- When you open macrium reflect free, you can directly select which partitions (and drives) you want to backup.
You can select only the partitions that contains the necessary OS files to restore the OS only.
Or you can select also data partitions if they contain data you don't want to lose; in this second case, the macrium reflect image file (.mrimg) will obviously be bigger than in first case.
- When you have finished the selections, click Image selected disks on this computer.
In the window that appears, you can still check and change your selected partitions.
Check the destination folder: here you can decide where the image will be put (and saved).
You can not choose a partition that you have included in the image.
Always in this window, you can choose to put the image on a cd/dvd disk and/or modify other settings (like the image name ID, compression, password, and so forth), but it's optional.
When you have finished with this window (the most important), click Next.
- This window will allow you to create your backup plan and to schedule the next backups.
It's optional (you can do it manually once a month, or the period you prefer), click Next.
- This window shows you a summary of your decisions.
Click Finish to start macrium job and create the image.
Summing up:
1) Download, install, open macrium reflect free.
2) Create the recovery media and test if it works; i.e., if it boots your pc and open macrium reflect.
3) Reboot to windows, open macrium reflect, select the partitions you want to include in the image.
The system partitions are:
- EFI/ESP partition (FAT32)
- MS reserved 128MB partition
- C: (or where windows is installed
- Recovery partitions
If you are still unsure and confused, select the entire disk where C: is (the image file will be bigger).
4) Click
Image selected disks on this computer.
Change the destination folder; i.e., you have to choose where the image will be saved.
All other settings are optional, hence click
Next.
5) Scheduling is optional. Click
Next.
6) Summary of your decisions. Click
Finish to start the image creation.
