
Standalone services - previously, internal components of the application required the presence of ReflectService to run.We decided this was not hugely inconvenient - once done, the stick can then be used offline for the duration of the license.
You’ll need to run an online activation to enable the technician’s features and you’ll need to be online when creating a technician’s USB stick (but not any other type of rescue media) so we can validate the license. Internally, we had discussions about issuing specific technician’s mode keys, but we decided this was inconvenient for large numbers of our customers who already have a technician’s license - so we decided an easier method was to make this part of the activation process.
We added a variety of technician’s mode checks to the licensing.
Unlike the PE version, VSS must be used as the volumes are online. So, all logging is disabled and registry is read only - if you have settings, these will be loaded, but if you don’t, the usual defaults will apply. The portable version must not touch the local system. The portable version of Reflect acts in a similar manner to the PE version - it’s essentially a cut down version without features such as loading backup definitions, because these can’t be reliably found (this could be any computer, after all). So, what are the challenges of running Reflect from a USB stick? Well, here’s some of our modifications to Reflect to make it work: If you check this option, Reflect will be copied to the USB stick along with all the files it needs to run. How do you know you’re going to get this option? If you’ve purchased a technician’s license, this now shows up on your splash screen: If you’ve purchased a technician’s license and are connected to the internet, you should see this option in your recovery screen: That means given one USB stick, you can either boot up the PE environment to rescue a system, or insert the stick and image/restore a live system. But first, what does the Technician’s Application get you? What should it get you? As it stood, we could already create PE-based USB sticks which would boot and allow you to image any system to this, we’ve added a copy of Reflect that can be used from a live system. There are some unique challenges running Reflect in a portable mode.
What you really need is something like this: Our Technician’s License offering previously gave you a key that would let you install on any number of PCs, but running installers is cumbersome, especially if you work with PCs that are not yours. One of the long standing requests for Macrium Reflect is the ability to be able to image any system, regardless of whether Reflect is installed.