The idea is to NOT boot into Windows, instead you boot into a cut-down version that only runs the Macrium program, nothing else.

'WIM' stands for Windows Image Management, it just means an Image file made a certain way.

The 'Windows Boot Menu' adds a choice to boot straight into Macrium in the boot menu when you start the computer.

If you connect a Usb stick you can select it and make it into a Macrium rescue device.

'Check for device drivers on boot' adds drivers to the Usb or Iso that could be needed for Macrium to work with that computer, such as a driver for an NVMe SSD if you have one. The idea is you can boot into Macrium and it will 'see' the NVMe drive.

'Prompt for key press to continue boot sequence' asks you to press a key within a few seconds to boot into Macrium on a CD or Usb stick, otherwise it will skip to the next boot device, usually the Windows drive.

I would make a Usb stick leaving everything at default settings, that's what I do, I boot from the Usb stick to make or restore an Image.

 

The idea is to NOT boot into Windows, instead you boot into a cut-down version that only runs the Macrium program, nothing else.

'WIM' stands for Windows Image Management, it just means an Image file made a certain way.

The 'Windows Boot Menu' adds a choice to boot straight into Macrium in the boot menu when you start the computer.

If you connect a Usb stick you can select it and make it into a Macrium rescue device.

'Check for device drivers on boot' adds drivers to the Usb or Iso that could be needed for Macrium to work with that computer, such as a driver for an NVMe SSD if you have one. The idea is you can boot into Macrium and it will 'see' the NVMe drive.

'Prompt for key press to continue boot sequence' asks you to press a key within a few seconds to boot into Macrium on a CD or Usb stick, otherwise it will skip to the next boot device, usually the Windows drive.

I would make a Usb stick leaving everything at default settings, that's what I do, I boot from the Usb stick to make or restore an Image.

Thanks Allan, I'm understanding it a little better. And just the general reason for needing this rescue media is because if the computer crashes, I plug in the rescue media usb, and it will allow me to start the computer with a "bootable, lightweight version of Windows and a full version of Macrium Reflect" and this will allow me to somehow restore the computer to the way it was before the crash?

Wouldn't it be better to just have a cloned image of the whole "C" drive?

I stuck a USB stick in (using the defaults) and tried it (the Rescue Media Builder) and got "The USB disk does not contain a partition table, it may not be UEFI bootable. Please use Micosoft diskpart to initialize this disk as MBR." So I went there (following this: https://www.diskpart.com/diskpart/initialize-disk-4125.html ) and ran into a roadblock. At first the USB stick was mounted and diskpart complained that it was already online. So I ejected the USB stick, but then diskpart said there was no media there.

I can see that this will be pretty easy once I get the USB stick in the shape Macrium requires.

 

Yes, the rescue media works by booting into a version of Macrium running in Windows PE (that's the official name for what I called a cut-down version in my previous post).

If your HDD or SSD Windows drive fails you boot the Usb stick containing Macrium and restore an Image you made previously. I also like to make Images this way, even if Windows still works.

You can make an Image of the whole drive or you can clone it to another drive. An Image is similar to a zip file, it contains a compressed version of the files making up the drive/partition.
Images are smaller than the original files and tend to be quite fast to create or restore.
So you can often get several images onto 1 other drive, plus it's easy to make updated images after the drives contents have changed a lot, like if you install a new program.

You could make a clone but that will use a whole new drive and will take longer because a clone copies everything including unused space on the source drive to the destination drive.

Ideally have a clone and images !

Try up to and including Step 3 here, make 100% sure you use the value of N for the Usb stick :-
https://www.diskpart.com/windows-10/uefi-boot-usb-windows-10-0310.html

(Strictly speaking C is a partition on a drive, not a whole drive).

 

Thanks Allan. Okay, the compression makes sense in explaining how the Rescue Media works. But I got a little confused with you starting off talking about the Rescue Media and then you were talking about images and I wondered if you might be referring to the "Image this disk..." function.

I was going to try that diskpart suggestion, but besides being just about certifiably brain dead by now, I did have some questions about the P.S.

x is one of the available drive letters that can be assigned to the partition.

Am I going to have to choose a drive at this point?

My USB stick is already FAT32. Does that matter?

If you want to create Legacy bootable USB drive, replace format fs=fat32 with format fs=ntfs.

Do I want the fs=fat32 or the fs=ntfs ?

Thanks

 

The Rescue media (CD or USB) runs the Macrium program and you can create or restore an Image with it.
You will need it if the OS drive fails because then you can't boot into Windows but you can boot into Macrium with it then restore an Image you made previously.
You can create an Image of the whole drive with 'Image this disk' or an Image of particular partitions on the disk.
Windows installs stuff onto a small hidden partition at the start of the drive and puts the rest of the OS onto the 2nd partition (which is usually given drive letter C). So you should Image at least those 2 partitions, any other partitions you can choose whether to include them or not.
I would recommend making an Image of the whole drive unless you have a lot of data in it's own partition(s), then just Image the first 2 partitions so you can get Windows back.

Save the Image to a different drive, internal or external.

For Diskpart make sure N is the number for the Usb stick.
You could skip the format line but I would run it anyway.
X is the letter the Usb stick will get, I don't think it matters so use X

 

Thanks Allan. So the Rescue Media gives you the bare bones version of Windows 10 and the full version of Macrium, right? So how does that bring about restoring the full version?

And why would one save the image made in "image this disk" to an internal drive (unless you meant on a different computer) because if the computer crashes you'd be out of luck, right?

Thanks for the clarification on the diskpart. I will give that a try tomorrow.

 

You have to make an Image first, then boot into Macrium and browse to the Image file and restore it onto the (possibly new) drive.

Assuming the only problem is the OS drive failing and the rest of the computer still works Macrium will 'see' internal and external drives, even if you can't get to Windows, because Macrium is running in the Windows PE OS independently.

 

Wow, this is some pretty amazing stuff. Thanks for all the great explanations. I'm actually getting close (lol) to understanding it. But I'm seeing the logic of how it works now. So tell me if I have this straight?

I make an image via "image this disk" in Macrium, and I store it on my internal "D" drive. The OS (in the "C" drive) crashes. I pop in my Rescue Media USB stick and Macrium hunts around for the image in the "D" drive and restores it. So then I have my operating system, files and apps back. Does that sound right?

 

Drive letters can be partitions on the same drive, Disk Management (DM) will show drives and the partitions on them. It's best to think of drives as numbered as in DM and partitions as letters (although some partitions don't get a letter). Have a look in DM to see what I mean.

You can save an image to a partition on the same drive but that's no use if the whole drive fails.
(You can't save an image to the same partition it's an image of though).

The drive you save the image to can be internal or external.

So the process I use is I boot from the Macrium Usb recovery stick and make an image of the whole drive (you can do this running Macrium in Windows too but I prefer this way, there's less software running so more reliable).

Now if the Imaged drive fails boot from the Macrium Usb (this is the main reason you make it, if you can't get into windows this is the only way to run Macrium) and restore the image onto a new drive. The restore will put everything back the way it was when the image was made, Windows, all Apps and settings and your data just as before.

The image file can also be used as a backup, you can mount the partitions in it as drive letters and they will show in File Explorer like any other partition then you can copy files of them.

The best way to understand all this is to actually make an image.
Do you have an internal or external drive with a lot of space on it ?

 

Thanks a lot, Allan. Yes, I have a lot of space because I added a SSD to my regular hard drive. So the regular hard drive is available for storage (230GB). I looked at Disk Management and saw all the drives (including the USB stick I forgot was in). I'm getting close to getting all this. I think I need to focus on the Rescue USB for the time being. I just need to wade into this stuff. But you're absolutely right in that the real understanding comes in the doing.

 

I store it on my internal "D" drive

Not a great idea to store the image on an internal hard drive. Why? If you get a rootkit virus or ransomeware, anything inside and connected to the the computer will be infected. Your image would be useless.

Store the image off the computer and remove the external drive after you have the image so it can't get infected.

 

Thanks Liz. I doubt they'd get very much from me if they pulled the ransomware on me! But yeah, better safe than sorry. Still, I think I'll experiment on an internal drive since I don't have an external one and it will familiarize me with Macrium.