Solved Macrium, Imaging the C-Drive

Prior to reformatting the C-Drive and
I need to Image the C-Drive. I purchased (a 4-pack of) Macrium Reflect. This'll be the first time I've used it.
I'm using (on a thumb drive).

1) Are there any pre-Image preliminaries I need to create (recovery thumb drive, Rescue Media, etc...) in case my attempt to image the C-drive goes awry?
2) By the way, why am I creating an Image rather than a Clone?

For Sure the rescue media AND test it - See How to test a bootable USB flash drive
Use Clone if you want to copy partitions to a new drive. Cloning excels in some rapid recovery scenarios, while imaging gives you greater backup flexibility i.e. incremental / differential See Planning a backup strategy You can never have to many backups !

Unless you are replacing the drive, you want to use disc imaging, not cloning. Imaging allows you to recover all or part of the image. Make sure you set the advanced options to validate. And yes, set up rescue media on your boot drive.

jro11 said:

I need to Image the C-Drive. I purchased (a 4-pack of) Macrium Reflect. This'll be the first time I've used it.

Click to expand...

Congratulations, it's a wise precaution to make a system image. Too few take the trouble to do so...

jro11 said:

1) Are there any pre-Image preliminaries I need to create (recovery thumb drive, Rescue Media, etc...) in case my attempt to image the C-drive goes awry?

Click to expand...

No, not really. You will need to have made your recovery usb and/or added it to your boot menu before you could do a restore though (preferably 'and').

jro11 said:

2) By the way, why am I creating an Image rather than a Clone?

Click to expand...

An image is a single file that can be stored on an external drive, along with anything else you might want to store there. Multiple images could be stored there, so you could retain a previous Full image when making a new one. You can also add recent changes to your most recent Full as a Differential or Incremental backup. You can then choose to restore back to a choice of earlier dates should the latest one not be to your liking.

A clone is a 1-to-1 copy to another disk. You'd need a separate disk for each clone if you wanted to keep multiple versions. Also, you wouldn't be able to use the disk for storing anything else.

Thanks.
Apparently I closed my last thread prematurely. The drive I changed into an NTFS partition and assigned letter 'R' to does not come up at startup.

It also doesn't appear when I plug it in AFTER restarting the computer. (the 'ping' happens, but nothing shows up)

So it seems I either have to go back to thread

EFI formatted drive to NTFS​

and again... using the same procedure (MiniTools that resulted in (following graphic is from MiniTools Disk Partition

reformat the drive. I just reformatted the drive AGAIN and again Disk Management is showing it as

Of course, the drive doesn't mount. It is now "unallocated" and has no Disk Letter (R).
I'm (psychologically) arming myself for the inevitable criticism of me that's going to ensue.
Otherwise, it seems there's nothing I can do.

Oh, by the way, thanks for encouraging me to test the rebootable disk.

That 931.51 Gb drive now needs to be formatted.

jro11 said:

Thanks.
Apparently I closed my last thread prematurely. The drive I changed into an NTFS partition and assigned letter 'R' to does not come up at startup.
View attachment 87192
It also doesn't appear when I plug it in AFTER restarting the computer. (the 'ping' happens, but nothing shows up)
View attachment 87193
So it seems I either have to go back to thread

EFI formatted drive to NTFS​

and again... using the same procedure (MiniTools that resulted in (following graphic is from MiniTools Disk Partition
View attachment 87195
reformat the drive. I just reformatted the drive AGAIN and again Disk Management is showing it as
View attachment 87201
Of course, the drive doesn't mount. It is now "unallocated" and has no Disk Letter (R).
I'm (psychologically) arming myself for the inevitable criticism of me that's going to ensue.
Otherwise, it seems there's nothing I can do.

Oh, by the way, thanks for encouraging me to test the rebootable disk.

Click to expand...

yes, right click on the drive in Minitools and create a new partition.

Badger said:

That 931.51 Gb drive now needs to be formatted.

Click to expand...

I have done this multiple times (at least 4x!) and published the results on this thread and on the previous thread! I restarted each time before testing the formatted NTSF drive and the 30.9 GB new partition.

antspants said:

yes, right click on the drive in Minitools and create a new partition.

Click to expand...

the formatted NTSF drive and the 30.9 GB new partition is the small partition you asked about in this quote:

How did you end up with 30.9GB of unallocated space?

Click to expand...

I will do it again but only if there is some way I can unambiguously prove to you that I did what I say I did.
So far, I have illustrated EVERY STEP ALONG THE WAY. How can I illustrate it differently...convincingly?

jro11 said:

I have done this multiple times (at least 4x!) and published the results on this thread and on the previous thread! I restarted each time before testing the formatted NTSF drive and the 30.9 GB new partition.

the formatted NTSF drive and the 30.9 GB new partition is the small partition you asked about in this quote:

I will do it again but only if there is some way I can unambiguously prove to you that I did what I say I did.
So far, I have illustrated EVERY STEP ALONG THE WAY. How can I illustrate it differently...convincingly?

Click to expand...

I believe you. Breathe.

See if you can right click on the main partition and resize it in the right click menu, and stretch it from the left of the main partition (resize) to the beginning of the unallocated space so that it incorporates the 30gb. I am just unsure of how that occured.

Hang on.. Is there still unallocated space or is it one partition, and formatted as @Badger said?

antspants said:

Is there still unallocated space or is it one partition, and formatted as @Badger said?

Click to expand...

There's a break in the rain...need to go walk the dog.

The reason you can’t see the drive is because it isn’t a drive, it’s unallocated.

antspants said:

The reason you can’t see the drive is because it isn’t a drive, it’s unallocated.

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And when it was
??
Was it unallocated then? Or was it a 900.6 GB allocated, and letter-named (R) drive.

Obviously, illustrating the MiniTools and the Disk Management windows isn't convincing anyone. How else can I illustrate what I've repeated 3X?

jro11 said:

And when it was
View attachment 87220??
Was it unallocated then? Or was it a 900.6 GB allocated, and letter-named (R) drive.

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Yes, it should show as R in your system. The unallocated shouldn’t be there. Try resizing the R to incorporate the unallocated 30GB

According to the MiniTool Partition manual,


The format feature was not available until I created a small partition:

That's why I created the partition. I didn't figure 31 Gb would be missed and I assumed, if MiniTool required it there was a reason, like a place to write bad tracks to. I think I can reduce that 31 GB a tad but doubt that would make a difference.
This is soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo frustrating...

Minitools wouldn’t of unallocated 30GB.
Now that the entire drive is unallocated, right click and select create.

When this box shows up, make sure where it says “Unallocated space before and unallocated space after” are both at 0.00



Set it exactly how it is on this image (Change the drive letter if you want to) The partition size should say 931.5GB

EDIT:

Thats 931500 MB
If unallocated space before and unallocated space after is set at 0.00, Minitools will know the partition size.

I get that you’re frustrated. When this happens, breathe, or take the dog for another walk, clear your head, look at the surroundings and not what’s in your head.

antspants said:

Set it exactly how it is on this image (Change the drive letter if you want to) The partition size should say 931.5GB

Click to expand...

This is the closest I can approximate the settings you suggest. I cannot

Create as: [Logical] I can only Create as: [Primary]
(What I can do is change the size of the partition to 931.5 instead of 931.51 GB) oh! Guess what! The program automatically reduced it by .01 GB.

And the result:

Not very encouraging.

jro11 said:

oh! Guess what! The program automatically reduced it by .01 GB.

Click to expand...

Not important. But how did you end up with a drive that is 0.00GB? WTH?

As far as primary is concerned, I don’t believe it matters. Unless someone wants to correct me. And you don’t touch the partition size. Just make sure the space before and after are 0.00

jro11 said:

What I can do is change the size of the partition to 931.5 instead of 931.51 GB

Click to expand...

You keep adding extra steps to the steps that are given you. Why do you need to play with the partition size?

OK. What I understood you to wanted was to assign the full partition size 931,51 GB.
So it was with amusement, and a nod of the hat to you, that I watched the program change that size, on its own, to 931.5 GB--EXACTLY THE SIZE YOU STIPULATED!
Someday I'll have to find out how you knew it had to be .01 GB smaller than the full partition size.

But this time I'll configure the size to be 931.5 GB EXACTLY!

When I do so, THE PROGRAM AUTOMATICALLY ALLOCATES THE ADDITIONAL .01 GB to its own partition--before or after the 931.5 GB. It actually makes sense, doesn't it?

So there's no way I can format the drive exactly as you specify. Either I make it 931.51 and the program changes the size to 931.5 and allocates the remaining space to another partition or I make it 931.5 and the program allocates the remaining space to another partition. The only say I have at this point is to place that .01GB partition before or after the 931.5 GB partition. (And, to me at least, this seems to make sense. How's the program to account for the extra space?)

Again, discouraging...What did I mess up this time? (Look mate, I appreciate your persistence, and your willingness to spend it on me, without all the vituperation I'm getting from many others--constantly--but I can't ask the computer/MiniTools to do something it won't do.)

Now for another 7 hr depressing breathing episode...called sleep.