Okay so I have been having some issues with Macrium reflect. Its with imaging, I only want to image my C drive however when I do it says it will take about 10-16hrs on a 16gb flash drive. Now I don't think it should take this long but maybe I did something wrong. Also should I format my Flash Drive before I do it again?
16Gb sounds very small for a backup drive even allowing for the fact Macrium will compress the image.
If you go to 'File Explorer' and 'This PC', how much space is taken on your C drive ? I'm just wondering if it will fit onto 16Gb.
What if I just wanna back up the OS, or do something to a recovery drive?
Some basics about Flash Drives.
They are notoriously slow. They are not intended for the type of work you are trying to do. An external spinner drive is the correct way to go. Flash drives cannot use Windows cache. They will, and do, wear out Much Much Much faster than any external drive would. They are simply not intended to be overwritten time and time again. They are memory cells, not magnetic media like an external drive. Even a USB 3.0 thumb will never come close to the speed of an external drive.
You will get ONE image, maybe, on that thumb drive.
Guess what I'm trying to say to you is that is the wrong choice. You will regret it in the long run. $50-$60 will get you a decent 1TB external with speed and capacity.
You shouldn't just image C:. Hopefully you know when Windows is installed it creates some other small partitions.
If your disk fails, you will want these as well to restore your PC.
Macrium provides a useful option which selects all relevant partitions - e.g. click
Backup, Windows Backup
My very rough guide for OS files is to use one at least 2x the amount of data I plan to back up. Backing up video/image files is different - these don't compress, so you need more storage. The drive you mention above is inadequate as f14tomcat says.
I use a 2Tb USB3 external hard drive, NTFS formatted.
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