Solved Macrium Reflect help needed

thecaretaker · Nov 25, 2023

I currently save Macrium Reflect full backups to an old SSD drive (G:) and when I want to restore a backup, I have always gone to Windows Boot Manager and picked the Macrium Reflect System Recovery option. So far so good.

Ghot pointed out with my Gigabyte mother board, when I boot up, I can press F12 and go directly to the MR rescue media instead of waiting for the Windows Boot Manager and having to reboot.

However, here is my problem. If I stick a USB stick in, I get the option to boot from it. And it works fine, I can see it as a boot option after pressing F12 and I can recover an image perfectly. But I cannot see the SSD drive with the MR rescue media on it (H:). It doesn't show up in the BIOS as a boot drive either.

Maybe I am trying something that isn't possible, but how do I get the BIOS to see the SSD with Macrium on it?

When making a USB stick as rescue media, it has an option to make it multi boot (MBR/UEFI) which is always ticked and says recommended. How can I make my (H:) SSD on SATA behave the same way and get recognised by the BIOS as a boot media so that I can access it from F12 when booting up?

Here are a few screenshots to help you see my setup.

(EDIT: I was playing with the (H:) SSD and tried rebuilding the drive to see if it worked. The screenshot I took makes it look like it has no content, but it does normally)

Berton · Nov 25, 2023

One important thing with the BIOS is that in most computers the BIOS has built-in support for USB 2 ports but not for USB 3, have to wait for the OS to load to get the drivers loaded. Some newer computers may have combination ports and support for them. The USB 2 ports and plugs have black centers and the USB 3 ports and plugs have blue centers, newest are black on my Notebooks.

Fabler2 · Nov 25, 2023

The rescue media built on the SSD should be in a Fat32 partition on it's own.

thecaretaker · Nov 25, 2023

Fabler2 said:
The rescue media built on the SSD should be in a Fat32 partition on it's own.

Ill give that a try

thecaretaker · Nov 25, 2023

I've no options in Windows apart from NTFS

Fabler2 · Nov 25, 2023

thecaretaker said:
I've no options in Windows apart from NTFS

View attachment 79015

You need to create a small Fat 32 partition first with a letter so that when you create the recovery drive Macrium will see the partition to create it.

As an example this is one of my flash drives with Fat32 for macrium and NTFS for data.

Fabler2 · Nov 25, 2023

Use something like MiniTool partition wizard to do it.

thecaretaker · Nov 25, 2023

I'm wanting to do this for my internal SSD SATA drive, not a removable flash/USB drive.

Wisewiz · Nov 25, 2023

Is it even possible to format an internal SSD as FAT32?

thecaretaker · Nov 25, 2023

Forget it. Yes, I did format my SSD with Fat32 but Macrium failed to create the boot rescue media on it. While playing with that minitool partition program, I managed to convert the wrong disk and lost all my backups on (G:). I've put things back to how it was and made a fresh backup.

Best leave things as they were.

wiganken · Nov 25, 2023

I create MR SSD rescue media using MR 'Other tasks>Create Rescue Media' but I first ensure that the SSD I have plugged into the USB port is all 'Unallocated' space. Totally blank. No partitions. Not formatted at all. This leaves MR to create it from scratch. Never failed me yet.

thecaretaker · Nov 25, 2023

wiganken said:
I create MR SSD rescue media using MR 'Other tasks>Create Rescue Media' but I first ensure that the SSD I have plugged into the USB port is all 'Unallocated' space. Totally blank. No partitions. Not formatted at all. This leaves MR to create it from scratch. Never failed me yet.

Mine is an internal SSD plugged into SATA not USB.

After formatting my drive back to NTFS and rebuilding the boot media. It would not load up. I got a screen telling me I was missing important drivers. I was using PE 11 not default RE. I put it back to RE under the advance tab of MR and it built it successfully. I've just tested it out and restored my backup.

A case of... if it ain't broke, don't try to fix it.

Lesson learnt. :boom:

POLYSIUS · Nov 25, 2023

Mission Impossible!
What you see in "Choose an operating system" in picture (1) are the 2 bootloader entries from you BCD. That's it.
It is like a Dual-Boot-System. Selecting the Macrium entry loads the Macrium boot.wim from the predefined Partition.
Example: The Recovery Environment WinRe.wim usually boots from partition (4).
One more entry in the BCD and you see that as well as a 3rd boot-option.
What you see when you press <F12> is completely different.
When you select the USB, it boots from the bootmgr.efi
For your plan you need a second EFI-Partition. Forget it if you don't know how to troubleshoot EFI-Partitions!

Fabler2 · Nov 25, 2023

@thecaretaker, I'd left the site for a while and missed your #8 post. My bad for assuming we were talking about an external SSD

Apologies for the confusion.

thecaretaker · Nov 25, 2023

Fabler2 said:
@thecaretaker, I'd left the site for a while and missed your #8 post. My bad for assuming we were talking about an external SSD
Apologies for the confusion.

No problem, thankfully I was able to start afresh and set it up how I originally had it. All part of the learning curve