Macrium Reflect, stand-alone Backup, and when Windows Repair Fails- "Unscheduled System Restore"

Brian

Product of the Fifties

I started using Macrium Reflect several years ago after making 512GByte FAT-32 disks that could dual-boot DOS and Windows XP for working on embedded systems. Figured out how to Defy Microsoft's artificial limits on FAT-32 drives, but it was not easy and took a long time to do. Used Macrium Reflect to image the Disk and make copies. It works.

I am also old enough to have run Stand-Alone backup for a VAX 11/780 using 8" floppies to boot and copy Disks to 9-track tape.

I also use Macrium Reflect to make stand-alone backups of the Disks in our home computers. Got serious about this with WIN10. Never know when a Microsoft Update will BRICK your computer. The last one bricked my HP I7 machine running WIN10. System restore failed, and system repair failed. That is because the last piece of code that Microsoft did right was DOS. Fortunately, I do all of my paid work on stand-alone computers dual booting DOS and XP.

I bought a 4TByte USB disk dedicated to stand-alone backups. I also keep images on a second USB drive.

SO- the next post on this thread will either be from my HP I7 using the restored image, or it will be from this one stating that the I7 machine has hardware problems.

If you don't use a stand-alone backup for your important computers, Macrium Reflect is free for home use. You can install it on a computer, and make a bootable CD/DVD with it. Some gotchas: use a USB2 port, not all USB3 ports are supported. I'll download the latest and see if it works- but may be a Windows CE limitation.
 
1 Hour and 36 minutes to restore the full image to the disk. Running Norton, and I am sure Microsoft is doing it's best to kill this machine again with its updates. Hopefully- the error messages sent back to Microsoft will prevent this from happening again.

And if not- I have the Disk with the full image backup safe- meaning disconnected from the Internet and back on my shelf.
 
So my backup I5 machine, a Panasonic Toughbook CF-53, I use separate Disks for DOS/XP and WIN10. Usually has the DOS/XP caddy in it. I just put the WIN10 disk in:
got the "Update in progress/ Do not turn off your computer"...

Be afraid, be very afraid...
 
The November 2020 update is whole version upgrade. If they were honest, it would be Windows 12 or thereabouts but they're trying to pretend it's not that drastic even as they pimp the new "features". Could be worse - we could have Oracle controlling everything instead of MS.

I need Windows for games with my son and for running Capture One but I have other machines for fun - my dell laptop with FreeBSD 12.1, my Sun Blade 2500 Silver workstation, and arriving today an old Thinkpad 760XL (P133mmx, 64 mb ram) that I'm planning to stick NextStep 3.3 for Intel on one partition and all my old DOS stuff on another. Lots of emulators too - my favorite is "Lambda Delta" an emulator of the old LMI Lambda Lisp Machine.
 
I have Windows XP and DOS Dual-Booting off an 8GByte CF card on my embedded Vortex DX3.
I also have Windows XP and DOS dual booting off a 128GByte SSD and 512GByte hard disk on my CF-53 I5, running 2.7GHz. DOS is FAST and with my PharLap 8.0 extender, uses 4GBytes of RAM.
 
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