Need help starting with Macrium Reflect.

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Hi all. I just downloaded Macrium Reflect Free for the first time. I want to back up my grandkids laptops. These are some inexpensive Lenova’s that only have 64 GB drives. So, the whole shebang should fit nicely on a small thumbdrive. But the program is more complex than I anticipated. Firstly, it starts with a screen that seems to imply multiple partitions and/or drives. I don’t really understand this. Do I “image” all of these? Will this allow me to bring the computer back to a pre-established set-point?

I’m just not sure how to get started here. The YT vids aren’t much help. Hopefully, my screenshot segment will display properly.

Thanks; Artie

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Install Macrium Reflect and immediately make a bootable Rescue Media, either CD/DVD or USB. This will allow you to boot an otherwise unbootable machine and access the backups you have made and allow you use some repair utilities. (It is also important to make  Windows bootable Rescue Media.)

To have a full disk image, you should include all the partitions (everything that is checked in your screenshot). Using the image will restore the computer to the time of the backup: OS, programs and data. You can backup the computer from the running machine, but my preference is to backup from offline using the bootable Rescue Disk. In the latter case, none of the system is active. It is a good ides to verify the backup image.

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[LHiggins]

PKCano wrote:

Install Macrium Reflect and immediately make a bootable Rescue Media, either CD/DVD or USB. This will allow you to boot an otherwise unbootable machine and access the backups you have made and allow you use some repair utilities. (It is also important to make  Windows bootable Rescue Media.)

Couldn’t agree with this more! Having a bootable Rescue Media saved me several times – and was very easy to use and restore my computer. First thing to do for sure!!

• This reply was modified 5 years, 6 months ago by LHiggins.

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GoneToPlaid

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I suggest you use Aomei Backupper, it does the same job but has an easy interface.

cheers, Paul

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Can I sympathise with the OP?

I use Macrium Reflect for a couple of systems (a 10 year old Win7 laptop and a Dell 8930 desktop with NVMe disk) and it works well although I too have struggled with the interface.

But I am still puzzled by a Dell XPS15 laptop that The Boy brought home from university.  The laptop runs Win10 v1809 on a NVMe boot disk.  During the summer holiday, I backed up the OS (using MR) and the Data folders (using SyncToy) separately.  All well and good.

But I could not persuade Macrium to include the NVMe driver(s) in the Recovery disk.  When I booted to the Recovery disk, I could see the MR images on the attached USB HDD and could verify them, but I could not “see” the NVMe disk.  Therefore, any restore operation was toast before it started…

I have trawled the Help files and both the Macrium and Dell websites for information but have not find anything useful.  The Boy has returned to university so any further research is on hold until Christmas…

That will be fun!

James

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In addition to creating bootable rescue media such as a CD/DVD, you should also enable the system to boot directly to the rescue environment.  The bootable media is for when the system is hosed and will not boot;  the other is for when the system will boot, but for some reason it needs to restored to an earlier version.  In MR go to Other Tasks > Create Rescue Media, select device “Windows Boot Menu” and follow the prompts.  Next time the system starts, there will be two boot options – boot into Windows as usual, or boot into the MR rescue environment.  Windows is the default, and will commence to boot after x seconds.  The value of x can be set via Msconfig > Boot > Timeout.

Windows 10 Pro 64 bit 20H2

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cmptrgy

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