Thanks for the good test report, Jay.

In regards to my 2TB Seagate drive, I encountered Problem 1 (booting) only on my new computer, which has a UEFI BIOS. And like you, the problem went away when I converted the partition type to GPT. But I did not have this problem on my old Win 7 computer, which has the standard BIOS.

However, I could not create a Windows system image on either computer. So I made my Seagate into a data drive, and I ordered a Transcend drive to see if I could do a Windows image on it.

Would you have a chance to try Macrium on your Seagate drive? Pete's sources say Macrium may not work on these 4K drives, but I don't think anyone has actually tried. Just curious........

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BB
http://barrypatch.net

OK, I tried Macrium Home trial, it failed. The scary part is that it reported that the image was created successfully. The problem is that the image will not restore either from an attempt to boot recovery media (failed) or through starting the recovery through Windows.

So, OK, there is something about my system that does not want to boot these recovery disks. DiscWizard, Acronis and Macrium recovery CDs all fail to boot. The only recovery media that will boot is Windows Recovery. Possible reasons:

1) I do not have either a DVD or CD burner. My optical is an EFI standard Blu-ray burner. I have gone to the BIOS on this and set the optical to EFI, Auto and non-EFI. All fail except the Windows 7 recovery CD which works in all modes.

2) I am not 100% sure that I have a full UEFI BIOS as it is remotely possible that it could be a hybrid. Remember that my motherboard is old enough to only support SATA 2. While I doubt this aspect I wanted to list it as a possibility. Since I have UEFI BIOS settings available my gut reaction is that it IS a true UEFI BIOS but I cannot prove that.

Anyway, with all these tests, the only successful restores I've had have been with Acronis whether it be DiskMaster or the full Acronis True Image when attempting with the Seagate drive.

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Can you create a USB recovery. Also with Macrium which PE did you select. Normally one uses PE3 with Win 7, but i reacts strangely with my system also. But with WinPE 5 all is well

Also with Macrium, could you boot into the recovery environment, or didn't you get that far.

The Macrium recovery CD will not boot.

As far as the PE mode I went with the default as would any normal first time user.

I have no idea as to if I can create a USB recovery media. I never really looked for it.

To be honest Macrium looks interesting but, to me, the user interface seems complicated and convoluted. While I can see that it seems to have good features I could never recommend it to a novice user just due to the interface. I am a pretty strong power user yet the interface confused me to no end. Too many options without ready explanations. Too many terms of which I have zero clue as to meaning.

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Hi Jay

I would agree a novice would need help. But if you set it up for someone, it's the easiest thing out there. I did this for my sister. All she has to do is plug in her USB drive, and double click an icon on the desktop. That is it. I have two on my desktop. One takes an incremental to my drive F, the other a differential to my Drive G. But it isn't that bad. I could talk you thru it on the phone. But the payoff is reliable and fast fast imaging and restore.

In terms of boot speed you can't beat the windows boot manager, but USB flash is so much faster then CD.

Check PM. I built an iso file on my system for you to try.

Pete

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It just dawned on me... I have two racks of pork back ribs sitting in my fridge that I was supposed to do today. I got so involved in this image stuff with the Seagate drive that I totally forgot. Thankfully I'm off work tomorrow too so I can still get my rib fix!

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Well send me to hell in a hand basket!!!! While I have not tried all it seems that the recovery CDs I burned now work. "How can this be you ask... For he IS The Kwisatz Haderach!".... You have to know the Frank Herbert Dune series of books to understand...

OK, here is the situation on the boot CDs. They all failed. I thought that the Window7 Recovery CD worked but I tried again and even it failed to boot. There was no option offered to boot from CD/DVD with any of the recovery media I created. I have now tried three out of the many I burned and they work as expected.

First I want to show my BIOS Boot Order, this has not changed through all of this. I just want to assure that even when the recovery disks would not boot the optical drive was the first in line.


Now we get in to the weird stuff. If remembered I had a thread going quite a while back as to my decision to treat SATA as AHCI or Native IDE. I chose AHCI even though performance levels were only slightly different. I just happened to like the S.M.A.R.T. report on each boot when in AHCI that does not show when in Native IDE.

Once I switched from AHCI to Native IDE all of the boot CDs I've tried have worked.

Before you go playing with this keep something in mind! If you make a BIOS change between AHCI and Native IDE your system will no longer boot as Windows will not have the proper hard drive drivers installed. In my old thread about this switching I gave instructions as to a registry change that was needed to succeed in the change. Through research and experiments I have found a much easier method that is almost on the fly.

The simple way to switch between AHCI and IDE mode:

1) Boot to your BIOS.
2) Select the SATA mode that you want and save.
3) Boot back to your BIOS and go to Hard Drive Boot Priority as it is likely to change when setting the SATA mode. Select the proper drive as the boot. Save and Exit.
4) Boot Windows to Safe Mode by tapping the F-8 key for the Windows boot menu. Reboot normally and Windows has automatically handled the drivers needed for the change of SATA mode.

This will NOT solve the Windows 7 issue of the built in imaging not working with these Seagate drives but may help some that cannot get a recovery CD to boot.

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Just as an added bit of info there has been one thing in common with all the images and restores that I have done. In ALL cases Office 365/2016 has not survived and has had to be re-installed regardless of what package did the image. No big deal as it does not take all that long but seems a bit odd to me.

Except for possibly trying Macrium again with a working boot recovery CD I can't see where I can carry this much further. Even if the Macrium boot CD allowed a recovery I would still have to go with Acronis as it works when started within Windows. Also one must consider the cost if one wanted to go with a paid version... not sure if Macrium even has a free version. I just looked and Macrium would cost me ~$70.00 for one machine. Acronis cost me $30.00 for 2 machines and I have not yet found a feature in Macrium that is not in Acronis.

Also I MUST consider the user interface. While a power user can figure out the fine points of Macrium the interface with Acronis is just plain a lot easier to understand.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that this thread is about an issue with image backups with a certain line of Seagate external drives. DiscWizard/Acronis works out of the box, Macrium does not. What else can I possibly do but recommend DiscWizard/Acronis over Macrium in this situation?

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Well, all I can say is that I understand a rack of ribs a lot more than I understand the recent dialog between Jay and Pete regarding images, restores, BIOS changes, boot CDs (or not), iso's, AHCI, different levels of SATA, etc.

For the record, although I am certainly not a power user in the same class as Jay & Pete, I can usually make it around the block. Personally, I like Windows backup.......it's simple and easy to use, and it NEVER failed me on a restore. Unfortunately, Microsoft didn't maintain it for these higher capacity 4K drives, and I didn't realize this until after I had purchased a new 2TB Seagate drive.

I also found DiskWizard easy to use, although admittedly I never got around to doing a restore.

But Macrium (and yes they have a free version) was a different animal, at least to me. I found it difficult to use, and I never quite knew where I was in the process, although the programs stated that I had successfully created an image. For a true power user who might perform many backups and restores a day and who is willing to pay big bucks for a utility program, then Macrium is probably the right answer. I know Pete, Acadia, Joan and others speak highly of Macrium, and I respect their technical abilities.

For me, I'm just hoping that Windows backup will work on my incoming Transcend external drive..........

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BB
http://barrypatch.net

Hi Jay

Smiling a bit at your post. You say a noobie would have trouble with the Macrium interface, and I don't' disagree, but then the reason the CD's wouldn't boot is you had messed with your bios. Not exactly a newbie thing. I use Acronis as a secondary imaging program, but only from the USB key. I don't have it installed. In Acronis Home 2016, the installed version is all about pushing the cloud on you not, imaging.

The office 365 thing is a puzzle. I have on other program that installs click to run. Going to test to see what happens.

Yes, the Macrium GUI interface is not extremely simple, not too hard either, but not simple. The most simple one that I have ever seen, and one that I really liked, is the MS built-in program, but now days good luck finding it.

With Macrium, if it is set up correctly, you do not need a recovery cd, USB, or anything. There is a pre-Boot screen that saves you even if Windows is not working. To repeat myself, you need nothing, just trying to boot into Windows brings you the Macrium pre-Boot screen, and you are saved.
Acadia

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The blazing evidence of immortality is our dissatisfaction with any other solution. -- Emerson

Acadia, when you say the 'MS built-in program', what are you referring to specifically? Are you talking about the Windows Backup/Restore program that you get to from Control Panel, or is this yet another MS backup program? I really like the Windows Backup/Restore program, and I just wish MS had carried it forward into these larger-capacity drives.

Pete, in my previous post where I was talking about the difficulty I had with Macrium, I failed to mention your kind offer to help me through the process, including a telephone dialog if needed. And Acadia offered to help. Although I don't think Macrium is my bag of tea, I did sincerely appreciate the offers. That's what the forum should be all about, like when Jay installed VirtualBox on his own PC to help lead me through that process.

It's too bad we don't all live closer, because I understand that Jay is cooking up a rack of ribs.

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BB
http://barrypatch.net

I am referring to the MIRROR imaging feature that MS had in Windows 7, not the System Restore. I am still (happily) stuck in Windows 7. But I hear that MS hid that VERY important feature.

Again to repeat myself so there is no misunderstanding, I am talking not talking about System Restore but the Mirror Imaging feature, I do not remember its name. It is very simple to use, at least it was in Win7, and very reliable. Yes, it takes more time than other programs, and did not have as many fancy features, but for it newbie who cares, Microsoft nailed it! Now, why hide it?

Acadia

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The blazing evidence of immortality is our dissatisfaction with any other solution. -- Emerson

Here is a website that explains what I think you are talking about. I too am happily stuck in Windows 7, but I never did any mirroring.
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/17926/us ... windows-7/

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BB
http://barrypatch.net

Microsoft's Create System Image is in the Control panel in Windows 10 under the Backup and Restore (Windows 7) item. When you open the Control Panel icon, on the upper left is the link to the System Image program.

David, I may be wrong, but I don't think that's what Acadia is talking about. I think he is talking about the mirroring or cloning capability, which is different than creating a system image from the screen that you are talking about. System image is what I do......I've never cloned a drive.

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BB
http://barrypatch.net

Jay, I forgot all about the mirroring or cloning capability of Win 7, as I have never used it. But I wonder if the Seagate drive will accept a clone, even though it won't accept a system image?

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BB
http://barrypatch.net

To the best of my knowledge Windows has never had a true cloning tool just file and image backup. There are many third party tools that will clone though.

I don't really see why any drive would refuse a clone.

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The HowToGeek website that I referenced shows how to mirror a drive. I thought this was the same as cloning, but I was mistaken. However, Acadia was talking about mirroring in Windows 7, and that's what the website shows how to do.

I think Macrium Reflect is one of the programs that will do cloning.

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BB
http://barrypatch.net

I think we are getting our wording mixed up a little. A clone of a drive is done using software to create an exact copy of a drive stored onto another drive, this is what Macrium and System Image do.

A Mirror or Mirrored drive is done at the hardware level using Disk Management or the BIOS in the system. This will make two drives appear as one to the user, this is for protection in case of one of the hard drives failing , the other will seamlessly take over. This is also called RAID, which there are different levels based on how you have your hard drives set up.

Yes, mirroring drives is a form of R.A.I.D. while cloning could be used as a backup or to migrate from one drive to another.

Patty runs mirrored drives if I am not mistaken, I know that she at least used to do so. The advantage here is that when you save a file you are actually saving to two different drives. If one of the drives fails the system just keeps on going with the remaining drive until the bad drive is replaced.



If you search on-line you will tend to find that imaging and cloning are talked about as if they are the same thing but they are not. If you were to clone your boot drive you could then swap the drives and there would be no difference. When you image a drive it is strictly a backup and will never boot. To make an image boot you would first have to restore the image to a drive.

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I'll bet Acadia is talking about a system image which is occasionally called Mirror Imaging. Cloning is usually called cloning.

Jay, this struck me as just plain wrong so I did some testing.

First I did an incremental update with Macrium. Then I install office 365 home, and made sure all was working.

Then I performed the following test with Macrium, Acronis True image 2016, Shadowprotect, and Image for Windows

What I did was first image the system with Office installed. Then I restored the preoffice Macrium image, and as expected Office was gone. Then I restored the image just taken with office. In each and every case the image restore, and office was fine and intact.

If you have to re install office with a restore, then the image is bad, period. And if this is happening with every imaging program, unless you are imaging from a recovery environment, I'd check your VSS setup. BUT SOMETHING ISN'T RIGHT. THE IMAGES ARE BAD.

Actually I probably just lost it once and never noticed. Then the images after would be without. I absolutely intend to test it out. Since I was trying different software I would do an image with each and then try a restore of each. I probably lost Office without realizing and then did a set of images. As I said I will test this out but not right now. LOL! I'm rather tuckered out in relation to images at the moment.

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