Macrium Reflect - Saved My Bacon Today! (1 Viewer)

[DBK]

Beofre I start I want to say a huge thank you to @Gellyneck for alerting me to this bit of FREE software in the thread http://www.motorhomefun.co.uk/forum...nstall-help-please.100257/page-3#post-1266194 The software is called Macrium Reflect and you can find it with a bit of Googling.

Today my PC wouldn't start. I hit it in vulnerable places and eventually it did spark into life. Subsequent re-starts gave the dread disk read error warning. The hard drive was on the way out I feared.

I went to local computer shop and bought a new hard disk which using Reflect I cloned from my original C drive while it was having a good day.

It all went perfectly. Reflect has other ways of restoring a dead hard drive but I found the cloning option was the simplest.

Did I mention it was FREE?

The alternative would have been a time-consuming fresh install but I only did that a few weeks ago - probably should have taken the hint something was on the way out.

I can recommend this program.

 

[Gellyneck]

Phew! Happy it helped for you.

Guess what. After building a new pc for son I did a full reinstalled on his old pc last week and after a couple of days of downloading updates it decided to go phut. Oh, and before I had done the first Reflect back-up (it was next on the cards after the final batch of updates!).

Would of had to do major changes anyway as it's the motherboard (obsolete) that's gone unless I can find a used replacement online but probably won't bother.

A new version is due out soon however here's a link to current version webpage for anyone else who's interested - http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

 

[DBK]

I cloned to a hard disk the same size as the original, 1 TB, partly because it is big enough, I have a second hard drive and a NAS for storing pictures and backups, so what is by current standards a modest drive is enough. But I wasn't sure if the free version of the program would clone to a different size, this might need the paid for version.

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[Gellyneck]

Obviously, I've not tried every sized hard disc but have cloned to larger, same and smaller sized drives. However I do tend to partition my hard drives with the C: drive dedicated to Windows and program files so end up with (for Windows 7) c100Mb System Reserved, c80Gb C: drive Windows 7 and balance D: drive for data files. Makes it easier to reinstall Windows and programs if you ever want to take the operating system back to "factory fresh".