Macrium Reflect OS images & protected content

[Whiznot]

Please help.

My cable provider places the copy once flag on several channels. I regularly backup my system disk by creating a Macrium Reflect image file. Every time I restore the OS from an image file, WMC thinks that my protected content was recorded on some other computer.

How can I restore from an old image file and still retain the ability to view my protected content?

[Space]

I've used Macrium Reflect to backup and restore my system disk without problem. I even restored the image to a different disk and booted off of it and all protected content was fine.

Make sure you backup and restore all special partitions on the disk as well as the partition with the OS.

On my Win7 system I backup the following partitions in to a single backup:

• "NO NAME (None)" FAT32 (LBA) Primary partition
• Unformatted Primary partition
• NTFS Primary partition (The partition with the OS on it)

(You may also have a "Recovery (None) NTFS Primary" partition, but I don't have one of those. I am not sure if it is required to back that up and restore it or not, but I would guess not. I think this partition is used by OEMs to store an image of Windows so you can recover back to the factory default Win7 image. There is no harm in backing this up and restoring it along with the other partitions, so if you are not sure you will need it, you might as well back it up.)

So all three of these partition are backed up in to one backup, and they should all be restored together when you do a restore. The 4th partition on that disk is the partition I use for recordings, and I don't back that one up.

[Whiznot]

Thanks for the helpful reply.

I'm running Win7 from an SSD and I may not be backing up every partition. The next time I create an OS image I'll try to get every partition on the system drive. My setup is different from yours because my recordings are on a separate hard drive. I don't know if that will create a problem.

It will be several weeks before make any changes to the system drive. I'm recording protected Wimbledon matches and I don't want to lose anything for a couple of weeks.

[Space]

You don't need to backup every partition on the system drive, just those special partitions I mentioned as well as the OS (Win7) partition (although those may very well be the only partitions on your drive). I think I remember reading here somewhere that those special partitions contain identifying information that allows WMC to see the OS install as the same OS install and not think it is a different system.

[Whiznot]

Thanks again. In a few weeks I'll give it a try.