Macrium Reflect USB Rescue Media.

Hi,
After having to do a Clean Install of Windows 11, I have just bought Macrium Reflect 8.1 and have made System Images of our 4 devices. Two are Windows 10 and two Windows 11. I'm not sure if I need to make USB bootable Rescue Media in case Windows will not boot?
If so, do I need to create separate USB rescue media for Windows 10 and 11, or will one be suitable for both operating systems? I'm not totally sure how to create this media - I understand it is done from within the Reflect program and how to boot from it, if need be, into the Macrium Recovery Environment.
Any advice would be appreciated,
Thanks,
Mitch.

You can create the media from within the app. It's under Other Tasks in the menu at the top. First item should be Crete Rescue Media.

The same rescue media will work for both 10 and 11.

Mitch said:

Hi,
After having to do a Clean Install of Windows 11, I have just bought Macrium Reflect 8.1 and have made System Images of our 4 devices. Two are Windows 10 and two Windows 11. I'm not sure if I need to make USB bootable Rescue Media in case Windows will not boot?
If so, do I need to create separate USB rescue media for Windows 10 and 11, or will one be suitable for both operating systems? I'm not totally sure how to create this media - I understand it is done from within the Reflect program and how to boot from it, if need be, into the Macrium Recovery Environment.
Any advice would be appreciated,
Thanks,
Mitch.

Click to expand...

MAKE THE RESCUE MEDIA. I can't tell you how many times it's saved my bacon.
Plus... it has some great little tools built into it as well.

Thanks very much to you both for the information. I will get the USB rescue media sorted.
Appreciate your help,
Mitch.

As a general principle, unless the devices are identical, I would create the rescue media on a separate USB on each machine and mark the thumb drives as to which machine it was made on. That way if you have some corrupted drivers or some other issue the likelihood is only one device will be hosed during a restore. But my desktops were always different, as in dual core vs. quadcore. So I may just be paranoid.

Mitch said:

Any advice would be appreciated

Mitch.

Click to expand...

... AND DON'T FORGET TO TEST IT OUT!!

The time to find out if it is U/S is NOW . . . not when you're trying to use it an emergency situation.

IanMosley said:

... AND DON'T FORGET TO TEST IT OUT!!

The time to find out if it is U/S is NOW . . . not when you're trying to use it an emergency situation.

Click to expand...

Amen to that. I had a quad core PC running Vista. The imaging software ran fine from Windows. But I had an unusual HD controller. Running the restore I got the dreaded "drive not recognized" error. Fortunately there was a "compatibility mode" on this other imaging software. I had to let it run for 9 hours, but thankfully it restored the image and the machine booted normally. I was just lucky I did not experience a power outage during that long restore. If possible I recommend testing on a Guinea pig machine before entrusting your main PC to any rescue software.

I have some USB drives around, so I'll do a separate one for each pc and test them. One thing though, can I wait to build the Macrium boot menu until I need to use it or does it need to be done beforehand? If I don't need to do it now I would prefer not to, to make it easier for my family to avoid accidentally booting into the Macrium Recovery Environment.
Mitch

Mitch said:

I have some USB drives around, so I'll do a separate one for each pc and test them. One thing though, can I wait to build the Macrium boot menu until I need to use it or does it need to be done beforehand? If I don't need to do it now I would prefer not to, to make it easier for my family to avoid accidentally booting into the Macrium Recovery Environment.
Mitch

Click to expand...

It is going to build the bootable image from stuff on that PC. So you need to do it while the system is in a known good state. If you want to make sure nobody inadvertently boots a recovery USB then put them in a locked drawer or someplace where they are not likely to be found.

Hi, I'll create the boot menu beforehand just in case.
Thanks again,
Mitch.

Mitch said:

Hi, I'll create the boot menu beforehand just in case.
Thanks again,
Mitch.

Click to expand...

You are most welcome.

Mitch said:

I have some USB drives around, so I'll do a separate one for each pc and test them. One thing though, can I wait to build the Macrium boot menu until I need to use it or does it need to be done beforehand? If I don't need to do it now I would prefer not to, to make it easier for my family to avoid accidentally booting into the Macrium Recovery Environment.
Mitch

Click to expand...

An alternative is to install Ventoy on each USB (a primary and a duplicate) allowing multiple bootable ISO's on them. Each Macrium rescue media is identified for different PC. Also have disk management ISO on those USB's.

MilesAhead said:

If you want to make sure nobody inadvertently boots a recovery USB then put them in a locked drawer or someplace where they are not likely to be found.

Click to expand...

I think he's talking about adding Macrium to his boot menu, which anyone could inadvertently (or intentionally) boot into.

Mitch said:

Hi, I'll create the boot menu beforehand just in case.
Thanks again,
Mitch.

Click to expand...

Scott said:

I think he's talking about adding Macrium to his boot menu, which anyone could inadvertently (or intentionally) boot into.

Click to expand...

Ok, I see. If the system is not corrupted then running restore to recover files or whatever will offer to do that on the fly. I did not pick up on that when I read the post. Thanks for clarifying.

Hi, Sorry I should have been clearer. As I understand it if you add a Macrium Boot Menu when the PC starts you are offered the options of Macrium or Windows and I can foresee family problems with this.
Can I ask a follow-up question please? I have created USB Rescue Media for one of our Windows 10 PC's (22H2) and Macrium has created it in Windows PE. Is this done automatically or should I have selected another option (which I missed)? We also have 2 Windows 11 22H2 PC's which I will be creating USB Rescue Media for. The Macrium guide shows Windows RE and I'm not clear if, as part of the process, I need to select an option and which one I should be choosing?
Hope someone can clarify this for me,
Thanks,
Mitch.

MilesAhead said:

As a general principle, unless the devices are identical, I would create the rescue media on a separate USB on each machine and mark the thumb drives as to which machine it was made on. That way if you have some corrupted drivers or some other issue the likelihood is only one device will be hosed during a restore. But my desktops were always different, as in dual core vs. quadcore. So I may just be paranoid.

Click to expand...

Not sure if that's really necessary -- I've found even when I created the rescue media from within a VM so a lot of "Virtual hardware and drivers" the USB drive worked perfectly well to restore images made on physical windows systems.

So long as the tool can read and write to the relevant disks even using basic drivers then it's fine. Whatever hardware you have the Ms basic video driver and bog standard AHCI driver for the disks are almost certainly likely to work.

With ultra modern NVMe disks -- should still work because if you made the tool in the first place using those it should be able to access those disks on restore.

The more of these things you have - the easier it is for them to become out of alignment with each other if something goes wrong.

Cheers
jimbo

Hi, When you are creating Macrium Rescue Media on USB flash drives, is there a required file format for the drive? The drive size I have is 32Gb. Should it be FAT32? It's difficult to find drives less than 32Gb and given that I may need to rely on it, I wanted to stay with recognised brands.
Thanks.

Mitch said:

Hi, When you are creating Macrium Rescue Media on USB flash drives, is there a required file format for the drive? The drive size I have is 32Gb. Should it be FAT32? It's difficult to find drives less than 32Gb and given that I may need to rely on it, I wanted to stay with recognised brands.

Click to expand...

Yes, a Fat32 usb will be fine. The rescue media creator will just copy its files to a suitable drive, and offer to reformat it for you if the current format is unsuitable.

Macrium said:

	Boot	Type	Min*Partition*Size
	The following partition is required on the USB flash drive for booting the Macrium Reflect rescue media:
	Multi-Boot MBR / UEFI	FAT32	1.2 x Size of Rescue Media PE files
	MBR Only	FAT32 or NTFS	1.2 x Size of Rescue Media PE files

The Rescue Media PE files vary in size dependant on PE/RE version. 1GB will be sufficient for all PE and RE versions as of May 2018. If there is insufficient free space then the build may fail.


Rescue Media Builder will first attempt to non-destructively copy the PE/RE files to an existing partition, then non-destructively create a new partition if necessary. If this is not possible then you will be prompt to destructively format the drive.

Click to expand...

Thanks Bree. I'll get a copy of the user guide and get the media in place.
Thanks again.
Mitch.

I can boot into Macrium or Windows, but as my laptop only has one drive, I like to make the USBs bootable as well just in case the whole drive becomes unbootable.