Macrium Reflect

I Have had a big hole in my security plan,as
I have never used backup or image software.
Other that burning my pics to disks,and most of my books.
I have downloaded Macrium Reflect,and it seems to be
pretty full featured.
Any one have in experence with it?

thanks

 

Yep. You looking for an instruction for basic image backup usage? I will tell you mine, but each to his own.

In a nutshell, you will be making an image of your c: drive, and it must be made to a different device, such as another harddrive, a usb stick, dvd, or network drive. Normally, and with Macrium PE for sure, you cannot place an image of your c: drive on the c: drive.

So with macrium, you basically choose to make new image, pick the destination drive, choose to give it a name if you prefer, set maybe a couple advanced options like compression level, and click finish. It dutifully makes the image. Ideally you want to make this image after a fresh install, and with as few apps installed as possible. Because the more apps you have installed, the longer the time to make/restore and the larger the resulting backup image will be.

Once you have the image made, you must now have a method to restore it. Unfortunately, at least with Macrium, you must boot up into an OS that is not on the c: drive. Macrium gives you 2 options built in. One is to create an ISOLinux boot cd, the other a BartPE plugin.

ISOLinux is a boot cd that you boot from, that runs a small linux OS that runs from the optical drive, AFAIK. Then you can start macrium and choose the image to restore, and the drive to restore it to (the c: usually).

The bartPE method is what I prefer. Macrium generates a plugin for bartPE. You download bartPE. Basically, you tell bartPE where your source XP files are (preferably these have been copied to your hdd somewhere), you add the macrium plugin (being sure it is enabled), possibly add a driver or two for your network card or sata controller, and make the bartPE image (an .iso). Then you burn the image onto a cd and boot with it. Once you are booted into the bartPE OS, again you can start macrium and choose the image to restore and the drive to restore it on.

Not too complicated, and lot's of forum posts all over to help. Should not be a problem making a bartPE cd at all.

Good luck.

Sul.

 

Macrium Reflect is pretty good. The speed and compression are okay, although it's still better than most. The price is also pretty good (if you get the paid version).

 

Thanks Sully!
That took the fear/mystery out of it for me.
I have put it off too long.

norm

 

Highly recommended. I found it very much easier to understand than any of the other Back up/Imaging software I looked at. Have now done several restores and they went without a hitch. I use the basic Linux disc to boot with, works every time on my machine. If you have any problems you can either contact them through support or the forum and I have often had a reply within half an hour, always within 24hrs. I found the tutorials from their home page their best guide to using it, here:

http://www.macrium.com/tutorial.asp

Just one point and this applies to the recovery discs you burn for any program, use the very best quality cd-r possible, don't use cheep ones. Many boot failures are caused by poor quality discs.

 

Thanks all.

 

Thanks all!
It is done,no real problems and I feel much more secure.
Anybody new to this should not let it put them off.
I hope a restore is not nessasary in the near future,
but i will be images current.
This is the place to go for help!