Back to W 10

I don't like the fact they removed folder previews, I take a lot of pics, vids. After many years I have many folders, previews are very convenient in remembering what's in the folder.

They also made the little sound menu more complicated, and un-intuitive, as they did with the task bar and start menu. So I'm happy with 10 again, hope they get their act together with 11, since we'll be forced to use it one day.

coolnewyorker said:

How does this differ from the image created through back-up and restore(w7) which I do once a month or so?

Over the years I have used both extensively.

Both the Backup & Restore (W7) system image and a Macrium Reflect system image can be used to restore a complete working system, as it was at the time the image was made. There are several significant differences between the two though.

The first is the storage required for the image. Backup & Restore creates a folder with the PC's name in a WindowsImageBackup folder on the drive you choose to store the image on. You must not move or rename either of these folders, else the restore will fail to find your image. The PC-named folder contains multiple folders of logs, catalogs, metadata and a backup folder with a *.vhdx file for each partition backed up. The total size of the backup is about the same size as the the used space on the partitions that were imaged.

Macrium Reflect creates a single *.mrimg file that you can place in any folder you like. It contains all the partitions and their index. By default medium compression is used and the size is about 50%-70% of the used space of the partitions in the image.

The second is what ISN'T backed up. Neither Backup & Restore or Reflect can include any of the Restore Points. These are VSS shadow copies, and as both MS and Macrium's imaging uses a VSS snapshot while imaging the restore points are not available to backup. In addition, Backup & Restore will not restore the list of updates in your Update History. All your updates would have been restored, but Update History will appear empty (you'll still see all the updates listed in the Control Panel though, so nothing is actually lost).

Then there is the treatment of the swapfile and hibernation file. Reflect will not back these up (they are not really of any use in a backup) Rather it puts a placeceholder in the image so that they will be recreated after a restore. Backup & Restore appears to back them up fully.

(BTW, this also includes a separate optional CD/DVD for system repair recovery disc. Does Marium imaged backup include system repair disc option?

Yes, to restore an image you need to boot to their respective recovery environments.

Backup & Restore offers to make a bootable CD/DVD though this is of little use if your PC doesn't actually have a CD/DVD drive. A Recovery Drive USB (made without including system files) is functionally identical to recovery CD. You can also restore a Backup & Restore system image by booting to Advanced Startup.

Macrium has a Rescue Media Builder that can create an ISO file, burn to a CD/DVD, create a bootable USB, or add Macrium recovery as a boot option for your PC. Unlike Backup & Restore the Macrium recovery environment is a full copy of Reflect with all functions available. You can not only use it to restore an image, but you can also make an image of any PC you can boot from the Macrium recovery usb. This can be useful if you need to recover files from a PC that can't boot. A Macrium image can be mounted as a virtual drive by any PC that has Macrium installed, then files can be copied from it with File Explorer.