Macrium Reflect or ShadowProtect?

I'm on the fence with either one to purchase.

Opinions and experiences would help.

Thanks.

 

For $100, you get four licenses of Macrium Reflect.

 

I was thinking that as well.

Can I mount the image as a virtual drive using Macrium?

 

Shadowprotect can not do file and folder backups, it is only a disk imaging utility. It is targeted towards professionals so it has a lot of features that most home users do not need. Therefore, it is quite expensive. 1.5 years back I was in a similar situation and tried both Macrium and Shadowprotect. I settled for Macrium as it was considerable cheaper and offered file and folder backups as well. As far as reliability is concerned, both Shadowprotect and Macrium are equally reliable.

One more point I wanted to mention that after taking a full image Shadowprotect then tracks changes to the disk in real time, so it has 2-3 processes running 24/7 on your system. The advantage is that the incrementals are blazing fast. The disadvantage is that you have processes running on your system and sometime Shadowprotect loses track of changes, then the next incremental takes longer to run than even the full image. Macrium does not have these problems.

 

yes you can.

 

Thank you Raza, you have a beautiful name. For $80, you can get four licenses of Macrium Reflect. For another $20, you can get four licenses of Macrium Redeploy, thus making a total of $100.

Best regards,

KOR!

 

For another $100, one can also get four licenses of Farstone Total Recovery 7, though you have to write to the good people there and make them an offer.

Farstone Total Recovery has two technologies in one. Imaging and Snapshot, which Rollback Rx is still aspiring to in their upcoming version 10. And, Farstone Total Recovery 7 co-exists with Macrium Reflect.

When you reboot, you first get the Farstone Total Recovery 7 option (F4), and then it goes to Windows/Macrium Reflect option.

I know some people on this forum don't like Farstone Total Recovery 7, as they hardly know anything about it.

Best regards,

KOR!

 

Thank you. This was my first ever username. I made it long long ago. I was 15 at that time. I have kept it since then, as it is usually always available. So, when I registered at Wilders, I turned to my trusted always available user name


You can get 4 licenses of Macrium + Macrium Redeploy + GPT disk support for $99.9

 

I think I'll give Macrium a shot.


Thanks for the input.

 

I really like Shadow Protect, but they need to come down on their price for Home Users. They are much more expensive than all other options I know of. I have 5 desktops, and a laptop so I don't plan on putting SP on all of them $$$.

 

I don't know anything about Macrium and can only say that ShadowProtect is very fast and reliable. Yes, the price is an issue which could affect a large number of people particularly at this very moment with a worldwide financial crisis.

About file and folders, if one backs up an image with SP, one can always retrieve any file or folder from the image simply by mounting it. Am I missing something reading your post?

 

Sometimes you just want to backup a folder on a partition, instead of the whole partition. For example, I usually backup my whole C partition, but only backup "my documents" folder on my D partition. The other large amount of data on my D partition is not that important to me. So, with Shadowprotect I am stuck with backing the whole D partition, but with Macrium I can just backup the "my documents" folder.

 

Does Macrium support drives 2TB or larger?

Thanks.

 

Yeah, I like it too, and they also need to stop scamming on their activation scheme as well. I've never seen in other type programs where the permitted number runs out for no good reason at all. I'm still bitter about it

 

i OWN both and multiple copies of each and i have switched all my personal systems over to macrium. i do still use sp but mainly for our server at our office and even then mainly because i use the option of folding down the backups at set intervals into a single one and the person i hired knows it well. and even there i may switch to macrium. the only drawback i see is that macrium can not fold down the backups for me like sp does which is nice. i 100% agree with their whole activation scheme though it really sucks.

 

this week i downloaded and tried this program and to be honest it was basic and simple but had to many issues and even caused a bsod one time i would not personally put this in the same league as either macrium or sp

 

Dear ZFactor,

Thank you for your input. As previously mentioned, I won Marcium Reflect. And, yesterday I bought TeraByte Image For Windows and Easues Todo Workstation. Easues Todo Workstation has snapshot technology beside imaging and so forth. I download a 15 days trail, but it didn't have the snapshot for trial, so I bought it for $31.20 (this price includes 20%). It just came out yesterday.

1. Please if you have sometime, can you try the Easues Todo Workstation, especially the snapshot thingy and let me have your opinion?

2. Now I have too many PE Boot CDs, is it possible to build a 8GB USB bootable and put them all on this? If yes, how?

Many thanks in advance!

Best regards,

KOR!

 

Not once before have I seen such a severely limited activation/deactivation condition on any kind of software license I've purchased. I bought it because I like how it performs its intended purpose, but for the above average cost, Storagecraft should loosen the reigns on it and allow for more or possibly even unlimited activations on the same hardware (note I don't expect this on different hardware). I've never had a similar complaint about licensing on any other software I've purchased before, and I've purchased lots. This is not some personal vendeta against Storagecraft, just a legitimate gripe based on my experience with it.

 

Okay, I understand their position. Thanks for the clarification. Still, it's too bad they could not come up with something that both prevents further piracy, while providing longer term use of the purchased license. Anyway, it's out of my hands and live and learn, I guess

 

sadly piracy will always be there and not to disagree with you but i dont think that is a good enough reason for them being so crazy strict. if you look hard enough (and i do not condone this) but you can find a "cracked" version 4 already. is it safe to use... not sure but i for sure would not put my data into the hands of a cracked program. i think they should have done a verification system where you got a system id and as long as it can be verified during activation they should allow it to be. as said above not on multiple systems but on the same hardware (with a bit of consideration for things like a failed mobo or cpu etc.. i mean what happens when that happens and it does happen while rare it is still a issue imo) right now the whole hassle of having to contact them and wait etc in a case like that is a pain. with macrium you buy a lic and if you want to reinstall or move it to another system you remove the lic key and then can re use it and there is no limit on that a better system imo and you can also find macrium out there also (i hate to say but i knew of people using the cracked version a while back not sure if it still works but it used to)

 

Those who are young as I am (lol), do very well remember the story of Lotus 1-2-3 and Mitch Kapor. Now I am giving away my true age, and those were the days when I bought two genuine IBM PCs without hard disk and paid an arm and an leg for each of them.

Best regards,

KOR!

 

I used to use Macrium Reflect and thought it was great but when I upgraded from 500GB to 1TB disk it stopped verifying and one of my restores failed (fortunately I had an older one that worked) so now I'm looking for something else.

 

I have three (3) 1TB HD installed on a Windows 7 64-bit computer. I back up and automatically verify all three drives without a problem with Macrium Reflect. I've had this setup for over a year and restore the c: drive at least weekly. Are you using the free or paid version? If paid I would suggest you visit the Macrium Reflect forum with the problem.