Using Macrium Free 30 Day Trial to Backup or Image your drives

Macrium Reflect is no longer free. It's now a 30-day Trial. They will continue updates until January 1, 2024.

The following is a tutorial to get you started utilizing the quite easy and full-featured backup program, Macrium Reflect Free 30-Day Trial

I have many years of positive experience with Macrium at work and home on multiple computers with a wide variety of configurations.

How to install it:

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Click here to download.



After downloading the file and clicking the executable, follow all the prompts on your screen. Make the choices that fit your needs.
Choose Home Use and download it to the desired folder. You can execute the program within the browser.

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Since this tutorial is for the Home version, choose Home and click next.
It will automatically populate the license key.
If it appears. I always uncheck the register box and click next. It’s up to you if you want to register or not, it does not change the functionality of the software.
Leave all checks default and click next.



Finally, click install.

Create the rescue media:

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1. Supports Windows 11/10/8/7, Vista, and XP. Also, you can choose what version of Windows PE you want to download at the next screen with the change PE Button.
2. Insert a USB stick into the PC you're creating the rescue media on.
3. From the Backup tab of the task pane, below Other Tasks, click Create bootable Rescue media.
   
   
4. Click Next, and you'll see the following as Macrium checks for Device Drivers compatibility. If you need to add Drivers, this is where you choose to do so.
   
   
   
5. Click Next to prepare and build the Windows PE image.
   
   
   
   
   You can leave this at default or choose your own WIM.
6. Click Next to begin the WIM build. Files will automatically be downloaded from Microsoft to complete the process if needed.
   
   
7. Once complete you can choose where to burn the media
   
   You can choose either CD/DVD or USB. I recommend USB.
   
   
   
8. Click Finish to create your rescue media
   
   Once you have your media created, it's wise to test it to make sure it will boot on your PC.

Create a full image of your system:

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You will choose the drive and partitions you want to image. Then, click Create an image of the partition(s) required to backup and restore Windows.



Make sure each partition you want to image is checked like above. Some of the partitions contain the boot files for Windows. Choose the location of the image file, preferably a separate or external drive.

You can name the image if you wish. Hit Next



You can add a schedule. As shown above, I have 2 Full backups and 12 Differentials, you can set it up any way that fits your needs. Explanation of Full, Differential backups: Incremental vs differential backup: what are the differences, and how do they compare?



Scheduling is self-explanatory.



This is your summary to check if all is well and to your specifications. You can also hit the advanced options and choose the option to verify the backup image before or after every run of the backup schedule.



This is it! You can run the backup you created now or uncheck that and let it run on the schedule you created.

What happens if you want (or need) to exclude files from your image?

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Check macrium knowledge base: Macrium KnowledgeBase v7.2 - how to exclude files from Disk Images and Clones (click)

Warning

Use caution when editing the registry, especially if you do not know what you are doing or without specific guidance from someone who is trained in manipulating the registry

In short:

1. Open regedit and navigate to:

   Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\BackupRestore\FilesNotToSnapshotMacriumImage

2. It should already contain this multi-string (don't remove it):
   

   Multi-string value name: RestorePoints
   data: $AllVolumes$\System Volume Information\*{3808876B-C176-4e48-B7AE-04046E6CC752} /s

3. Add a new multi-string value, name it like you desire, fill it with the paths or files you want to exclude.
   
   Example:
   I have some films in c:\films, and I want to exclude them from the image (because it will be bigger otherwise).
   I added:

   Multi-string value name: film
   data: %SystemDrive%\film\*.* /s

   
   
   
   Be careful with system variables: given that the parameter /s is present, windows/macrium will search and exclude all \film folders (and the files inside them) in %systemdrive%.
   If you want to exclude c:\film\*.*, it will be simpler to use that one.

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One caveat that was brought to my attention by one of our experts here at Sysnative: Macrium, in some instances, breaks Windows Update in a way that prevents Windows Upgrade from completing successfully by modifying the ImagePath value of the WIMMount key. The fix for this would be to change the Image Path back to the default.

 

[ubuysa]

I appreciate that this is an oldish thread, but I've been a Macrium Reflect user for many years now and some may be interested in the way I use it..?

I schedule a full Macrium backup image of my system drive every night (I don't use incremental or differential backups - IMO these are just for improved speed of backup in a commercial environment, where availability is critical and backup time must be minimised) and I keep the most recent 7 images (so I can restore back to any day in the last week). I also have the Verify option turned on, so every image is verified immediately after being written.

I backup to an external HDD which is USB attached all the time. The power for the external HDD however, goes via a USB controlled switch so that the external HDD is powered on and online only whilst the Macrium image is being saved. I actually schedule a batch job that turns on the USB switch, to power the external HDD on, it then waits 30 seconds for the HDD to come active, and then starts the full Macrium system disk image running. When the Macrium job ends the USB switch is turned off to take the external HDD offline.

The batch job is actually a tad more complex than that because I also use SyncBackSE to synchronise my user data with the same external HDD before the USB switch turns it off. I've discovered that creating separate partitions for the system drive images and user data files makes sense too. The Macrium files are large and best performance comes on an exFAT partition, whilst the user data files are small and best performance comes from an NTFS partition. The batch job also uses SyncBak to do cloud backups, but after the external HDD has been turned off.

IMO the main advantage of my method is, that because the external HDD is only online during the backup run, the chances of it being encrypted by ransomware are minimised. I did, for a time, also disconnect the Internet (via Nircmd) in the batch job before switching the external HDD on and then reconnecting the Internet after the external HDD has been switched off, to prevent ransomware from "phoning home" for the encryption key. I've stopped doing that though, it sometimes got in the way of the cloud backups staring properly.

My Windows system and apps occupies less than 100GB. A full image takes about 14 minutes to write, and a restore (booted from a Macrium Rescue Disk), takes a little less (because the write also does a verify).

Macrium Reflect has saved my life many times, not only when I suspect there might be malware on my system (a restore to an earlier backup eliminates it) but also when I do something dumb (I like to experiment) and end up with an unbootable or messed-up system. A 10-minute restore of a Macrium image is a faster way back to normality than just about any other method.