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#1
Factory MFT on a brand new HP Windows 10?
I am preparing a brand new HP 15-f272wm laptop bought today from Walmart (Windows 10) and before I install another OS I thought I would make a backup image of the entire hard drive using Macrium Reflect 6.1 build 1225 (most recent).
This computer was turned on only once, and after it booted to the first point where user input was required (making sure it worked OK and wasn't DOA) I shut it down and removed the hard drive. I put the drive into a USB 3.0 enclosure and connected it to my Windows 7 system to perform the backup.
Macrium starts the backup, but aborts with: MFT corrupt - Error code = 6. Please run 'chkdsk G: /r' WTF? Why does Macrium think this is an MFT drive? Windows 7 disk manager clearly shows it to be a GPT with an EFI partition.
I am concerned that running the chkdsk command may corrupt the drive, especially if Windows is confused about the type of drive it is. I'm sure the factory image was created through a standard sysprep process or whatever they may now call the equivalent of it for Windows 10. Since I didn't proceed the image should still be pristine factory fresh, right?
Another concern I have is running the Windows 7 chkdsk on a Windows 10 drive. I would hope that GPT and NTFS should be solid, unchanging standards, but this is Micro$oft and they have a way of doing things that make assuming things like no changes to GPT and NTFS between Win7 and Win10 seem risky to me.
I'm very disappointed and suspect that Micro$oft has intentionally made it difficult to perform even basic tasks like making a backup image of a disk for protection in the event of disk failure, or in my case to try another OS.
I really don't want to go through all the rigamaroll of setting up Windows 10, activating it etc just to take a backup image. It was a bit of a PITA to remove the drive from this system, it isn't accessible through an access panel, rather the entire top half of the system has to be removed, so I need to make the backup of the drive before I reassemble it back into the laptop. I could try to eliminate the USB enclosure and connect it directly to an extra SATA port, but the enclosure has worked well on all other drives, regardless of partition type, MFT, GPT and even Apple OSX GPT disks, so I don't think that is likely to help.
I would appreciate any insight or workaround procedures or suggestions any of you Win 10 gurus may have.
Thx!