Cant restore Macrium disk image of C

Hi all, saw this backup imaging disk managment forum on google looking for a fix on my Macrium reflect problem.

Im using the free edition so no access to the official forums which is a bummer cause im trying to sort a newbie problem restoring a disk image of my C drive, which is stored on an external usb using Macriums program,

ive got to either use Reflect recovery environment (from windows boot menu) ? or their Linux rescue CD

but dont know where/what this 'Macrium recovery environment' is, and with the Linux rescue CD, neither the standard or 'compatibility' mode (versions when creating it) can detect my external hdd partitions, only the comps internal drives/partitions, so cant restore my system.

I did also try the Linux CD debug mode but only showed a constant searching bar for 15 minutes (ie couldnt finalise) so sicked task manager on it Plus the BartPE alternative says its incompatible with Vista and W7. Im using W7 64

Would any present Macrium users have some tips or suggestions for other Linux boot CDs that'll also restore Macrium backups?

thanks for any help
nisen

 

The BartPE plugin can be used from a Win7RescuePE disc. I have done it many many times now.

You could make a regular bartPE disc (or win7rescue etc) and place the macrium plugin on another drive. Then you just browse to the plugin and start it.

As long as your USB drive with the image is available to whatever the recovery environment (bartPE, win7PE, etc) it should work.

You could always copy the image from the USB drive to an internal hdd as long as it isn't the partition you are restoring to, and restore that way, deleting when done. You could also store it on another computer and use network to restore. I have done that many times as well. You could even hook the USB drive to another computer, then share the USB drive, and access it across network.

You could create an image of the recovery cd and use grub4dos to load that image, trying out different linux cds like puppy or dsl, anything that works with the linux restore application that macrium makes. You could boot to dsl of cd, then try the linux rescue cd macrium makes.

Or, you could.. .. .. so many ways really

Sul.

 

@ Sully

Have you restored using Macrium Linux CD to a Virtualbox guest from backup DVD's?

Macrium creates .img for backups when choosing image.
Maybe partclone can restore. If that is the case try Redo Backup

 

thanks sully, so is the macrium plugin to allow barPE to be compatible with W7 comps, or to allow 'win7rescue' to be compatible with macrium?

damn how would that work restoring a c drive? How would disk managment swap them out. C drives listed as Health (System, Boot, Page File, Active, Primary Partition) so how do you turn the restored image into one of them if its being copied to another partition first.

ill do my best trying to google this stuff, but am green

 

well its starting to confuse me,

cant get the win7rescuePE cause i have no W7 install disk and cant install the BartPE builder without XP installation files.

Whats the simple answer you guys found when installing the Bart PE builder on your W7 machines or do you really need one or the other

ive got the updated reflect plugin from here http://support.macrium.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=2748 but looks like a dead end and starting to think the only way for a noob is to buy the paid version to get use of macriums copy of windows PE 2.0

 

You can download a Windows 7 System Repair Disk for free: http://neosmart.net/blog/2009/windows-7-system-repair-discs/

Boot your computer from the repair disk, start command prompt, navigate to your Macrium PE directory or Macrium plugin directory and start ReflectPE.exe from there. Macrium started fine that way for me on the VM, although I didn't try a full restore.

Alternatively, you can also download Microsoft's WAIK (Windows Automated Installation Kit) for free and use it to build your Win7PE rescue disk. Be warned though, WAIK is about 1.5 GB, give or take depending on the version you download.

 

I have used the Linux restore disc macrium makes, in a vmware box, from a dvd. I have used both the real disc and mounted an .iso of the linux restore. I have restored from USB, from other HDD, from DVD/CD and from a share. The hardest part of using the Linux CD is to make sure it can talk to all the hardware. In my experience, I would say about 20% of the machines I tried it on failed to work with it. Same is true of PE though, you need the correct drivers for it to happen.

Sul.

 

The macrium plugin has the restore program in it. Wherever you place this restore program (ie. d:\data\macrium PE plugin) it can be used from PE. It doesn't matter where it lives as long as it is not on the drive/partition you are restoring.

Not sure exactly what you mean, but will briefly describe it.

C drive is 20gb. You make an image of that drive, which ends with an image file of lets say 8gb. You must put this on a different "partition" than the system "partition".

If the C drive is 100gb, broken down into a 20gb partition (primary) and two 40gb partitions (drives D and E), you can store the image on D or E.

When you start PE, it is in memory, so it is not using the C drive at all. You are then free to take an image off of D or E, and copy it (erase) to the C drive. When you reboot, if all went well, the C drive has what the image has and boots just fine.

HTH>

Sul.

 

Note: To run the MacriumPE plugin from a Win7 repair disk, you may need to use the 32-bit repair disk even on 64-bit Windows. Of course that disk won't be able to perform the usual repair functions for a 64-bit Windows 7 (boot fix, mbr rebuild, windows system restore point restores, etc.), but you just skip/cancel all those things until you get to the screen to start command prompt and then start the Macrium ReflectPE plugin from there (I guess the plugin itself requires a 32-bit system, at least mine does).

You can also 'burn' the repair disk iso onto USB Flash with tools such as WinToFlash (Advanced mode tab -> Transfer WinPE Vista/2008/7 to USB drive). And if you want to further edit its system files (contained in a wim-file e.g. sources\boot.wim), you can use a free command line tool offered by Microsoft called ImageX.

 

Please help!

I only chose to backup the C drive without the MSR (System Reserved) partition. The recovery worked fine before I deleted the MSR and recreated due to installing another version of window7 (Chinese). Now I want to restore the Windows 7 ultimate x64 English from the backup (which worked before), but it won't work anymore. I know the problem is because I removed and re-created the MSR.

How to fix this issue?

Can I use a Windows PE boot disk? Can I create the PE disk from another windows 7 ultimate x64 machine?

Urgently awaiting any help!

Thank you so much!!!!

 

If the worst comes to the worst and you're unable to restore your system image,you can install Macrium Reflect again then "mount" the image you created.It'll then appear as a drive in Explorer and will allow you to recover any important files.

As for the issue with recovery,I'm not sure but you might need to reinstall the English version of Win7,deleting the current C Partition and creating another,in order to allow you to restore the image you created.

 

Thanks for you help!

There is no any particular files I want to recover. that's a C drive backup after a fresh installation of the OS and a lot of programs such as office 2010. I just don't want to spend 2 days to go over that again.

I did what you said: Reinstall only the window 7 English, deleted both the "System reserved" and C partition. and recreated them. then restored the backup successfully, However. the problem is it doesn't boot, saying no boot section found or boot manager is missing. And again, I believe the cause is I lost the previous "System reserved" partition which may have a pointer pointing to the bootable secion on the C drive, and recall I didn't make a backup of that "System reserved" partition.

Any idea before I have to spend 2 days reinstall everything from scratch? The image is there, but It just doesn't boot from it. it's a pain.

I did try to use the BartPE option on this HP laptop, but I failed too on a bluescreen on booting from the BartPE. googled found is because of the SATA driver missing and I can't find such a driver because this laptop only support windows 7. It's a deadlock!
Thanks

 

When you went through the restore wizard did you select the option to restore the mbr from the image or "do not replace"?

 

Maybe try a recovery disk. The downloads are here:

-http://neosmart.net/blog/2009/windows-7-system-repair-discs/

 

I tried that too without working out.

The problem was when I made the backup, I didn't choose the MBR. How could I restore it?

 

The MBR is automatically backed up when you create an image but it's restoration is optional.

Perhaps this might help also:

http://www.myefficientplanet.com/60405/how-to-solve-bcd-corruption-in-windows-7/