New
#41
@doncole
Don, good morning.
Let's back off just a little bit to clarify some things. The Macrium Premium Trial you have is not going to just go poof and disappear. It will revert to the Free Edition, which is more than adequate for making and restoring images. Including making and using a Rescue Thumb drive. There is no time panic to get something done before it expires.
Your thread has jumped around from pre-installed 8.1, to an upgrade to AU, to restore points, to partitions, to sticky keys, to bootable images..... basically all over the place.
Let's set aside, for the moment, all the other things and concentrate on the Backup that you can make and restore if necessary.
First, the Macrium process of creating a backup does not create an image that is "bootable". It is simply a 1:1 exact copy of your operating system, your files, and supporting partitions. One big data file of exactly what your system looks like at that time. That is generally done to an external HDD spinner drive, like a USB 1TB drive you can hook up for the backup then remove for safe keeping.
The Macrium Rescue Thumb Drive (or DVD if you prefer) is used to boot from and restore the image from the external drive. Boot the thumb, find the image, restore. Restart the system and you are back to exactly where you were at the time the image was made. Forget Restore Points, they are not image backups. They do not backup all your files, etc.
I need to add, and please, this is for information purposes only, there is, technically, a way to create a bootable system from a Macrium backup. But, it is not something you even want to know about right now. I mention it only in case it comes up in future posts. It is NOT something you want to contemplate now. It is NOT straight forward. With that said, tuck that info away and forget it.
- you need a 4GB thumb drive, USB 2.0 or 3.0, doesn't matter.
- you need a place to store the backups, preferably an external 1TB hard drive.
- you need to read and understand this tutorial Backup and Restore with Macrium Reflect Windows 10 Backup Restore Tutorials
One thing at a time.
If this is your understanding of the current goal, please say so. If it is not, then we'll try something else.
Thanks, TC