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Well, maybe it isn’t that earth shattering but I did have an Idea today, yeah I know unusual.
I got to thinking that if I could create a bootable USB stick for Macrium Reflect Free why
couldn’t I just create a small partition on a USB hard drive for the Reflect Boot Partition and setup the rest of the drive for the images. Thus eliminating the need to have the USB stick and/or find it:rolleyes:. Just plug in the drive and boot directly from it.

Well the test worked although there were a few bumps along the way.
So here’s the final procedure that worked for me.

[*]Plug in the USB hard drive and use the partition manager of your choice and delete all partitions. {This may not be necessary for you but I couldn’t get Macrium to put the boot files in the right partition when I just shrunk the existing partition and created a new one from the unused space. YMMV}
[*]Create a small partition {2 Mb should be sufficient}
[*]Format it to FAT32. Note: this may not work in all cases NTFS will but you have to set aside a minimum of 4GB wasting some space! Note 2: If you have a UEFI/Secure Boot system you MUST format using FAT32 as Macrium will NOT create the Rescue Media on a NTFS partition if this is the case and will notify you that the partition is unsuitable but doesn’t tell you why!
[*]Mark it as Active.
[*]Startup Macrium Reflect and select the create rescue media option.
[*]Use the Win PE options.
[*]After working through the menus select your USB hard drive from the destination options and click finish.
[*]Restart your partition manager and set up the rest of the space as an NTFS partition.
[*]Use Explorer to give the partitions meaningful names { I chose Macrium and M-images}.
[*]Restart your computer and hit whatever key you need to get the Boot Options Menu {F12 on my Dell Laptop}
[*]Select Boot from USB device and the Windows PE environment and Macrium should startup automatically.
[*]Do your backups as normal.

I hope some of you find this useful.

Now If I can figure out how to use the feature in Macrium to do automatic backups from a file I’ll have truly plug and play backups for my more PC challenged friends and relatives. :cheers:

Update: Unfortunately the ability to save the definition of backup jobs is NOT available in the free version. Can anyone with the paid version tell me if this feature is in the Paid Version when using the Windows PE environment?

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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Here is some more information along the lines of making an external drive into a fully functional backup and recovery drive.

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We use the same basic method to re-image our PCs. Boot from USB, image from second partition on USB.

cheers, Paul

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Well, maybe it isn’t that earth shattering but I did have an Idea today, yeah I know unusual.
I got to thinking that if I could create a bootable USB stick for Macrium Reflect Free

SNIP

How do you create a bootable USB stick for Macrium Reflect Free, and is it possible with the paid version??

BJ

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I’ve put together something here specifically for MR’s free 5.0, it’s a tested and true functional USB rescue disks;
Macrium Reflect USB Rescue Options

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With much thanks to RetiredGeek and CLiNT for all the wonderful information here. I’m hoping to spend some time this coming weekend in running through the process outlined in this thread. In looking at the thread and the related links a question has popped into my mind. Why 2 separate partitions on the USB drive? If I read it right you’ve got one small partition that is the boot partition then you’ve got a partition to contain the images created by the backup process. Does this require the drive to be in two partitions? Is there an advantage to having it in two partitions?

I plan on using a Western Digital My Passport 2 TB USB 3.0 portable drive with Macrium Reflect Standard.

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Eric,

You could probably get away with 1 partition as long as it is NTFS since you can’t make a Fat32 partition that big. That said I just thought it would be easier w/2 partitions especially when you want to upgrade the version of Macrium on the drive. Mostly, though it is a personal preference. :cheers:

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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OK, that makes sense. I just noticed that your directions and Macrium’s both talked about having the 2 partitions, so I wasn’t sure if that was a requirement or not. Originally I’d been thinking of having 2 partitions, a small one with the boot info, backup software, diagnostics & TrueCrypt and then a larger one that would hold the backups as you suggested, but be encrypted. I had noticed that many of the backup programs that have both free and pay versions have encryption as a feature in the pay version. I was going to save money by doing the encryption on my own. I think I’ve decided to go ahead and pay for Macrium Standard anyway. Then I can either do the TrueCrypt encryption myself or use their encryption feature. Again, thanks for the information.

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RG, you ask

“Unfortunately the ability to save the definition of backup jobs is NOT available in the free version. Can anyone with the paid version tell me if this feature is in the Paid Version when using the Windows PE environment?”

Yes, it is.

The backup definition is stored as an XML job. You can even edit it. Moreover, I have mine set up to do a full image on Mondays and an incremental Tuesday-Sunday. And to delete images after two cycles. Many options are available. For me, truly set and forget, it just works.

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Leslie,

Thanks for the info. However, I’m not exactly clear from your description if this applies when booting MR from Windows PE media like USB key or External USB HD? The first paragraph seems to confirm this capability. My confusion stems from your description of your backup schedule which does not seem consistent with booting from an external device. Of course this could just be my age addled brain. 😆 :cheers:

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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RG,

Mea Culpa, I glossed over the “when using the Windows PE environment?” I apologize.

(Early morning, still dozy, no coffee. And if I match you, addle for addle, that fine Shakespearean-sounding word, … well, let’s just not go there.)

My description pertains to backup within the Windows OS. I’ve only used the “Standard WinPE” once, from a DVD. I’m sorry, I can’t answer your question after all.
—
FWIW, here’s a message from the latest MR update:

Date 17 April 2013
What’s new? 5.1.5870:

Windows PE Recovery boot menu now available on 32 bit UEFI boot systems
Reflect now supports Windows PE recovery boot menu on the latest 32 bit UEFI boot tablet PCs.
—
cordially, l

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Lesle,

“Ah poor Sanity I knew him well…” Thanks for the reply. :cheers:

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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Well the test worked although there were a few bumps along the way.
So here’s the final procedure that worked for me.

[*]Plug in the USB hard drive and use the partition manager of your choice and delete all partitions. {This may not be necessary for you but I couldn’t get Macrium to put the boot files in the right partition when I just shrunk the existing partition and created a new one from the unused space. YMMV}
[*]Create a small partition {2 Mb should be sufficient}
[*]Format it to FAT32. Note: this may not work in all cases NTFS will but you have to set aside a minimum of 4GB wasting some space!
[*]Mark it as Active.
[*]Startup Macrium Reflect and select the create rescue media option.
[*]Use the Win PE options.
[*]After working through the menus select your USB hard drive from the destination options and click finish.
[*]Restart your partition manager and set up the rest of the space as an NTFS partition.
[*]Use Explorer to give the partitions meaningful names { I chose Macrium and M-images}.
[*]Restart your computer and hit whatever key you need to get the Boot Options Menu {F12 on my Dell Laptop}
[*]Select Boot from USB device and the Windows PE environment and Macrium should startup automatically.
[*]Do your backups as normal.

I hope some of you find this useful.

Very useful, I decided to give it a go with ToDo and maybe your small partition first and only saved me some time because I did it that way. ToDo WS didn’t give me any option to choose PE options so I didn’t know which environment was installed. Turns out it was the PE environment, maybe because I had already created a PE disc ISO? Otherwise it would not have been available since it requires that huge SDK from Microsoft to create initially.

Well, for whatever reason, it took about 10 seconds to complete; so fast that I thought it must not have worked correctly, like it just made the USB disk bootable and didn’t add the PE enviroment; but it’s all there.

The one system I used it on took longer to boot to the working environment that it would booting from a disc so I don’t know if that’s an anomaly or not but it seemed plenty fast once it was into the process of restoring the image on the USB drive that I added after partitioning the rest of the available space.

Two thumbs up either for my luck or EaseUS’s competency. :cheers:

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The one system I used it on took longer to boot to the working environment that it would booting from a disc so I don’t know if that’s an anomaly or not…

It was, the second all-in-one USB recovery operation booted into the working enviromment three to four times faster than the boot disc does. All seems as expected now.

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F.U.N.,

Glad you have it working to your satisfaction. :cheers:

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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Thanks; up and running full force with a mature OS on the “dissimilar” system already.

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Hey Y’all,

This is just to let you know I’ve modified the original post instructions to reflect the fact that if your target system uses UEFI/Secure Boot you must format the Active partition on your USB HD to FAT32 or Macrium will refuse to create the rescue media telling you that the device/media is unsuitable but it doesn’t tell you why! HTH :cheers:

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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I just happen to have some time this afternoon and have not yet made my recovery disk….. and have two retired drives in external cases :^_^:
Thanks for the heads up

🍻

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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Well not booting. I did the format with Gparted which leaves a 1 Meg space before the partition, I am thinking that should work as well as the Windows 7 format. I think I went wrong by choosing the PE 4 option when I had WAIK wchich would be ver 3xx. It still wanted to download something. I fear I have mostly confused myself:p

I will redo the proceedure when I have a chunk of time. I see one set of directions reads: copy the contents of ‘c:bootmacrium’ to the root of the USB stick. . I will see if I have anything to copy in that directory and try that. Those directions were for a previous ver of Reflect.

EDIT

Well I sit corrected. The USB HDD did boot, it just took a whole lot longer than I was anticipating. I figured I would give it one more try and went away for a glass of water. It works. Now I just have to put it on a disk that is actually big enough for and image file.
Thanks again for the suggestion.

🍻

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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Wavy,

Let us know how it goes. :cheers:

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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