Hi and thank you for reading my post. Hope you won't mind helping me with some clarification regarding Macrium Reflect and which options I should select.

I recently downloaded an older free version of the software Macrium Reflect v 8.0.7783. There appears to be 2 options (clone this disk and image this disk). I'm not sure which I should select. The manual says "Disk Image stores the information required to completely restore disks" and "Cloning with Macrium Reflect creates an exact copy of partitions to a different drive. When you Clone a hard drive, you can boot from the target disk on the same system after cloning. Important Windows cannot boot from a USB-connected drive. This is a restriction imposed by Windows. If you clone your system disk to a USB-connected external drive then, to boot your clone, the physical disk must be removed from the USB caddy and attached internally."

Not sure if I'm interpreting this correctly but if I choose Image This Disk, it will create an ISO of my entire laptop drive that I can store on an external. Does this mean I can mount the image using something like virtual clonedrive and retrieve files and folders individually while also using it to restore entire drive contents if necessary without having to do that USB caddy removal and internal drive attachment procedure they described in the manual?

They also have this option on the left that says "Create an image of the partition(s) required to backup and restore Windows. Should I also do that as well? I'm assuming that partition is OS (C: )

Any advice is greatly appreciated! Thank you in advance!

 

Hey korniceman3000

Cloning a disk is for when you want to copy your existing HD on to another physical disk, you normally do this if you upgrade to a bigger disk or if your existing HD is showing signs of failure. Cloning a disk would normally copy all partitions including the windows system partitions as well as the data ones.

Imaging a disk makes a file copy of however many partitions you choose to image and this is used in case you get a virus, or system corruption just to name a couple of examples and once you restore the image it restores your machine back to the same state that it was at the time of creating the image. This stores the data in a proprietory file type and some imaging softwares do let you open the archived file (bit like a zip file) and you can extract data from it.

I image my DAW computer often keeping a couple of previous copies on an external HD, I also backup certain windows files and various application data which should I need to restore the main windows image I have the separate updated file of installed apps and there configs. For me it keeps everything up to date in case of that emergency.

When I build a new computer I always take a RAW image of just the main Windows installation and all drivers that have been installed and all my OS tweaks so I can always take it back to a vanilla state.

I also take a MAIN image which contains all the Windows partitions.

When building a computer like a Studio computer I take periodic images as I install and configure more software.

My day to day Image only contains my Windows OS partition my C:\ , any separate data partitions are automactially backed up to various NAS.

I use the following

Imaging Software: Acronis True Image
Windows Backup Software: Nova Backup and Urgent Backup

Always keep images and backups OFF of your main computers hard disk.

There is a very important saying "Always Backup the Backup"

 

Last edited: Oct 15, 2024 at 9:24 PM

I use Macrium Free, same version you relate. I dont clone. I have a PE Windows USB (which Macrium did for me), with it I reboot the machine to the USB and without even touching it , it Opens Macrium interface were I choose what point of restore I will do, usually an incremental or differential latest bup. I recommend you do retention rules, decide when to do a complete bup, how many incremental/diff ones in between, etc. This is good to avoid incrementing your backup disk space dramatically , you can choose how many bups to keep, etc, probably you already know that. I do incrementals whenever I uninstall/install something.
EDIT I meant Differential backups, thats what I use, ( as Incrementals are not included in the free version ) there is a good tutorial well documented here (4 parts):
https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/61026-backup-restore-macrium-reflect.html#Part1

 

Last edited: Oct 15, 2024 at 10:29 PM