I can mount the images using Macrium Free and pull single files from the image, or I share either the drive on the network and mount the images on remote computers, or mount the image on the server and share the resulting virtual drive.

I've just downloaded Macrium reflect but it's doesn't say anywhere about it being compatible with Win 10.

ash55 said:

I've just downloaded Macrium reflect but it's doesn't say anywhere about it being compatible with Win 10.

I'm using it.

Windows 10 and Macrium - Macrium Software


How to Create an Image of Your PC Before Upgrading to Windows 10