Well, I only do manual Images and are not scheduled. The user has admin privileges. It is doing the delete but it is going to the Recycle Bin. That is not showing that drive under windows.
Perhaps you have a corrupt recycle bin. https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/94946-fix-corrupted-recycle-bin-windows.html
Great, I will look. I wonder what it will show for my drive E: as it is my backup drive but IS a removable drive, but Windows does not know that. However, it is in a DOCK and that dock is connected via SATA. When not being used to store an image, it is powered down. So it will be interesting to see what Windows thinks this drive is. I bet it is just a normal fixed drive when it is powered on but need to see why it does not show in the recycle bin. Thank You
Hi, I have the latest version of Macrium Reflect Free on my Windows 10 Pro (x64) system. I've made a full disk image. I also have VMWare Player 14. Is there a way I can restore the Macrium image as a virtual disk in the VMWare, so that I don't have to install Windows 10 anew as a virtual machine? Mind that I have free "Reflect" and free "Player" - is there a way? Thanx.
Since you have Windows 10 Pro, you have access to Hyper-V, which means you'd be able to use Macrium viBoot (included even in Reflect Free) that is specifically designed to allow this functionality with minimal user effort. You don't even have to restore the image. You just point viBoot at an image and say, "Start this as a VM". So if you were willing to switch to Hyper-V, which incidentally would give you MUCH more functionality than the Player version of VMware, then doing this would be trivial. If you need to use VMware for other purposes, then the issue is that Windows can only have one hypervisor running at a time. One workaround to that is to create a secondary boot menu option for Windows that starts it with Hyper-V disabled. When you boot your system that way, you'll be able to run VMware. When you want to run Hyper-V, reboot and choose the boot option to start Windows with Hyper-V. If you insist on using VMware, does VMware Player allow you to either a) create a virtual disk file on the host and mount it as a disk ON the host, rather than using it only within a VM, or else b) allow you to use Microsoft VHD/VHDX files for your VM rather than using its own proprietary format? If one of those is an option, you can create a virtual disk within your host system (using Disk Management for VHD/VHDX files) and mount it on the host. At that point, it will appear in Reflect and you can restore your image into that mounted virtual disk file. When it's done, detach it from your host system and attach it to a VM. However, I'm not sure that an image from a physical system will boot inside a VMware environment. Macrium's viBoot feature includes some functionality that alters the image (non-destructively) so that it can boot inside a Hyper-V environment, and the fact that that exists leads me to suspect that simply booting an unaltered image from a physical system wouldn't work. But if the concern is just around reinstalling Windows 10 in a VM, that's a pretty trivial process. Just get the Windows 10 ISO from Microsoft, attach it to your VM's virtual optical drive, and go to town. If the issue is that VMware Player doesn't let you do that, then once again you might want to consider switching to Hyper-V.
@Bellzemos, if you're on Windows 10 1903, then in addition to my above reply, another option that might work for your purposes is Windows Sandbox. Whereas typical VMs involve a fair amount of setup and occupy a fair amount of disk space, Windows Sandbox very quickly starts a Windows VM that's always running the same Windows version and patch level as the host, but it always starts as a completely fresh environment. The catches are that you can only run one at a time and there's no way for anything to persist across sessions -- but within a session you can still copy/paste files back and forth between host and VM. It's designed primarily for testing things you're not sure you want to run on your real system. But if that's what you need to do with a VM as opposed to having any persistence within it, then Windows Sandbox is definitely worth looking into.
Macrium Reflect v7.2.4523 Released (October 31, 2019) Download Changelog Spoiler: What's New - Bugfixes v7.2.4523 http://updates.macrium.com/reflect/v7/v7.2.4523/details7.2.4523.htm Bug fixes and Improvements v7.2.4523 - 31st October 2019 XP Boot Menu Windows XP can now handle boot menu creation when the 'C:' drive has the compressed attribute set. Auto System restore A "Backup is running" message box could be incorrectly shown on Windows Vista when performing an automatic restore. This has been resolved. SQL Continuous backup The Start end End time calculations didn't take into account the local time zone. This has been resolved. Rescue Media Builder On multi-boot systems, Windows RE WIM files for a different architecture to the current OS will now be ignored when scanning. When building rescue media with a custom wim for a different architecture to the running OS (eg. a 32-bit custom wim on a 64-bit system), RMBuilder will now detect the architecture mismatch and will not try to copy drivers from the host OS. On Windows Vista, RMBuilder would sometimes give "WIM file not found" error messages when a valid Wim file was present. This has been resolved. Since Windows PE does not support wifi, Windows PE rescue media will no longer give Unsupported Devices messages for wifi devices. In certain cases, 64-bit drivers could be automatically copied into the 32-bit drivers folder. This has been resolved. USB root hubs will now be shown in the list of devices on RMBuilder's Devices And Drivers options tab. If the Windows ADK is installed but a newer version of Windows PE is available from a zip file, RMBuilder will now build rescue media from the zip file wim rather than the ADK wim.. When performing an automatic restore on a system with multiple network adapters, the rescue media would sometimes not correctly set the network configuration for all adapters. This has been resolved. USB Devices in RMBuilder now show the volume label as well as the drive letter. The 'Backup Selection' dialog in Reflect and the 'Update Drivers' dialog in RMBuilder have been updated to allow for easier browsing for network folders.
^ It's been pulled due to a late found bug and Macrium says a new build is being created, which should be available in a few hours. But it appears that unless you're running XP, Vista, SQL, or having problems with your Rescue Media, you may as well skip this update. And even the changes related to XP, VIsta, and SQL are pretty minimal.
@ jphughan - Thank you for your great and professional reply, I appreciate it very much. I will be using VMWare, not Hyper-V, so that complicates things I see, but I want VMWare. Ragarding VMWare player, I think that the a) option doesn't exist. About the b) option - VMWare Player allows me to "import" VMWare virtual disks (with the .vmdk extension). So I would have to somehow convert a VHD file to VDMK file, if that's even possible and works. Is there a way to convert the macrium image file to VHD, standalone file? The problem is not just installing Windows 10 anew, it's configuring it with all the drivers, programs and settings the way that I have it now. What I'd like to do is use my Reflect system image and then modify it in the VMWare for testing purposes. Thanx for mentioning the Windows Sandbox but it gets purged upon exit so it's not what I'm looking for.
The "conversion" from a Reflect image to a VHD file can be accomplished by restoring the Reflect image into a mounted VHD/VHDX file, as I described above. But if the import capability in VMware only supports VMware's native VMDK format, then you'd need a tool that could convert a VHD/VHDX file to a VMDK file, and I don't know whether a tool like that exists because I haven't had a need to look for one. But if you find one, then Option B would be a possibility. It would be a bit time-consuming, but if you only need to do this occasionally to get yourself a VM "baseline" based off your system, it might be efficient enough that you're willing to keep using VMware rather than switching to Hyper-V where this becomes simpler. However, you'd still likely have the issue that an image captured from a physical system might not boot in a VMware environment, because that image would be set up to load boot-time drivers for a completely different set of hardware than would be presented to it within a VM. That's why Macrium viBoot has the tweaking capability that it does, which I believe is based on their ReDeploy technology found in paid Reflect versions that serves a similar purpose of getting an image captured from one system to boot properly on another system with dissimilar hardware. Finding a replacement for that would be a much more difficult proposition. VMware has a tool called VMware Converter that is meant to facilitate migrating a physical system to a VM, but I've never used it and in fact I don't even know whether it's free.
This is good. I was quite worried when I updated 1 PC and then it was unavailable. I have now updated a few and it seems ok so far.
Hello, At least for me it seems, Macrium has made this a little bit on the confusing side. Let me see if I understand it correctly. With the free version, Macrium released a new version as 7.2.4524. With the paid version, Macrium did not issue a new version and the version remained at 7.2.4523 version. I am assuming from this thread: V7.2.4523 on the Macrium Support Forum, 7.2.4453 is correct for the paid version as changes were only made to the free 7.2.4524 version. I always download the new installer in case I my need it and the one from this morning when I did the update has the sames hashes and digital signatures as a fresh one I just downloaded. Am I correct in assuming that if we are on the paid 7.2.4523 version, there is nothing to worry about?
Hi @puff-m-d. I understand it the same as you. There is .4523 for paid version and .4524 for free version. So .4523 is ATM latest paid version released.
Happy to help. Just out of curiosity, what's leading you to stick with VMware Player rather than considering switching to Hyper-V, especially considering that Player offers very limited functionality whereas Hyper-V is a fully featured platform that would be more comparable to VMware Workstation? Hyper-V also has the unique advantage of being a Tier 1 hypervisor, which means it actually runs underneath the host OS and therefore VMs that it runs don't have the overhead of having to run through the host OS, which in turn means they can generally outperform VMs running on other hypervisors. Every other hypervisor available on Windows (e.g. VMware, Virtualbox, etc.) is a Tier 2 hypervisor, meaning it has to run on top of the host Windows OS. And then the "Enhanced Session Mode" that's available when your VM is running a Pro version of Windows 8 or newer and leverages the RDP engine makes guest/host integration pretty seamless, without any need to install special tools inside the VM. My favorite features are the ability to copy/paste files between the host and guest right through the console window and then audio redirection, including host mic audio redirection into the VM.
I think I have finally worked out how to fix the dreaded Macrium Reflect disappearing Taskbar icon. When you do your next backup, while your backup is running, go to Taskbar Settings > Select which icons appear on the Taskbar and select it. Now, right click on the Reflect icon in the Taskbar and select "Show". Leave it on "Show" (on the Desktop) until the backup has completed. Once it has completed, click on "Done". Next time you run your backup, the Reflect icon should now appear on your Taskbar without you having to go and enable it each and every time.
Hi, I like VMWare Player, and don't need all the extra functionality that Workstation/Hyper-V have, at least for now. Hyper-V is tier 1 hypervisor and virtualization is always "on". This takes some performance off a PC even when no virtual machine is running and I want all my PC resources available when I'm not using virtualization (I'm using it very rarely). Also, it has direct access to hardware since it's tier 1, tier 2 has another layer in between (host OS), which is more secure (I think). I will be testing some anti-malware products in Windows 10 as a guest system and really don't want to get my host OS infected so I'm taking all the extra precations. I have another question: is it more secure to have virtualization feature in BIOS disabled and only run a 32-bit OS in VMWare Player VS having virtualization feature in BIOS enabled and using VMWare Player with 32 and 64-bit OS? I'm thinking of installing 32-bit Windows 10 for testing purposes and with no hardware virtualization support. I know this sounds like overkill but I am just curious as to what is more secure in terms of decreasing chances of things "leaking" from guest to host. Thank you.
If you simply like VMware Player, then fair enough, but I have to disagree with the rest of the rationale you posted. Hyper-V's resource consumption footprint when no VMs are running is completely negligible especially on modern PCs. That to me sounds kind of like people who are willing to spend hours researching Windows services they can disable in order to reclaim a few MB or memory when their system has 16GB and is only using about 14GB. Sure your PC is using fewer resources now, but it's not actually running any faster because you weren't using any of those resources to begin with, and unless you ever actually max out your memory consumption (which Windows basically prevents from happening anyway), then it's not a practically relevant exercise. I also have to disagree about the security aspect. I don't believe that Tier 2 is inherently more secure simply because everything has to run through the host OS after the hypervisor, but I'm admittedly not sure about that. However, security is mainly enforced at a hardware level by the virtualization features built into the CPU itself, and there are actually security ENHANCEMENTS available by having virtualization running all the time. Microsoft's Device Guard feature relies on virtualization being running all the time, for example. In terms of whether it's worth keeping that feature disabled in the BIOS, you're absolutely right that it's overkill. If it weren't secure to keep virtualization running all the time and use Tier 1 hypervisors, then it would be completely impractical for companies like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft to allow customers to run their own VMs in their datacenters and allow VMs from different customers to run on the same physical systems. I suppose if you practically never need virtualization, then the general wisdom of disabling things you don't need in order to minimize your attack surface would apply, since bugs are always a possibility and there have been cases of guest-to-host and even guest-to-guest security incidents. So if that's practical for you, then go for it -- but I wouldn't consider virtualization a sufficiently high risk for anyone who needs it on a regular basis to justify the steps you've taken or are contemplating. The larger risk probably comes from having the guest/host integration features enabled, come to think of it.
Hi, thank you for your reply. I see, that's not what I read about Hyper-V footprint but I can believe you, as I've never used it. Probably I will, in the future... I've read some time ago, that if you don't need virtualization, you're better of with the feature disabled in BIOS. That was a couple of years ago though. I remember that a couple of years ago I used VMWare Player v7 with VT-x disabled and was able to run 32-bit OS. I just wonder if that is a bit more secure that than with VT-x enabled, but now I tried it and found out that with the new VMWare Player v15.5 I have to turn VT-x on, or it won't even run the 32-bit OS. As I mentioned a few posts ago, I am planing to test anti-malware products in a VM, so I'd like to make it as secure as possible, so that it won't ruin my host OS.
This Altaro page notes that Hyper-V itself consumes about 300 MB before accounting for memory overhead related to VMs when you're actually running them. So it's not nothing, but hopefully any system where someone is contemplating running VMs will have enough memory that losing 300 MB would not noticeably affect the performance of other applications. My Web browser alone routinely consumes more than that, sometimes significantly more. Yes, if it is practical for you to disable virtualization features in your use case, then as I said, the general theory of reducing your attack surface by disabling things you don't need has merit -- unless maybe you have security software that relies on being able to run a hypervisor, though that can actually introduce its own problems. But with modern virtualization software that now requires those capabilities to be enabled, enabling them on-demand often isn't practical even for people who only run VMs sporadically because that would mean rebooting their system and reconfiguring their BIOS before and after every VM session. If you want to maximize security of your host, disable as many guest integration features as you can tolerate, especially the ones related to file transfer. Good luck!
Hi, if all that Hyper-V does unused is eat up 300MB of RAM, I'm happy. I can't remember where I read that it takes toll on the CPU as well, that's why I wasn't into the idea of using it. I hoped that VMWare Player 15.5 would work with VT-x disabled, as VMWare Player v7 did, but it won't. So I have enabled VT-x in BIOS now and will leave it enabled. I'm just curious in what is the difference in terms of security but am unable to get exact info on the matter anywhere. Those features you mention are called "VMWare Tools" at VMWare (if I'm not mistaken) and I haven't installed them so I hope this means more secure means of using a virutal machine to test out malware protection. Thank you!
PS: Is VMWare safe for installing potentially infected ISO files? Where could I read more about that and about VM security in general? Thanx.
