Following is a simplified version of the Macrium Reflect backup image restore process. Note this sort of software and process is for more advanced users. Normally, restoring a backup to the existing PC where the backup image was taken and the recovery disk was made won't present any challenges. However, restoring an image to another PC can be challenging. Depending on your PC or laptop there may be endless combinations of potential gotchas which will result in not being able to see the internal hard drive in the PC or laptop and as such being unable to restore the image to new hardware.

If you boot (startup) from the USB boot-disk and you are unable to see the internal PC hard disk you could try the following:

• Changing the disk mode from RAID to 'standard' Link

WARNING:
USE EXTREME CAUTION that you don't restore an image over all your data this is an advanced procedure that ERASES the entire contents of your PC.

Following are the main steps:

STEP ONE:

Backup the entire PC if you are in any doubt that there may be files that you need to recover.

STEP TWO:

Boot from the Macrium recovery disk, normally this will require tapping DEL, F10, or F12 during the boot process depending on your PC then selecting the USB or CD recovery disk. (Note Windows 8 era PC hardware may not have the option to intrurpt the process by pressing a key)

Notes regarding UEFI or legacy disk mode (sorry this is an advanced topic I will try to make it as simple as possible)

Your PC will be set to run the hard disks in UEFI or legacy mode:

• Older PCs may only have legacy (in which case there is only one option)
• Newer PCs may only have UEFI (in which case there is only one option)
• Most PC's at the time of writing will have either option

Your PC may be set to using either UEFI or legacy disk mode. Typically this can be changed in the BIOS setup normally accessed by F2 at PC Boot/startup. Your restored image should be suitable for that disk mode, if its not the backup can still be restored but it requires extra more complex steps, see here for that.

Additionally, if the PC is set to  UEFI disk mode and boot from USB you may get the option to boot from [the same] USB drive in either UEFI or legacy mode, depending on how things are setup you may not see the disk drive to be able to backup or restore to if you chose the wrong mode.

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I'm simple terms everything needs to match

• If your PC is set to UEFI disk mode, boot from the USB in UEFI disk mode and restore a UEFI image
• If your PC is set to Legacy disk mode, boot from the USB in Legacy disk mode restore a Legacy image

(remember you *can* restore an image from Legacy to UEFI or vice versa if need be see here for that)

STEP 3 - The Restore

Once you have successfully booted from the Macrium boot disk follow the instructions below...

"press any key when prompted"

Allow the Macrium recovery environment to start

Click on the restore tab (1 below), then browse for an image file (2 below)

 Select your recovery image from its stored location, normally on another USB drive which you will find under "Devices with removable storage" (see 1 below), In this case its is on a second hard drive in the PC (see 2 below). Note that drive letters will probably be different than in Windows

Click on OK (see 3 below)

Once the backup is selected click restore image (see 1 below).

You may have to chose the drive to restore "to" (especially in the case of restoring to a different PC), make sure you chose the correct hard drive. Its useful to understand we are restoring the entire hard drive from with the backup image and restoring it over the entire main "boot" hard drive in the PC (for this simple application). Restoring only certain partitions is beyond the scope of this simple guide.

Ensure that the checkbox "copy selected partitions when I click next" is checked

Click next

The entire hard drive will be erased and the image will be restored.

When complete, remove all the USB drives and restart the PC, Windows should start and if this is a different PC it should locate the specific drivers for the new PC. The PC may restart several times during this process.

Tip:

Macrium doesn't always seam to auto scale all the partitions to fit on the drive in the instance that you get an error about not enough space before the actual restore starts you may uncheck certain partition iof not required, in the instance below I could uncheck the Last pation (see 1 below) as this is not required.

 This information has been provided for the benefit of digitalwelcomemat IT customers.
Treat this information as informative only and do not take actions or make decisions on the basis of the information contained here. All IT decisions and actions should be made after consultation with your chosen IT professional taking into account all the of the relevant factors.

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