macrium reflect pro & shadowprotect.Opinions please.

Hi,

I'm looking into a new imaging solution for my second pc.I already bought shadowprotect desktop 3 yrs ago for my main machine and it's great. I wouldn't mind an alternative now tho ..a tad cheaper than Sp.

Would macrium reflect pro be a good choice ? I need a solid/stable/reliable product with good support.

I already trialed Image for windows and it is way too slow for me.


All opinions/experiences/info are of course appreciated just don't tell me to try acronis

Thanks

 

I've come from Acronis 2010 with all its bells and whistles (many of which are dubiously functional). I've swapped to Macrium Reflect Pro (I bought a 4 x PC license) and it's doing everything I need.

Essentially I use it to back up my systems (images of boot partitions) to my NAS, then I have it also regularly backing up my source code files (I'm a programmer) from a second disk to the NAS and finally I use it backup files from my NAS to my local hard disk. Some might not use that function but it's very important to me.

My backups are a customised sequence of full images and incrementals and I used the basic Macrium scheduling interface to setup the backups (it places them into the Windows scheduler) and then I enhanced the schedule via Windows scheduler itself (you could do backups every 15 mins this way if needed).

 

Ditto to OldCoder

Macrium Reflect has performed flawlessly for me for years

I have set it up to do a full backup (to a second drive) once a week with daily incrementals. It is also set to only keep 2 backup sets so I don't keep adding unlimited weeks of backups

 

How is macrium speedwise ? Is the booting from the cd quick ? I figure it will not be faster than SP but I need a fast solution nevetheless.


All info/experiences you can share would be great !!

thanks in advance.

 

If you want just opinions on Macrium, I can tell you I use it less frequently than my other imagers (like IFL and DS), BUT it has never given me any problems and all my test restores have performed flawlessly. Good luck!

 

Some time ago I was looking for a imaging software and tried a few, some good some not so good.
Ended up with Macrium Reflect 4.2 and it has yet to fail me. Never needed support as it has always worked here.

 

hmmm image for windows for me is actually way faster than macrium is..

 

Thats where software trials come in handy, whats works well for one may not for another.

 

Hi,

I only use images for early pictures, at the time of the OS reinstall, and the few days after when I get the basic programs installed, serial #s entered, etc. The theory is that after the system gets clogged or mal-ed, I would rather do an OS install, but using an early image to save a ton of time and be sure that drivers and everything work. (Lots of gotchas on OS reinstall, do I have the right CD, what do I do, how do I get on the internet, why is the screen looking funny, service pack city.)

(Note: Wilders has many techies who need far more extensive image use, e.g. when a puter is used for experimental purposes.)

Since my images are small and quick, I go redundant, starting with Macrium and DriveImageXL, maybe Paragon. (I like Macrium's single file over the series of files in DriveImageXL). Have not tried Easeus. Nor any of the ones that start below Windows, like Terabyte. That is nice, but unnecessary on the save, you go below on the restore.

The restore from Macrium the other day was perfect. The 5 to 10 gig early images take about 5 minutes to save, not much more to restore. So in that type of case, speed is not a concern and now I rarely even bother comparing.

Macrium free (not sure of pro) has a limitation that it does not restore to a smaller partition, but there were only two partitions involved, so it offered to combine them back together and did that pretty much on the fly. Then I repartitioned using Mini-Tool Partition Wizard, five minutes involved.

So I became a fan, just the last few days especially, because of the restore. Here is a thought: the puter stores don't encourage people to have early images ready because they can charge about $100 for an OS reinstall that takes them 5-10 minutes of labor. I talked to my fav store about this, and, although they really do care about their customers and avoid extra charges, they smiled and laughed.

Remember, Wilders security techies are likely to be far more involved with images than the more basic user like myself. So decide what is your need and plan carefully. Reading the forums, I see people who get hurt by large images that do not have a 100% restore rate and I believe that frequent images are oversold. Even if they work, why would you want to restore a clogged by 100 unused installs, or even possibly compromised by stealth malware, image ?

Also make sure you make the CD that matches the version of the save and keep it in your super-CD box. (e.g. a Macrium 4.2 rescue disk and a 5.0 disk may not function identically and properly for each others restore). Granted, you could *probably* get that together at the time of the restore, but you want certainty and solidity more than probably. I put the software name and version in the file name of the image, plus a small description ("Dell 2012-04 Macrium 4.2 clean OS install"). Whatever fits.

On most cases of disaster (not all, disk crash or BIOS corruptions are examples of oops, so you should have some recent save and all vital data saved) you can do an absolutely final save of everything on your disk, using the file manager PCMan that is with Parted Magic (and a few others) on your rescue disk, which properly will save to USB without forcing Linux crypticness, looking very friendly. (Once I had a rescue disk with Free Commander, the principle is the same.) The more involved BartPE or WinPE is not necessary for that file save purpose.

The store did install a new CD-DVD drive, $50 total, for me, since that was not working. I was thinking of trying to do the whole thing from USB, but that was ultra-problematic.

Steven