I have 6 Windows 10 Pro x64 pcs, some have optical disk some not, various i7 cpus (2nd, 3rd, 4th gen) and mobos. I have installed Macrium Reflect Free on all 6 and it would be really convenient if I could have just one bootable rescue USB for all the machines. Is this possible or do I need a separate USB for each pc ?
In general, one usb stick will be ok but now and then you need to pick up a specific driver for it to work. You basically need to test it on each pc.
A simple option is to add Macrium as a boot entry, installing it on each pc. Of course a USB stick is still needed if hdd fails.
Thanks for reply - can you expand on this ?In general, one usb stick will be ok but now and then you need to pick up a specific driver for it to work. You basically need to test it on each pc.
A simple option is to add Macrium as a boot entry, installing it on each pc. Of course a USB stick is still needed if hdd fails.
If you have Macrium installed on a system you can start the Create Rescue Media on each system and on the 2nd screen it will show the driver status for that PC. It has a driver database built into WinPe.
Jim
Phone Man - are you saying : create boot usb on pc #1, then use same usb to create boot device on pc #2 ? and it won't overwrite data from pc #1 ?
NO. Just start the process on each PC and cancel out after the 2nd page. It just shows if an drivers are missing.Phone Man - are you saying : create boot usb on pc #1, then use same usb to create boot device on pc #2 ? and it won't overwrite data from pc #1 ?
Jim
You install MR on each pc, and then just go to "other tasks - add recovery boot menu option".
Re. usb - create one and boot each pc from it - if it loads ok and you can see your drives, it is ok.
If not, you should create a usb specific for that pc, adding drivers as required. Actually it is not that common to need to do this.
You also need to update those USB drives and the boot menu option when you install a new Reflect update. You update the boot screen option by removing it then reinstating it as I discovered last week - see Update Macrium Reflect Boot Menu Option?
Hi there
so long as you have Video and any RAID drivers that's all you need on the macrium rescue USB. Any different hardware on different PC's can usually be automatically loaded again after your restore -- so I'd make a copy of the PC with the most complex software and hardware as your main "Source" backup.
Since HDD space is cheap -if you have something like a network server why not schedule backups on all these PC's and dump to the server though. A typical Windows backup will probably take around 25 GB so not a huge amount of storage needed for all your PC's.
(note this assumes OS and programs on separate HDD or partition to your DATA -- that you'll have to back up in other ways depending on your requirements).
Note - the macrium software only needs the minimal driver set to run on any particular PC -- usually basic video and RAID if you use hardware RAID - so only ONE USB containing the program is fine --don't IMO mess around with Windows boot menus --it usually comes to grief later on.
If the programs installed on the 6 PC's are totally different then you'll need different backup images too.
If you have something like a NAS server that is running LINUX then I'd say bring up a basic Windows Virtual Machine with just Macrium installed on it and then schedule the macrium program to backup your 6 client Windows machines at specific times --easily and simply done. VMware player or VBOX both run VM's easily on Linux systems and are easy to install and get working.
Without knowing the specific environment it's hard to make a "Best solution" - but given the fact you have 6 PC's around I'd certainly look at some sort of NAS server solution.
Cheers
jimbo
Thanks for the info guys - I think I understand Macrium a bit better now.
My 6 pcs are 2 for regular use, and 4 as headless render boxes - I use Maxon Cinema 4D and their Team Render lets you render one project across as many pcs as you want, movie frames being distributed and managed automatically. Completed frames are sent back to the server pc as tifs for assembly in After Effects.
Recently I had to reinstall Windows + the render software on one machine and setting up firewall rules/ports and getting the pcs to talk to each other again is a PITA. So I made a MR image of every pc on its 2nd partition - will copy these to another location.
