Macrium Reflect Error restoring please help :(

Discussion in 'backup, imaging & disk mgmt' started by Frankfree, May 16, 2019.

  1. Frankfree

    Frankfree Registered Member

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    OK every body told me Macrium Reflect even the free version is wonderful and now
    When I tried to restore from image backup every thing is messed up and does not work

    this time I did some verification and I am stuck here

    https://i.imgur.com/2m10pfr.jpg
     
  2. roger_m

    roger_m Registered Member

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  3. JasonUK

    JasonUK Registered Member

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    Did you verify backup when you created it or choose to verify it before using Restore option? That might have provided insight whether the image was good or whether other factors (hardware/other) are the issue. Also have you only got the one backup or have you got others you can try even if slightly older?
     
  4. zapjb

    zapjb Registered Member

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    Sorry, hope you get sorted.
     
  5. EASTER

    EASTER Registered Member

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    Macrium is wonderful and incredibly accurate.

    Where there is an issue it's a high likelihood and chance that it's possibly the drive.
    The only time I experienced any errors whatsoever it wasn't the program but my own hardware.

    That being said I never use verification any longer for the simple reason that if a first try at backup doesn't restore with Macrium then my fallback is Drive Snapshot. In imaging IMHO it's best to keep (2) imagings just in case of situations that might arise unexpectedly. Happens with every program software.

    Of course smarter pencils are here to better guide your efforts to pinpoint the problem you're seeing, not me :rolleyes:
     
  6. guest

    guest Guest

    This is exactly the reason why I always have a backup from Windows Backup & Restore (windows built-in imaging feature), it never failed me.
    Don't get me wrong, Macrium is my favorite 3rd party one, works very well but it failed me a couple of time, Windows' one never.

    People are so obsessed finding 3rd party replacements that aren't really needed and work even less well than what Windows already offers.
    Sure, Win10 is far from perfect but some stuff it has works very well.
     
  7. Frankfree

    Frankfree Registered Member

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    Thank you for telling me it is wonderful , It is probably my drive but I just wanted to test this software and in a working pc I restored and it has completely
    made my PC unusable, I can not boot at all , I can't even reinstall the OS it is a blue screen all the time

    Now I am scared to use this software on other pc.

    Every thing destroyed and nothing works
     
  8. guest

    guest Guest

  9. Freki123

    Freki123 Registered Member

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    If you can't install the OS my guess would be the drive is the problem. Macrium should have nothing to do with anything if you boot from Usb/Cd to install Windows and stuff fails.
     
  10. Frankfree

    Frankfree Registered Member

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  11. Frankfree

    Frankfree Registered Member

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    How to know if there is some thing wrong before spending restless nights backing up and having a flase feeling of security before we find out that nothing works?
     
  12. EASTER

    EASTER Registered Member

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    Obviously this is a first time and so sorry you've run into an issue after such high expectations about Macrium but it is actually one if not the only one of it's kind that rarely borks. But that's not to say it can't and doesn't because at some point all such apps glitch be it slightly or fully.

    In your case it seems a full failure ensued leaving you with but only questions and a need for urgency.

    The Image Specialists that frequent here i'm sure will zero in on what went wrong after they draw conclusions and outline a procedure that can help. I'm not one of them but learned a lot from them, you can too :)

    If, and that's a big IF, your Restore Image is after all complete and non corrupted after all, they may be able to guide you to other steps to repeat the restore perhaps since you mention a blue screen now even on reinstalling attempts the O/S again.

    And if it's any consolation to you, at this point I know it's not, :oops: this is a perfect learning session to discover why things went haywire and if there is a solution short of a malfunctioning hard drive which will almost always impede Macrium from completing it's task.

    Spent those same restless anxious moments and loss of nights myself and it's nerve wrecking for sure.
     
  13. zapjb

    zapjb Registered Member

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    The way is to have two HDD/SSD that are perfect clones. You know they both work cause you've swapped them out a few times. This is your failsafe.

    I'm without coffee. Somebody else please explain.
     
  14. Frankfree

    Frankfree Registered Member

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    Excuse me? some body can help me ?
     
  15. Peter 123

    Peter 123 Registered Member

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    I am no image specialist at all but for a certain period of time I had a similar issue like you with another image programe (Paragon Backup & Recovery). So from my own experience I would advise you to check your hard disk (the one from which you would like to create the image), e.g. with a program like CrystalDiskInfo or with the tool of the manufacturer of the disk. In my case this check showed that my hard disk was defect and this was obviously the reason why the image program always stopped to work at a certain point. Finally I changed the hard disk and from this time the creation of an image works without any issues.

    In other words: As already have mentioned some other posters, probably it is not Macrium but your hardware that is responsible for the failure.
     
    Last edited: May 16, 2019
  16. Frankfree

    Frankfree Registered Member

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    It is Macrium in a sense that the software should have give me some sort of notification a pop up or some thing and tell me that I need to check the disk
    I do not know how or what they should do all I know that this is also their fault too. So not only I will not pay for the paid version I won't recommend it to any body else either . This is terrible
     
  17. EASTER

    EASTER Registered Member

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    In all fairness your O/S should have jumped to the forefront first (before your decision to image or restore) to alert that it needs to do a Disk Checking if something on the drive signaled (as it normally would do) a scan is needed. I take it you seen nothing of the sort and this ERROR and mishap showed up only when you engaged Macrium for an image restore and then it threw up the WARNING and stopped.

    I wouldn't be of haste to diss Macrium so soon. That's just throwing in the towel before fully exploring more into potential reasons the WHY it happened at all.

    Not to discount your suspicions that Macrium fudged the Restore but you do realize there are other possible reasons such as the softwares you currently have on your unit. It is NOT outside the possibility that some installed (security?) program within your O/S may have conflicted with the progress of the restore too.

    Just hate to see you give up so soon and dismiss with conclusion that Macrium as a bad product before looking over all other maybe's fully but it's your decision and choice of course.
     
  18. Frankfree

    Frankfree Registered Member

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    OK I am wrong you and the software company is right. I give up it is a waste of time to explain . Tomorrow I have to go to LG center and ask them what they can do for me.
     
  19. pandlouk

    pandlouk Registered Member

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    What are the system specs?
    This kind of error is more often caused by faulty ram modules or overclocking than failing disks.
    Can you load/verify the image on another system?
    Also run a chkdsk /f on the disk where the image backup resides.
    Does macrium allows you to continue restoring (even with failed verification) or does it force abort?

    Panagiotis
     
  20. Frankfree

    Frankfree Registered Member

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    My external hard drive is OK I checked. Now I followed your advice I checked the backup image in another PC and it passed the test
    So what does that mean?
     
    Last edited: May 16, 2019
  21. jphughan

    jphughan Registered Member

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    There's absolutely no guarantee that a Windows backup would have behaved differently under the OP's circumstances, which aren't even clear yet. And although the Windows tool may have been reliable in your experience -- and there's certainly something to be said for having image backups made by different applications in general -- the Windows system image utility is also missing a LOT of features that are considered table stakes for any proper imaging solution, such as:

    - Encryption
    - Compression
    - Diff and Inc backups (actually keeping separate backups, not just incrementally updating the existing backup)
    - Retention policies
    - Email notifications
    - Restoring to smaller disks than the original source (Windows won't do this even if the data will fit)
    - Resizing or reordering partitions as part of the restore
    - Restoring only certain partitions from the backup (Windows only allows you to exclude entire disks)
    - Preserving certain existing partitions on the destination

    That's a partial list. And that's before even thinking about more advanced features like Rapid Delta Restore or ReDeploy on paid Reflect versions.
     
    Last edited: May 16, 2019
  22. jphughan

    jphughan Registered Member

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    Sorry to see this, since a failed restore obviously leaves you with no usable backup and no usable system if you were restoring your OS partition. However, it's not realistic to expect Reflect or any other solution to notify you that a disk needs to be checked unless you want all of these applications to include disk monitoring, which I personally think would be a mess on several levels. But short of that, Reflect doesn't have a way to know that something might have happened to the disk, file system, USB cable, memory module, or whatever since it created that backup file (with the possible exception of issues encountered during consolidation operations). If the error had occurred during the original backup, the job would have failed. Technically you can enable Reflect's option to verify backups after they're created, but even that only tells you that the backup is intact and fully readable AT THAT TIME. It makes absolutely no guarantee that it will STILL be intact and fully readable later on. Some users choose to mitigate risks like this by using a rotation of multiple destination disks, and Reflect has some functionality to keep management of such solutions fairly simple. Others choose to replicate their backup files to some other location, i.e. having backups of their backups.

    I realize that none of that really helps you now, and it's definitely an unfortunate first restore experience with Reflect, but I seriously doubt this is caused by a bug in Reflect as opposed to some hardware or file system issue. And in that case, I also doubt that any OTHER imaging solution would have performed any better if confronted with the same underlying issue.
     
    Last edited: May 16, 2019
  23. pandlouk

    pandlouk Registered Member

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    Then probably the image is fine.
    If the disk of the system is ok; then is probably a bad ram module or an unstable overclock.
    Is your system overclocked?
    If yes restore to optimized defaults and try restoring again.
    If is not overclocked you should remove the ram modules and try with one at a time; e.g. put only 1 ram module and perform an image verification, then put the second module and perform another verification, and so on. Veryfing images is a good method identifying bad modules.

    Panagiotis
     
  24. jphughan

    jphughan Registered Member

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    Did you use the same USB cable when you tested the drive on another PC? If so, before rummaging around with your RAM modules, have you tried simply using a different USB port on the original PC? I remember someone having issues with image backup and restore operations that were solved by moving the drive to another port. If that solves the issue, I would recommend taping over the offending port to make sure you don't use it anymore, or just replacing the motherboard. If that DOESN'T solve the issue, then I suppose it could be a problem with the USB controller chip, which would be common to multiple or even all ports on the system (or I guess the motherboard's interface to that chip), but that really would require replacing either the motherboard or the CPU (which contains the USB controller), so I'd test the memory module theory first.
     
  25. jphughan

    jphughan Registered Member

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    Except that if you test memory this way and encounter a failure, you can't be sure whether the culprit is the memory module or the source data (or the USB cable, etc.) without verifying that image somewhere else, where you might not have independently verified other components separately to establish their reliability. An image verification operation involves reading data blocks from the image into memory, calculating checksums on them, and then comparing them to the calculated checksums stored in the image file itself, the latter of which were calculated when the image was originally created. But if you just want to test your memory modules, the much better way to do that is to use an application that writes a known, chosen value to memory and then reads it back to confirm that the same value is returned. It's a more precise test, and it eliminates some of the confounding variables that are involved in image verification.
     
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