Macrium Reflect basics – how does it restore a HD?

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In layperson’s terms, how does Macrium Reflect restore a hard drive back to exactly what it was?

Is everything on a hard drive just a file including the Partitions?

I’m thinking what about the various Partitions, the Boot Area, Sectors, all the other areas that make a hard drive perform?   Is it as simple as all these, as well as the Operating system, Apps, and Personal Data are basically just binary files?

How does Macrium know how to put those files back into the exact same locations on the disk?

Windows 10 Pro x64 v22H2 and Windows 7 Pro SP1 x64 (RIP)

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Tex265 wrote:

In layperson’s terms, how does Macrium Reflect restore a hard drive back to exactly what it was?

Put simply, if you use a Macrium Reflect image, that image file is an exact block by block copy of the original source disk, minus a few things such as the paging and hibernation files, which are not necessary to copy.

When you restore an image file, it is a “mirror” of the original disk contents.

More here: https://knowledgebase.macrium.com/display/KNOW80/Macrium+Reflect+User+Guide

Disk imaging

Macrium Reflect creates an accurate and reliable Image of a hard disk or the partitions on the disk. In the event of a partial or complete system loss, you can use this image to restore the entire disk, one or more partitions, or even individual files and folders.

During the imaging process, Macrium Reflect copies the contents of entire volumes including a reference to their physical location on the storage device to an image file (.mrimg). You would normally store the image file on local or network drives, or removable drives connected using USB or eSATA.

We strongly recommend that you create an image of your system at regular intervals.

You can read more about how to use Macrium Reflect to image your PC in our KnowledgeBase article Creating a backup image of your computer, drive or partitions.

Macrium Reflect can help you create regular images by scheduling them for you. It can even tidy up after itself – see Scheduling retention and disk space.

Restoring images

Macrium Reflect restores disks or their partitions exactly as they were when the backup was taken. The restore process also enables you to expand or shrink partitions if the restore target is a new disk and a different size to the original.

If your whole system becomes corrupt, you can load Macrium Reflect and restore your image despite being unable to boot Windows. You can boot from the Macrium Reflect Windows PE rescue media and use Macrium Reflect to find and restore your images

The restore process is documented in the article Restoring a backup system image from Windows.

Windows 10 Pro 22H2

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Tex265

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That’s what inside an image backup. In this case my Acronis image backup.
You get all the original partitions which are copied back to original state overriding exiting data (on a current drive) or creating (on a new drive).

2 users thanked author for this post.

Tex265, JohnW

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