Does anyone have an answer for this?
Because I don't wish to pay a subscriptio for True Image I have been trialling Macrium Reflect 8, I went onto their forum to ask a question and one of their replies alarmed me. "
The Bad News:
It turns out that True Image does not create a "true image" of your drive. It backs up the bare minimum required to create a bootable system (i.e., it backs up only the "boot disc" and the "system reserved" partition, which are not even accurately described -- these are actually the Windows partition and the Extensible Firmware Interface system partition, respectively). Then, when you restore those partitions, it also creates -- on the fly -- a replacement for the so-called MSR partition that it never bothered to back up, but it inserts this forged MSR partition in a non-standard location, which shifts the location of the Extensible Firmware Interface system partition, etc. Long story short, when you use Acronis True Image to create an image of the "system reserved" and "boot disc" and later restore that image, True image creates a bit of a mess on your drive. Silver Lining: Fortunately, it is a mess that will still boot up and function properly for most intents and purposes, but it's a mess nonetheless.
The Good News:
Now that you have Macrium Reflect, you can for the first time create a "true" image of your computer. Since all your data and programs are stored on on C:, all you have to do is what you have already done: just click "Create an image of the partitions required to backup and restore Windows", specify the destination folder, and proceed through the wizard. To be extra safe, I would concur with JP's recommendation to select Disk #3 (which was not checked by default), so that all five partitions on your drive are selected:
To clarify the quoted response (which Peter had received from me on the Macrium forum), the "Silver lining" part of the first paragraph ("Fortunately, it is a mess that will still boot up and function properly for most intents and purposes") is completely consistent with the core message of Steve's post above ("The actual placement of the MSR before the EFI system partition likewise doesn't impact on the bootability of the system ").
However, the larger point of my quoted post was two-fold:
- Restoring (or cloning) with ATI/ACPHO does not actually create a replica (what might one call a "true" image) of the source system. In most cases, the fact that Acronis does not back up the full state of the source disk and then modifies the partitions during restore will not have any practical consequences. But in my opinion, it is a bit misleading to call such a process a "true image".
- I stand by my characterization of the ATI restore outcome as a "mess". Since Windows 10 2004, the default partition layout for clean installs has been ESP, MSR, Windows, WinRE. There can be unintended consequences of messing up this layout. For example, Peter's hard drive (presumably after multiple backups/restores using ATI) now has some sort of vestigial partition inserted between the EFI and Windows partitions (it is labeled "System Reserved", but its size is 500MB). More to the point, if Peter ever needs to seek any technical assistance outside the Acronis forum (as he has recently done on the Macrium forum), there will be a lot of head scratching when the non-standard partition layout is examined.
Why not actually do what an imaging/cloning solution would be expected to do, and create a true replica of the source drive, which includes all partitions?
Also, out of curiosity, how does ATI/ACPHO handle the Windows Recovery partition, which (like the MSR) is also not available for selection in the ATI/ACPHO GUI? Unlike the MSR, the WinRE partition is displayed in Windows Disk Management, and there are legitimate reasons for wanting to image it.
J K, I fully agree with the sentiment being expressed here that Acronis should not be changing the layout or sequence of partitions that are being backed up, recovered or cloned, and as such the name 'True Image' is misleading when it does this!
In terms of the recovery partition, this is shown when the option to show/hide hidden partitions is used in the GUI and I have never seen any examples of where this has been omitted.
Windows is responsible for many of the issues around recovery partitions, i.e. allowing multiple such partitions to be created when the size required increases with new versions of Windows!