So what image tools are you using now?

ShadowProtect in the past with XP and Vista, very reliable but too expensive. Macrium Reflect home edition nowadays, also very reliable and fast (using USB 3.0). I wish they'd offer a discount for two licenses...

 

@Arvy,

That was very puzzling indeed. So much so that all of the suggestions I received from @TheRollbackFrog (and from MR Support) did not resolve the message I received every time I attempted to create the Boot Menu Option (“An error occurred while unmounting the WIM"). While I was quite frustrated at the time I have become accustomed to using a WinPE Recovery UFD (as created by MR) to perform a restore.

JA

 

Any WIM mounting/unmounting issue would usually arise during the Reflect "wizard's" creation of some WinPE version rescue build. Merely adding a pointer option into the system BCD boot menu for a successfully created boot image shouldn't require any mounting/unmounting of the WIM itself. However, if you've become accustomed to using your rescue UFD, it provides better "insurance" anyhow if recovery from a total failure situation is ever required.

 

@Arvy, the error message to which Jo Ann alluded is the very same one I received and I might add that MR's support team was less than helpful. Like Jo Ann, I too no longer desire that option, so at this point the problem (and solution) is strictly academic.

 

Question on using IFL to image a Macbook...if I buy a USB hard drive to store the image on, what file system does the usb hard drive need to be formatted with?

 

I have used ntfs, fat32 and ext4.
I suspect that it can right to all the format types that it can backup but I haven't tried saving them in hfs+ partitions.

Panagiotis

 

If you format your USB HDD using NTFS, it will work for sure. I did the same thing (using IFL boot USB UFD to image a MBP to an external USB HDD) a year or so ago.

 

@pandlouk @oliverjia Thanks!

 

@oliverjia, just curious - which disk imager do you use to backup Linux (IFL)?

 

Currently don't have Linux on any of my computers anymore. But when I have Ubuntu up until a few weeks ago, IFL has always been the best and first choice for me. Before the LINUX SWAP bug DS had been great also, but since that bug, I used Paragon HDM a few times and it worked well backing up Linux.

Now I switched to Windows 10 Creators Update on all my computers, and formatted all drives exclusively using ReFS. TBWinRE created on Windows 10 v1703 platform support store the disk images to ReFS formatted HDDs, so now I use IFW (TBWinRE) for Windows OS backup.

 

Just curious...why not continue to use IFL (assuming you are doing these offline)? Any advantage I might be missing to using IFW over IFL in an offline situation?

 

@napoleon1815 - it just may be a ReFS situation... I don't know whether the Terabyte LINUX media supports that FileSystem yet but the current WinPE media most likely does.

 

Yes the Frog is right, TBWinRE created on Win10 v1703 makes it possible to save disk images to ReFS formatted external HDDs. I don't think any Linux-based boot media supports ReFS yet (it won't recognize a ReFS formatted disk).

Edit: all my internal/external storage HDDs are ReFS now, but the Windows 10 OS drive is still NTFS, because currently ReFS does not support boot drive yet.

 

Hi all, for me the top 3 is :
R-Drive Image (the most reliable regarding restore, too bad differential images are difficult to handle, incrementals are ok)
AOMEI Backupper Pro, also very reliable
Reflect V6 for speed and space management

I also use occasionnaly Drive Snapshot in cmd line mode so that I can use the --exclude function, to exclude big folders I don't want to image (such as videos...).

 

As I have understood it, ReFS will be supported in Windows 10 Pro Workstation, which seems to imply that it won´t be supported in other Windows versions.

 

NTFS has been around for ages. It's time for Microsoft to come up with some new file system. I hope ReFS will be supported by all Windows versions.

 

AOMEI has grown on me a lot. I hate the name and translation issues but it's been flawless in my testing. It's totally not an app I would usually like but I keep coming back to it. I also love R-Drive and has always been one of my faithful standbys.

 

The only program that have the option to create a secure zone on the machine to store and eventually restore a system image is Acronis, that I no longer use.

 

Windows Fall Creators Edition: Windows 10 Pro & Enterprise will have full reFS capability (Create/Modify/Write), all other versions will only have Read/Write capability.

 

So according to that link, only Windows Pro for Workstation and Enterprise will have full reFS, which means Windows Pro will not.

 

Windows Pro for workstations IS Windows 10 Pro.

 

Only Windows 10 Enterprise and Pro for Workstation. Creation ability will be removed from all other editions, this also includes Windows 10 Pro.

 

What about Windows 10 Education, which is basically Enterprise? Not that I'll be likely to use it...

 

I stand corrected... "Windows Pro For Workstations," announced 2-weeks ago, is a future edition to be released around the same time as the FALL CREATORS UPDATE. See HERE in WikiPedia.

Other than ENTERPRISE, no current editions of Windows 10 will support reFS.