If my Win OS is corrupt when I do an image, will the image also be corrupt, if I re image? Thanks


ASRock Z77 Extreme6 LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
Gigabyte GeForce GTX GV-N1080G1 GAMING-8GD
Ram: G.SKILL Sniper Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240 pin DDR3/SDRAM DDR3 1866
Intel Core i5-3570K Ivy Bridge
3.4GHz (3.8GHz Turbo) LGA 1155 77W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 4000
MS Windows 10 Professional 64-bit

When you create an image, you are basically taking a snapshot of the disk, partitions, etc. at that moment in time.  If there is corruption in the OS, then I would assume that corruption will find its way to the image.  If that image is successful, then restoring it (if able) would just be loading the problem back to the disk. 

Restoring an image from when you know the OS was good would be an option.. Before you attempt any restore, be sure to verify the image to make sure it is readable.  I would not attempt a restore from an image that fails verification.

I suppose there's a chance the image process itself might fail if corruption exists on the disk but I'll leave that for others.

If your OS corruption was things like bad registry key (unrelated to what Reflect might use for its function), corrupted but readable file like a dll, screwed up executable, bad configuration etc then the image is very likely to succeed. Now if there are unreadable blocks because of a disk problem or the Master File Table is corrupted then there would be a problem with the imaging but it should result in an error message.
Like Capair45 said, restoring the image of a corrupted system will just put the corrupted system back on the disk. There is a time when you might want such an image and that would be to mount it and extract files from it which will work. Of course if you extract a file that is corrupted then you get a corrupted file. You can also mount and extract files from an image that will not restore because it fails verification as long as the files requested are not in the block(s) causing the verification to fail. Macrium writes the image out in numerous blocks and each one has a checksum. Just one bad bit in one block will cause the verification to fail.

+x

 

capair45 - 25 February 2021 8:06 PM

When you create an image, you are basically taking a snapshot of the disk, partitions, etc. at that moment in time.  If there is corruption in the OS, then I would assume that corruption will find its way to the image.  If that image is successful, then restoring it (if able) would just be loading the problem back to the disk. 

Restoring an image from when you know the OS was good would be an option.. Before you attempt any restore, be sure to verify the image to make sure it is readable.  I would not attempt a restore from an image that fails verification.

I suppose there's a chance the image process itself might fail if corruption exists on the disk but I'll leave that for others.

OK, did run the "Prompt" verify and other and it apparently fixed the problems as can be seen. Thanks

ASRock Z77 Extreme6 LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
Gigabyte GeForce GTX GV-N1080G1 GAMING-8GD
Ram: G.SKILL Sniper Series 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240 pin DDR3/SDRAM DDR3 1866
Intel Core i5-3570K Ivy Bridge
3.4GHz (3.8GHz Turbo) LGA 1155 77W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 4000
MS Windows 10 Professional 64-bit