Macrium Reflect is THE tool for making backup copies of Windows XP

[John Doe]

Long ago, when I first started using disk managers (probably
PartitionMagic) and shortly thereafter stumbled onto the practice
of copying the operating system, day by day it slowly and
pleasantly took a big load off of my shoulders. Maybe that
practice is just for enthusiasts. Whatever. If you need to do it,
Macrium Reflect is your tool. Making copies of Windows and
occasionally restoring one encourages you to keep track of and
backup important files, but most of us should learn to keep a
backup of important files anyway.

On my main PC, I have an SSD main drive and a Raptor secondary
drive. Macrium Reflect copies the main drive to the secondary
drive in the form of a compressed file that is about 65% of the
main drive size. Those copies are browsable, so I can copy files
from them.

Recently, motherboard trouble caused me to revert to my backup PC.
Installed the Raptor on the old system and made some space at its
beginning. From the Macrium Reflect restore CD, took one of the
compressed copies of the SSD drive from the Raptor and copied it
to the beginning of the Raptor. Booted into Windows safe mode.
Stopped at the logon prompt since Fast User Switching had been
disabled. Sat there for a while, while Windows XP reconfigured the
mouse and keyboard drivers for the old motherboard. After getting
to the desktop, installed the old PC's motherboard drivers.
Rebooted. Now this thing is almost precisely the same as it was on
my fast PC. The only noticed exception (besides the slowness) is
something to do with DirectX when opening a resource hungry game
"Unable to create Direct3D" (not asking for help), maybe because
the video card is older.

Being able to take a compressed copy of my main system SSD drive
Windows XP installation and copy it to a different drive in a
completely different system is IMO very impressive. Some of that
positive result had to do with Windows XP itself, but still...

Have not tested Macrium Reflect with Vista or 7. With each new
operating system, Microsoft complicates the process of making
Windows backups, so who knows.

FWIW. Years ago, I purchased one of their other products Partition
Manager but was not very impressed. The free edition of Macrium
Reflect requires using a restore boot CD and the restore copy is
very slow, but that is not a problem if you can find something
else to do, unless you need to do restore copies frequently.
Apparently the paid-for version allows making the restore copy in
a special Windows mode (probably after rebooting and before the
desktop appears), that might be faster. Also, its user interface
is poorly designed for my white text on a black background system
(not a problem).

 

[Rod Speed]

Long ago, when I first started using disk managers (probably
PartitionMagic) and shortly thereafter stumbled onto the practice
of copying the operating system, day by day it slowly and
pleasantly took a big load off of my shoulders. Maybe that
practice is just for enthusiasts. Whatever. If you need to do it,
Macrium Reflect is your tool. Making copies of Windows and
occasionally restoring one encourages you to keep track of and
backup important files, but most of us should learn to keep a
backup of important files anyway.

On my main PC, I have an SSD main drive and a Raptor secondary
drive. Macrium Reflect copies the main drive to the secondary
drive in the form of a compressed file that is about 65% of the
main drive size. Those copies are browsable, so I can copy files
from them.

Recently, motherboard trouble caused me to revert to my backup PC.
Installed the Raptor on the old system and made some space at its
beginning. From the Macrium Reflect restore CD, took one of the
compressed copies of the SSD drive from the Raptor and copied it
to the beginning of the Raptor. Booted into Windows safe mode.
Stopped at the logon prompt since Fast User Switching had been
disabled. Sat there for a while, while Windows XP reconfigured the
mouse and keyboard drivers for the old motherboard. After getting
to the desktop, installed the old PC's motherboard drivers.
Rebooted. Now this thing is almost precisely the same as it was on
my fast PC. The only noticed exception (besides the slowness) is
something to do with DirectX when opening a resource hungry game
"Unable to create Direct3D" (not asking for help), maybe because
the video card is older.

Being able to take a compressed copy of my main system SSD drive
Windows XP installation and copy it to a different drive in a
completely different system is IMO very impressive. Some of that
positive result had to do with Windows XP itself, but still...

Have not tested Macrium Reflect with Vista or 7. With each new
operating system, Microsoft complicates the process of making
Windows backups, so who knows.

FWIW. Years ago, I purchased one of their other products Partition
Manager but was not very impressed. The free edition of Macrium
Reflect requires using a restore boot CD and the restore copy is
very slow, but that is not a problem if you can find something
else to do, unless you need to do restore copies frequently.
Apparently the paid-for version allows making the restore copy in
a special Windows mode (probably after rebooting and before the
desktop appears), that might be faster. Also, its user interface
is poorly designed for my white text on a black background system
(not a problem).

I prefer Acronis True Image myself.

 

[John Doe]

John Doe wrote:

I prefer Acronis True Image myself.

I have Acronis Disk Director 10, and its recovery CD can no longer
even see my hard drives, there have been zero updates since it was
published years ago.
--

 

[Rod Speed]

John Doe wrote

I have Acronis Disk Director 10, and its recovery CD can no longer
even see my hard drives, there have been zero updates since it was
published years ago.

There have been plenty of updates for True Image.

 

[RayLopez99]

I prefer Acronis True Image myself.

You! you post here too? Nowhere is safe.

RL

 

[John Doe]

BTW (Fishface)... On my Windows XP SP3, Macrium Reflect 4.2 does allow
removing the browsed image from Windows Explorer, through the right-
click menu "Unmount Macrium Image".

 

[Fishface]

BTW (Fishface)... On my Windows XP SP3, Macrium Reflect 4.2 does allow
removing the browsed image from Windows Explorer, through the right-
click menu "Unmount Macrium Image".

I went to check this on Win7 64-bit edition, but it wanted to do an update.
I should have checked first, but instead allowed the update. The option is
there on the right-hand-pane Explorer context menu (but not the left) to
unmount the drive, and now the menu choice to "Detach Image" does work.
So, it just keeps getting better! That reminds me, time for another backup...

 

[John Doe]

Playing with Windows defragmentation utility. Eight files could
not be defragmented. So I deleted them and copied them back into
place from a backup file. No more fragmented files. That just for
fun, no doubt you can do defragmentation better with a different
utility if you got one.

 

[Rod Speed]

Playing with Windows defragmentation utility. Eight files could
not be defragmented. So I deleted them and copied them back into
place from a backup file. No more fragmented files. That just for
fun, no doubt you can do defragmentation better with a different
utility if you got one.

Defragging is pointless with modern fast seeking drives,
essentially because you dont see much linear access to
large files anymore except with media files where the play
time is controlled by the media format and so a few extra seeks
are completely undetectable, even when a benchmark is used.

The only time you can even detect that large files are fragmented
with a benchmark is when copying the files and it makes a lot more
sense to put files where you want them in the first place and not
copy them around.

In spades with the few files that a defragger refuses to defrag.

 

[John Doe]

John Doe wrote:

Defragging is pointless

Could be, but it is fun and I missed doing it.
--