Disappearing Restore points

[Martin S]

Oh well, another idea down the pan.

I downloaded Macrium following your earlier post and did my first recovery disk/image a couple of days ago.

I now need to read the help files to work out exactly what is in the image.

Again, many thanks for your help WHS.

Martin

 

[whs]

What exactly is not clear. What are you trying to learn from the help files?? Maybe I can give you a tip, because what's on the image corresponds exactly to what was on your partition when you took the image. When you open the image (like any other file/folder, except it mounts a volume, see note below) you should see the same thing then when you opened your C. Your own files are under Users > Your name.

Note: the volume Macrium mounts when you open an (the) image will temporarily appear in your Computer window. And if you open images several times, it will appear several times. But those are virtual volumes which will disappear with the next reboot. But whilst the virtual volume(s) are in Computer, you can open it from there.

 

[Martin S]

I had assumed that the image did not include the actual programme files such as CCleaner, Microsoft Money, Photoshop, games etc but only the associated data files, photos etc.

I just had a tentative 1 minute check on my image drive and it appears to have everything.

So If I need to restore I don't need to reload all of the programmes - an unexpected bonus.

 

[whs]

When you restore, you get everything back exactly as it was when you took the image - OS, programs, data, settings, etc.
If you took the image on e.g. 1/20 and you restore on 1/25, your system will look exactly as it was on 1/20. However, all the updates you have made (e.g. imported new pictures on 1/23 or produced a document on 1/24) will be lost. That's why I take an image every second day so that the loss would be minimal the day I need to restore.
I also have a seperate data partition. And that I even image more frequently - every time i have made a major update to my data. In return, I delete older images.

 

[Martin S]

Sorry to keep asking questions - I just noticed that my internal C drive is NTFS but my external drive for backups is FAT32. Is that significant?

 

[whs]

Martin, you can ask as many questions as you like (need). No problem. And yes, that is a problem. Reformat your external drive to NTFS. Fat32 should really only be used for USB sticks (for a variety of reasons like speed and wear and tear). But disks must be NTFS. When you reformat, you will loose your current image. But you can always create a new one and more to come. If you have other data on that disk, copy it first to your HDD and once reformatted move it out again. Not sure whether you can save your current image that way too. It may or may not work. I never tried that.

 

[Martin S]

WHS, I found a Brink tutorial on the Vista Forums called Convert FAT or FAT32 Volume to NTFS. If I follow this, will it wipe out all my files as part of the conversion process? It doesn't explicitly say so.

Do I need to create a new Macrium recovery disk?

 

[whs]

Yes, when you reformat the disk, your data gets wiped out. So you better save it (even to your internal disk until you can write it back).
I am not sure regarding the Macrium recovery disk. This is an odd case that I have never tried. To be safe, I would burn a new one. Takes only a few minutes.
And you don't really need a lot of tutorial for reformatting. Just highlight the disk in Computer, right click on it and go to "Format". I would go with "Quick Format" because full format may take forever.