Looking for advice from people who have used either or both. I would like to start as i mean to go on, asap on this new W10 pc. So info good & bad on both would be Very helpful. AOMEI Pro Edition https://www.backup-utility.com/free-backup-software.html $38.93 Macrium Reflect 7 Home Edition https://www.macrium.com/products/home £47.95
Macrium by a country mile in my opinion... it's never let me down when I've had to restore an image which is the acid test. I used to be a fan of AOMEI too but its system backups don't actually backup all the partitions needed to restore the system fully and there are also known issues with (restoring) disk backups and the system not being bootable after. I've tried others too including Acronis (had problems with corrupt images), EaseUS (same system backup issue as AOMEI) and more recently MiniTool* Shadowmaker which I quite like but it's early days... So Macrium for the win [Edit: *Originally referred to Shadowmaker as a Wise product instead of correct MiniTool!]
I tried many, including these two. I feel somehow dissatisfied with AOMEI, I remember I tried it heavily some years ago. And yeah, I finally chose Macrium free, their freemium is quite OK for me. Why Macrium? It never let me down and everything is clear what to do and and what I shouldn't do.
In the past, I had an issue with the AOMEI rescue environment, that my mouse didn't work. A simple, generic, wired mouse probably would have worked, but I don't like to go scrambling for a spare mouse in an already tense situation of trying to recover from an extreme failure. So Macrium for me. The free version has less features and also less issues.
Never used Macrium, Once I used Acronis, since two years AOMEI: never had problem with it, in my experience.
Macrium - I have used both and like JasonUK above, it's Macrium by a mile for me too. It is very dependable and easy to use and has saved me several times. No question in my mind, it is currently one of the best!
100% have to fall in line with Macrium Reflect by far and away as best! I also use DriveSnapshot but that's turned into a sort of failsafe backup that's never had to be used to support a failed backup from Macrium. Because these years Macrium is not failed a single time. On AEOMI, there's been no reason to consider it for backup images since Macrium does the job efficiently and rapid enough IMO. However AEOMI does supply a need on this end with it's Pro Partition Manager which is proved useful. In short, I can offer no opinion on AEOMEI for this purpose however Macrium is proved superior in every way without a single fail-sort of like DS for me which also is never failed but that's a different program/product.
@EASTER: why Macrium is superior ? And doe Macrium have some option like Acronis Secure Zone that AOMEI unluckily has not ?
The Imaging Specialists we have right here in the forum can better detail differences/comparisons. As for Macrium this is their front page connection to features for the FREE version- The more advanced commercial version is chalked full of useful additionals that may include what you look for. https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree For this camp 100% error free track record over a span of 3 and more years routine (daily/weekly) usage is fit for mention as superior. DS is gone 10 years plus on my machines without a single fail but that product isn't of mention.
I like Macrium also, but a few years ago have used Veeam Endpoint too. https://www.veeam.com/windows-endpoint-server-backup-free.html
Macrium Image Guardian (MIG) - protects backups from third-party access wherever they are, including from ransomware.
Acronis also has it's active protection. I use it, but I turn off half the extra crap that it installs like Secure Zone. I've had issues with it where as Macrium v 6 just purrs along
Macrium it is then I like the paid feature where we can clone even with new hardware etc, should it be needed. Better safe than sorry. Thanks to everyone for their opinions
@CloneRanger, my favorite Reflect features (all only available in paid versions) are Incrementals Forever with Synthetic Fulls (animation here), Rapid Delta Restore/Clone (article here), and BitLocker Live Restore/Clone (article here). The first is very handy for backing up large volumes especially if you have a disk rotation since you'll only ever have to perform Incrementals, which in one deployment allows me to have a disk rotation consisting of 9 disks, with the entire thing managed by a single definition file with a single schedule entry. The second can save you a ton of time on restore/clone operations, especially on large partitions, because you only need to restore/clone the changes rather than writing out the entire partition each time. If you ever need to roll back your 1TB partition to the previous day's backup, it will only take minutes rather than potentially hours. And the third, Reflect's extensive BitLocker support, comes in handy a lot. If you ever need to roll back a BitLockered partition, you can do so while preserving the existing encryption rather than having to re-encrypt the restored partition afterward -- and this capability can be combined with Rapid Delta Restore. And if you ever want to perform periodic clones of one BitLockered partition to another, this is a godsend. Not only does this avoid ending up with a decrypted clone target each time, but it can actually preserve the unique encryption keys on the source and target -- and again this capability gets combined with Rapid Delta Clone. Lastly, since Reflect records the BitLocker status of source partitions, if circumstances will ever cause it to have to restore/clone that partition such that the destination will be in unencrypted form, it will warn you about this. That's especially nice for restoring OS partitions, because the default BitLocker mode is TPM-only, which means users don't see a password prompt even when encryption is enabled. That in turn means that if they performed a restore that caused their partition to be restored unencrypted, they might never realize that otherwise because the boot process will still be the same. Not quite anywhere. The backups have to reside on a local NTFS volume. MIG won't protect backups that reside on a NAS share, for example. However, if that NAS share is hosted by a Windows system that has a paid version of Reflect installed, then THAT instance of MIG will protect whatever backups are sent to it by other paid Reflect clients, while still allowing those paid Reflect installations to modify/purge backups as needed. Reflect Free cannot work with destinations protected by MIG, to my knowledge.
Drive Snapshot. http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/ Also ongoing thread on forum https://www.wilderssecurity.com/threads/new-drive-snapshot-build-released.288597/page-49
Macrium works well. when I clone a drive I have to manually adjust partition sizes. years ago I remember Acronis doing to this automatically. Acronis got a little too bloated, so I stopped using it. have not tried Aomei.
you know, i never install imaging sw on my systems. i prefer to use them offline (bootable disk). you can do the same so as to use ati or any other imaging sw without all the "bloatware" (unless you prefer to use mrcbt or similar, ofc).
Macrium is small, fast and easy to install and easy to uninstall, unlike elephant-like Acronis, which you can’t pick out from the system. In addition, the integration of the Maсrium in the boot menu gives very good opportunities, if you try, then it is difficult to refuse.
That's exactly the way I prefer it too. But it's not clear to me now: Is this possible with Macrium? And if yes: How? With Paragon Backup & Recovery I made it in the following way: - I installed it under Shadow Defender (so that the installation was gone after a reboot ) - only in order to create the bootable disk. - Later on I used it exclusively from the disk. Is this a method I could / should use with Macrium too?
You can, but what's the point. I have Macrium installed and can do things with it you can't do off line, and I've never had a restore failiure, and my average is probably a restore every other day.
I agree. Offline imaging has limitations compared with imaging using the installed app. For those concerned about bloatware, Drive Snapshot only uses half a MB of disk space.