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October 15th, 2018 04:00

Creating a Macrium Reflect USB boot media

When I try to do this there is an option to create a legacy or UEFI boot media. So do I select UEFI because I read if I create the usual boot disk I might have to set the Dell XPS to legacy mode in the BIOS for it to recognize the disk.

If I do create a UEFI USB boot disk will it be automatically recognized on boot or do I have to set up a boot order in the BIOS like with older computers?

10 Elder

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24.8K Posts

October 15th, 2018 04:00

Without knowing what system model you have, not possible to answer.   If it's in UEFI mode, that's what you need for boot media -- and you'll need to press F12 to boot from it when you power up the system.

 

9 Legend

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14K Posts

October 15th, 2018 13:00

Actually, the option in Reflect's Create Rescue Media wizard is to create either legacy or "multi-boot" media, not UEFI-only.  The only difference that checkbox makes is that when it's enabled, Reflect will only create Rescue Media on a flash drive formatted as FAT32.  When it's disabled, Reflect will create Rescue Media on a flash drive that's formatted either FAT32 or NTFS.  The underlying issue is that for reasons not worth getting into here, Legacy systems boot just fine from either FAT32 or NTFS partitions.  But with UEFI systems the system firmware has to natively support reading the file system of the partition being booted, and in the UEFI spec, FAT32 support is mandatory, but NTFS support is optional and not very widely implemented -- and therefore it's not a good idea to use NTFS if you're trying to create media that can be booted in UEFI mode.

If your XPS system is normally configured to boot in UEFI mode, then as long as you have a flash drive formatted as FAT32 and check the multi-boot box in the Rescue Media wizard, you'll be able to boot the Rescue Media in UEFI mode, no need to switch the system to Legacy.  The easiest way to do that is to press the F12 key during system startup to access the one-time boot menu.  As long as the flash drive was inserted when the system first started up, you should see it listed as a boot option, and then you don't need to mess with the BIOS boot order.  And incidentally, you specifically would NOT want to temporarily switch to Legacy anyway, because the Rescue Media's "Fix Boot Problems" function operates differently based on how the Rescue Media was booted.  If it was booted in Legacy mode, it attempts boot fixes meant for Legacy systems, so if your system normally boots its OS in UEFI mode and you temporarily set the system to Legacy just to boot your Rescue Media, then the Fix Boot Problems function would be useless.

68 Posts

October 15th, 2018 23:00

OK thanks a lot! This should really clear up creating USB rescue media and how to use it for myself and many others who have just purchased an XPS :Yes:.

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