John & Jane Doe wrote:


Just in case I need it for Windows 10, I will save that installer in my
location that I save all my installers.

Thank you.

The CNET installer is a stub, of a few megabytes.
It's not the actual software.

When you run the stub, it downloads two files. The
40MB main installer. And a WinPE kit. The WinPE kit
can be 500MB in size. It is used to make the emergency
boot CD.

After the stub is finished, it might leave the two
files in the folder it was working in. Those are the
ones I keep for transport to other computers.

Then, when I want to install locally (network or not),
just those two files will do it.

The second downloaded file might be 500MB, but it
can be compressed as part of the post-processing.
It's a bit confusing as to how much downloading
it actually did.

If you're in a situation where you know you will not
need an emergency boot CD (or ISO file), then just
the 40MB portion need be downloaded. For people on
dialup, to me it's more important that they
make some kind of backup. And ignore the emergency
boot CD issue for another day. Someone on dialup will
go through enough torture, just getting the 40MB part...
For someone with broadband, you want both files.

*******

Most of the commercial tools will not back up a damaged
file system. Even when they claim to have a sector-by-sector
option, it's hard to prove the option to do it that
way, exists and works right.

For situations like that, a tool that can be used is
ddrescue. So while Macrium covers many of the things
you may need to do in a given day, it doesn't handle
every corner case well.
ddrescue First ddrescue Second
Sick drive with ---------------- Disk ----------- Disk
damaged file ("good (Run CHKDSK
system copy") on this disk)

That's the two-spare-disk method for attempting
repair or data recovery on a sick source disk.
Repair operations are done on the second disk,
to keep the First Disk safe. If the CHKDSK fails
and ruins the data on the Second Disk, you
clone over from the First Disk. This is why
I keep two spare disks here.

When a disk is sick, it might not survive more
than one clone operation. The First Disk is then
your golden reference, after the copy is made.
You're no longer dependent at that point, on
the sick disk.

DDrescue is multi-pass. It gets the easy sectors
on the first pass. On subsequent passes, it fills
in the holes. If the disk only manages to live for
two runs of ddrescue, then most likely you got
most of the sectors. And only the "bad patch"
is missing from the copy made.

As far as the spare drives go, they should be cleaned
before usage. Using "diskpart" in Windows, you
"Select Disk" and pick the disk you want to work
on. Then "Clean All" zeros the entire disk. After
that, the disk is ready as a destination for ddrescue.
Zeroing the drive, avoids confusion about where the
files on the disk came from :-) You then know it
was absolutely clean, before any other work was done.

So those are the things you do, when Macrium no
longer wants to work on stuff.

Paul