Veeam releases free version of its Standard Edition backup March 28, 2019 https://www.crn.com.au/news/veeam-releases-free-version-of-its-standard-edition-backup-523066 Veeam Backup & Replication Community Edition Website
Unfortunately I only do cold backups from WinPE boot USB, and it appears the boot ISO of Veeam does not support backup function, so although I'm interested in trying it out, I could not until they add the backup function into their recovery media.
Ouch. That is also off the table for this end too. Since am already long locked in with DS + Macrium and 100% satisfaction/results, this would be or been a nice try for another backup program given it had a backup function in a recovery media. Maybe they'll add that soon. Maybe not.
Right, Veeam Agent for Windows is a different (free) product, and still available. I've been using that one for around 18 months to back two systems up to a home NAS, and like it very much when it works: it is quick, light footprint, I don't notice it at all when it runs. I've needed it three times on system problems, the first two times it worked great, the third time there was an issue (all my data was still accessible in the backup through the console, but it wouldn't image a new drive). I'm continuing to use it, but with slightly less confidence. I recently installed the Community Edition backup on a new machine but haven't tried it yet. One feature is that it is supposed to be able to restore a disk to a hyper-v virtual drive, which functionality would have been quite useful in my latest crash. The down side is that it is heavier than VAW, for example it needs a bunch of SQL stuff running in the background all the time.
