If you have a brand new system, I don’t think it would have come set up for pure Legacy BIOS booting. It may have come set up to support both BIOS and UEFI booting, but in that case UEFI Secure Boot would be disabled. If you don’t have any need to boot Legacy BIOS environments because you’re not running Windows versions older than Win8 or similarly old Linux distros, then I would absolutely think of touching those settings to enable UEFI Secure Boot. It’s a nice anti-rootkit mechanism, and it’s how all PCs sold with Windows are required to come out of the box these days, so it’s not like you would be implementing some unusual configuration. And you mentioned that this new system is a Dell? If you bought a brand new Dell system with Windows pre-installed, I don’t see how it’s possible that it would have come with Legacy BIOS boot support enabled. As for formatting flash drives, even if you’ve never done that before, try doing it now. The sticks would have had to be formatted at some point, even if it was just at the factory, and there’s no need to be afraid of doing that yourself. You can always format them back to whatever file system they’re using right now. And on that subject, you didn’t actually answer the question of how they were currently formatted. In terms of boot order, putting USB devices at the top of the boot order will just cause your system to take longer to boot each time — especially if you only have a generic “USB storage device” option. And if you ever accidentally leave a bootable flash drive connected, your system will boot into that environment when you may not have wanted that to happen. That can be especially problematic if you ever need to restart your PC remotely and expect it to boot back into Windows so you can access it remotely again. Bottom line: Flash drive booting is a temporary and relatively rare need. It doesn’t make sense to optimize your “permanent” boot order for that scenario. Configure that boot order based on what you will want to occur most of the time, and use the one-time boot menu for the rare occasions you need something else. That’s what it’s designed for. If you can muster the courage to do it, I would recommend that you enable UEFI Secure Boot in your BIOS settings, which will disable Legacy BIOS boot support, then configure your boot order with your internal storage device as the top choice, and THEN format your flash drive as FAT32 and try building Rescue Media to it. Then access the one-time boot menu by pressing F12 during startup and see if you can boot from it.
Jphughan, it's a new pc for me but it was not a brand new pc from Dell. It's a second hand pc, that's why the config is as it is and indeed UEFI Secure Boot is unsupported. I don't have a preference as such and as long as I can easily make changes, I am happy to do so. I just want to have a reliable pc that works for me. As for the flash drives and boot order, no worries. I will try to format and default back the boot order. edit: removing the external drives solved the issue - Macrium booted up from the USB stick as I had hoped. I then changed the normal boot order back to default. Thank you for your help.
Today Macrium Reflect failed to create an incremental image. Worse: it changed the extension of 9 previous incremental (weekly) backups from “.rmimg” to “.rmimg.error_loading”. This behavior is not mentioned in their knowledge base. What does this mean? And what to do now? (I deleted all those files and am currently trying to make a new incremental image, which is going on for hours)
Thanks. This PC is only protected by Windows Defender (OK according to that post), so I’m still curious what might have caused this.
After installing the latest Windows 11 Cumulative Update all my Macrium Reflect backups fail: ERROR: COM call "m_pVssObject->BackupComplete(&pAsync)" failed. - Returned HRESULT = 0x80042301 - Error text: VSS_E_BAD_STATE What to do about this?
Try "Other Tasks", "View VSS Eevents..." for more info, and or the "Fix VSS Problems..." item just under it. If necessary do a screen shot of the VSS events popup & post it here. You may need to include more info on your system, version numbers for win11 and Macrium, backup disk size, free space & size of your backups, etc. See also: https://forum.macrium.com/16287/Imaging-Error-0x80042301
I was not aware of the "Fix VSS Problems..." menu... This seems to have solved it (or adding Folder Access to some more Reflect executables; I did two things at once...) Thank you!
Macrium Reflect 8.0.6867 today released http://updates.macrium.com/reflect/v8/v8.0.6867/details8.0.6867.htm
I have a (probably) dumb question. I restored an image to an external sata drive, using a USB 3 sata adapter. It appears all the stuff copied onto the drive, but it won't boot. I figured maybe it's because the image was from my regular internal sata drive, so even if the image transferred perfectly, it can't boot from a sata connection. Am I right? And more importantly, if I replaced my internal drive with this new drive, SHOULD it boot and run OK? I ask because it's a lot of work to rip this setup apart to find out, but I want to be pretty sure the new backup drive will work in the event of a future drive failure. Thanks for any help guys.
I'm sure someone will give a better and more complete answer than me shortly, but What OS? Do you have Secure Boot or Bitlocker on the system it was imaged from?
It's the latest version windows 10. No bitlocker or secure boot, just plain vanilla legacy bios, MBR drive, in an old dell 790.
Windows does not boot from a device attached via USB, except for Windows To Go, but that requires special prep and licensing. Macrium’s KB page on cloning a disk here has an “Important” callout box at the top about this exact issue. I’m not clear what Dell system you have because you didn’t mention the product line, and Dell uses the same model numbering across multiple product lines, but if you have an OptiPlex 790, it shouldn’t be too difficult to get at its insides to attach a SATA disk internally. And I would argue that’s a better option than just crossing your fingers hoping it will work if the need ever arises. Also make sure you have working Rescue Media in case you ever need to run the Fix Boot Problems wizard after swapping disks.
I always keep several rescue flash drives. The dell 790 (optiplex) itself is very easy to work on, but it's location and nearby equipment make it a chore, especially if you're disabled. I always dread it
When I install Macrium Reflect, I see this notification from Windows that the Macrium UI Watcher is set to auto start. Can I disable this? I only wanna do manual backups would would this UI watcher always run?
Yes, you can disable Macrium UI Watcher autorun without damage. https://forum.macrium.com/11858/Macrium-Reflect-UI-Watcher
See aldist's link above. You can disable it, it seems to help speed up & optimize various user functions in Reflect. It uses very little memory or cpu time. You can try it, and if it works for you, fine. If you have the odd backup error, you can re-enable it. I leave it running. I do not have stuff running on different user accounts.
I have a daily scheduled Macrium Reflect image that backs up my C: volume to an external USB drive. I have the automatic "verify" option enabled. Occasionally I get a failure on the first verification try, followed by a successful retry. I have also had this happen while backing up a different internal drive to a different external USB drive, on a different USB port, using a different cable. I have read and basically understand everything on the Macrium Knowledgebase regarding this topic. According to Macrium, the failed image verification means that the backup file was not written correctly. If that is true, how can the verification fail once, and then pass on a retry? It is the SAME file! I have eliminated the drives and memory. My AV is Windows Defender, and I have also been running HitmanPro Alert. https://knowledgebase.macrium.com/display/KNOW80/Understanding Image Verification Failures Macrium Reflect Log: Saving Partition - <NO NAME> (C) Reading File System Bitmap Saving Partition Free space low: 5.00 GB required 4.73 GB available Backup Sets: 3 sets found Delete File: E:\Macrium Daily\8727D42B3CD19B85-00-00.mrimg 5.00 GB required 209.70 GB available -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Saving Index New File: 206.67 GB 31877C79A55AC1E0-00-00.mrimg Verifying '31877C79A55AC1E0-00-00.mrimg' Failed retrying... Verifying '31877C79A55AC1E0-00-00.mrimg' Ok. Continuing... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Retention Rules Rules will be applied to all matching backup sets in the destination folder Full: Retain 3 full backups Linked incremental and differential backups will also be deleted Backup Sets: 3 sets found Nothing to delete -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I/O Performance: Read 2.9 Gb/s - Write 533.1 Mb/s -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Image and Verification Completed Successfully in 02:04:05
