Restoring an Image File from Macrium Reflect Free

[Steve C]

I'm transferring my Windows 8.1 desktop system from a HDD to SSD. I've created a Macrium image file of the partitions "required to backup and restore Windows" on the D: partition of my HDD. I'm ready to restore the Macrium Image from drive D: to the new SSD.

See Restoring an image from within Windows - KnowledgeBase - Macrium Software

Please advise:

1. What options do I select for the restore?
2. Do I need to resize the restored partitions and how should I set the partition alignment to ensure a bootable SSD?
3. Do I need to do anything else to ensure the new SSD will be UEFI bootable and the Windows recovery partitions will be operable?

 

[topgundcp]

1. With SSD connected. Run Macrium and click on Restore tab then select the image that you've create in D: and select the SSD as destination drive to be restored to.
2. No. You don't need to do anything.
3. If the original is UEFI then the restore will be in UEFI.

After restored the image to the SSD. Connect the SSD to sata port 0 and set it to be the 1st drive in boot priority. Reboot, the PC should boot up with SSD as the boot drive..

 

[Steve C]

I hit a problem. My C: drive is a 249GB partition of which 52.8 GB is used and the SSD is 240GB.

Macrium Reflect won't restore the image since the SSD is too small even though only 52.8GB of the C: drive is used.

What do I do now - shrink Drive C: to something like 200GB using Paragon Partition Manager or is there an option in Reflect I'm missing?

 

[Cliff S]

To reduce the C: drive size:

1. Try turning off system restore and pagefile and hibernate(all which can be turned on after system is on SSD if you wish).
2. Reboot so the files are free.
3. Then run ccleaner and disk cleanup(as admin) make sure you tick Windows update clean-up.
4. Then defrag normally first with Optimize Drives.
5. After that using admin command prompt with the commanddefragc: /x /v /ufor free space consolidation.
6. Then and only then using Disk Management shrink your C: volume only as much as it allows.
7. Then create an image to which you can reimage to the SSD.

How much used is not the question/problem, it's how much space is allotted for the partition.

 

[Steve C]

I had 5 partitions on the disc - the 4th was my C: drive and the last the PBR recovery partition. My original C: drive partition size was just too big to allow room for the PBR partition on the new SSD.

It's quite easy to adjust the partition size when you work out how to use Reflect. You need to drag each source partition to the destination drive. On dragging over the C: drive to the destination drive there was not enough room for the PBR partition. I just used the option under 'Restored Partition Properties' to resize the C: drive on the new disk to enable the remaining PBR partition to fit.

The OS has been restored to the new SSD and all works fine.

 

[Cliff S]

Cool I never heard of that way before. And no data or anything got lost? All programs work?

 

[Steve C]

All data restored OK but I hit a problem trying to improve the boot speed.

When I started the system with the SSD alone it booted in 10 seconds. However, when I plug in the old HDD which contains a partition having the old Windows 8.1 OS, it takes 30s to boot - but it is booting from the SSD. Boot time is reduced to 15s if I enable fast start-up.


I tried changing the MSCONFIG start-up options which messed up something since the system then refused to boot from the SSD!


I've now restored the SSD again. I wonder whether the problem is due to still having the old OS on another partition (Drive G). Should I delete the old OS partitions or is some work needed using BCDEDIT to restore the boot up time?

 

[Cliff S]

If you don't need it: delete it. On mine I deleted the C: partition but left the Recovery partitions and OEM & EFI, the repartitioned the old C to F & G. Here's a screenshot:

I left the others because they really don't take up much space and it's kind of a 4th backup method(to be used when nothing else works to reinstall). But when I switch to Win 10, I'll probably pull out my Ubuntu live disk and nuke those partitions and extend them to F & G using GParted(great tool for everything but an OS disk(I use windows tool for windows)).

 

[Steve C]

I've hidden the previous OS partitions on the old HDD which is now a backup drive and disabled some unneeded startup programs and tasks using Autoruns.

The PC now boots to the Windows login screen in 15s (from BIOS beep to login) with fast start-up disabled and in 10s with fast start-up enabled.

Is this now a reasonable boot time for a system using a San Disk Pro SSD, Intel i5 4670K CPU, 8GB RAM & Gigabyte GA-Z87-HD3 Intel Z87 motherboard running Windows 8.1 Pro x64?

 

[Cliff S]

I've hidden the previous OS partitions on the old HDD which is now a backup drive and disabled some unneeded startup programs and tasks using Autoruns.

The PC now boots to the Windows login screen in 15s (from BIOS beep to login) with fast start-up disabled and in 10s with fast start-up enabled.

Is this now a reasonable boot time for a system using a San Disk Pro SSD, Intel i5 4670K CPU, 8GB RAM & Gigabyte GA-Z87-HD3 Intel Z87 motherboard running Windows 8.1 Pro x64?

Yup very...
If you wish to control/look at your boot times with break down of individual phases, go to this post and download the zip I posted, and follow the instructions there.

 

[Steve C]

My PC is still taking about 30s to boot to the login screen using the new SSD. Does the analysis of boot time below show where the bottlenecks are?

-

EventData

BootTsVersion

2

BootStartTime

2015-07-31T13:45:02.722027600Z

BootEndTime

2015-07-31T13:47:00.605041300Z

SystemBootInstance

114

UserBootInstance

96

BootTime

38166

MainPathBootTime

24166

BootKernelInitTime

17

BootDriverInitTime

270

BootDevicesInitTime

611

BootPrefetchInitTime

0

BootPrefetchBytes

0

BootAutoChkTime

0

BootSmssInitTime

20794

BootCriticalServicesInitTime

143

BootUserProfileProcessingTime

901

BootMachineProfileProcessingTime

76

BootExplorerInitTime

903

BootNumStartupApps

7

BootPostBootTime

14000

BootIsRebootAfterInstall

false

BootRootCauseStepImprovementBits

0

BootRootCauseGradualImprovementBits

0

BootRootCauseStepDegradationBits

0

BootRootCauseGradualDegradationBits

0

BootIsDegradation

false

BootIsStepDegradation

false

BootIsGradualDegradation

false

BootImprovementDelta

0

BootDegradationDelta

0

BootIsRootCauseIdentified

false

OSLoaderDuration

430

BootPNPInitStartTimeMS

17

BootPNPInitDuration

791

OtherKernelInitDuration

180

SystemPNPInitStartTimeMS

966

SystemPNPInitDuration

152

SessionInitStartTimeMS

1125

Session0InitDuration

19350

Session1InitDuration

114

SessionInitOtherDuration

1328

WinLogonStartTimeMS

21919

OtherLogonInitActivityDuration

367

UserLogonWaitDuration

4251

 

[Cliff S]

I have mine set to automatically log in(netplwiz)

Log Name: Microsoft-Windows-Diagnostics-Performance/Operational
Source: Microsoft-Windows-Diagnostics-Performance
Date: 30-Jul-15 15:26:10
Event ID: 100
Task Category: Boot Performance Monitoring
Level: Warning
Keywords: Event Log
User: LOCAL SERVICE
Computer: TOWER-PC
Description:
Windows has started up:
Boot Duration : 17414ms
IsDegradation : false
Incident Time (UTC) : ‎2015‎-‎07‎-‎30T13:23:41.627064300Z
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event">
<System>
<Provider Name="Microsoft-Windows-Diagnostics-Performance" Guid="{CFC18EC0-96B1-4EBA-961B-622CAEE05B0A}" />
<EventID>100</EventID>
<Version>2</Version>
<Level>3</Level>
<Task>4002</Task>
<Opcode>34</Opcode>
<Keywords>0x8000000000010000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime="2015-07-30T13:26:10.655539800Z" />
<EventRecordID>4570</EventRecordID>
<Correlation ActivityID="{F3CD5B33-CACA-0001-5E5B-CDF3CACAD001}" />
<Execution ProcessID="1036" ThreadID="3728" />
<Channel>Microsoft-Windows-Diagnostics-Performance/Operational</Channel>
<Computer>TOWER-PC</Computer>
<Security UserID="S-1-5-19" />
</System>
<EventData>
<Data Name="BootTsVersion">2</Data>
<Data Name="BootStartTime">2015-07-30T13:23:41.627064300Z</Data>
<Data Name="BootEndTime">2015-07-30T13:26:08.952397300Z</Data>
<Data Name="SystemBootInstance">368</Data>
<Data Name="UserBootInstance">360</Data>
<Data Name="BootTime">17414</Data>
<Data Name="MainPathBootTime">5514</Data>
<Data Name="BootKernelInitTime">14</Data>
<Data Name="BootDriverInitTime">129</Data>
<Data Name="BootDevicesInitTime">451</Data>
<Data Name="BootPrefetchInitTime">0</Data>
<Data Name="BootPrefetchBytes">0</Data>
<Data Name="BootAutoChkTime">0</Data>
<Data Name="BootSmssInitTime">3392</Data>
<Data Name="BootCriticalServicesInitTime">245</Data>
<Data Name="BootUserProfileProcessingTime">173</Data>
<Data Name="BootMachineProfileProcessingTime">153</Data>
<Data Name="BootExplorerInitTime">731</Data>
<Data Name="BootNumStartupApps">19</Data>
<Data Name="BootPostBootTime">11900</Data>
<Data Name="BootIsRebootAfterInstall">false</Data>
<Data Name="BootRootCauseStepImprovementBits">0</Data>
<Data Name="BootRootCauseGradualImprovementBits">0</Data>
<Data Name="BootRootCauseStepDegradationBits">0</Data>
<Data Name="BootRootCauseGradualDegradationBits">0</Data>
<Data Name="BootIsDegradation">false</Data>
<Data Name="BootIsStepDegradation">false</Data>
<Data Name="BootIsGradualDegradation">false</Data>
<Data Name="BootImprovementDelta">0</Data>
<Data Name="BootDegradationDelta">0</Data>
<Data Name="BootIsRootCauseIdentified">false</Data>
<Data Name="OSLoaderDuration">751</Data>
<Data Name="BootPNPInitStartTimeMS">14</Data>
<Data Name="BootPNPInitDuration">586</Data>
<Data Name="OtherKernelInitDuration">237</Data>
<Data Name="SystemPNPInitStartTimeMS">818</Data>
<Data Name="SystemPNPInitDuration">90</Data>
<Data Name="SessionInitStartTimeMS">914</Data>
<Data Name="Session0InitDuration">1308</Data>
<Data Name="Session1InitDuration">424</Data>
<Data Name="SessionInitOtherDuration">1659</Data>
<Data Name="WinLogonStartTimeMS">4306</Data>
<Data Name="OtherLogonInitActivityDuration">150</Data>
<Data Name="UserLogonWaitDuration">261</Data>
</EventData>
</Event>

 

[Steve C]

I've since found much of the delay was due to an external Seagate USB HDD I have. Once removed, the boot up time decreased to 20s. I changed the partition to inactive as recommended on some forum posts and this has kept the boot time to 20s with the USB HDD connected at boot. Another recommendation was to perform a chkdsk /r analysis of the USB HDD which is currently unerway.