Best free imaging software?

HHmm...strange. In the meantime I have Windows Agent V6 installed and running. This version enables me to create an BMR with Windows 10 PE.
I agree it is quite some data stored to your disk. As mentioned before, I'll keep it installed for a while to see how it behaves..

 

Getting back to the initial question, I now recommend AOMEI Backupper Free Edition, AOMEI was the only one to be able to restore a full drive where Macrium and other failed. Not the fastest but quite reliable. They once had a severe issue with an update, back in Summer 2015, after the update the PC wouldn't boot, which is annoying of you don't have a backup pre-installation of the update. But this was fixed since then and the latest version 3.5 runs fine from XP to Win10, the recovery media is Win PE based so it helps with external devices compatibility.

 

Incremental backup comes with paid version only?

 

I was after incremental backup but that only comes with paid version.

 

Does it offer incremental backup too for windows 8.1?

 

Does Aomei offer Incremental backup with their free version?

 

Any update on Arcserve Unified Data Protection and has it worked out so far? Will it work with Windows 8.1?

 

Best free version with incremental back-up for windows 8.1?

 

http://www.backup-utility.com/edition-comparison.html

 

O&O Incrementals are painfully slow !

 

For a free application, I really think it is the best.
You need to weigh up reliability against needing incremental backup. You also need to ask yourself if it is really that important? Full backups are quick anyway.

 

The Count,

In your studies did you investigate Differential backups?

 

I just tried Aoemi free & Macrium free,both latest versions, & I can say macrium fared better. Main reason for this is Aoemi doing something with win 8.1 bcd store on a single hdd UEFI/GPT laptop which created issue with using macrium.

Everything was done using only rescue media on usb created by both softwares.Actually in case of macrium I simply extracted rescue iso contents to "usb prepared to boot by aoemi" after moving aoemi files.

In detail this is what happened.

1.I created a full backup using macrium free but couldn't find option to create differential image so didn't tried restore.

2.I created a full backup using aoemi & then after making some minor changes(uninstalling aoemi) created a differential image.

3.Restored Aoemi differential image with option restore mbr(i think this was the option as I clearly remembered msg saying for system backup it is essential to restore mbr/track included already in image during creation as many times mbr/track may get corrupted) which was checked by default.I proceeded without changing anything & on next reboot system was restored.

4.Found out how to create differential image using macrium rescue media usb so decided to try by creating a differential image based on base image created in 1.

5.Tried restoring differential image by macrium & after restoring process,was greeted with a blue recovery screen saying pc needs to be repaired as a required device isn't connected or accessible.

6.Rebooted the system & used macrium rescue media fix boot problems option.macrium did these steps:EFI partition found on disk 1,Removing old bcd,Creating BCD for C:\Windows.After reboot system was back to normal.

7.Thought maybe something went wrong with macrium restore last time so repeated step 5 with same result as step 6 again.

8.Thought aoemi did something to Windows bcd store after step 1 which is getting captured by the differential image made by macrium in step 4 so tested by creating a fresh full image using macrium rescue media usb again.

9.Tried restoring fresh full image made by macrium & this time all went smoothly without any issues.

Conclusion: Macrium lived upto its reputation of reliability.Though aoemi also did the job but I can not rely on a software which does something that is manageable only by that software & not by other softwares.From my experience it is clear that Aoemi did something to windows BCD store which was not normal procedure as it forced Macrium to do a repair of BCD which is basically nothing but windows own BCD repair commands.Another interesting thing to note was that Aoemi rescue usb media was modifying files on the boot usb itself so as to remember what it did last time as it was able to remember the path & creation time of base image to automatically show option for differential image creation unlike macrium where I have to manually select a base image on every reboot for creating a differential image.Most likely this was the reason how Aoemi able to reboot the system successfully after restoring possibly with an incorrect BCD configuration.

 

Yes I did; incremental is meant to be quicker though.

 

...but requires many more dependencies to return to a successful configuration than Differentials do.

If you do frequent FULLs (and have a decent amount of storage), Differentials are a fine way to manage important images.

 

Best time of day to do the differential or FULLs; end of day (before you go to bed) or whilst working on something else
on the computer?

 

Depends on the imaging software in use. Some (Macrium Reflect) can run at a very low priority and as a result, the impact on any current work is minimal. If imaging HDDs, all seem to have an impact on speed of I/O operations.

For the least impact, your 1st selection would be best.

 

I have a paid version of Reflect, and I only do Full and Differential backups.
I don't want or need Incremental backups.

 

LOL. Then you actually don't need the paid version. Free version will do all you need just fine.

 

Windows built-in one never failed me (for now) even after unbootable systems; interesting than almost no one use it.

 

guest,

Windows Imaging has a few missing features compared with more modern apps...

The images aren't compressed and are roughly double the size of images created by other imaging software.

There is no option for resizing the restored partition.

You can't restore into a smaller partition (eg if you want to transfer your OS to a SSD).

The images can't be Validated/Verified.

You can't move the backup image to another folder as the restore process won't find it.

 

yes obviously, my point was not to compare their efficiency/features. Just that it works well (at least for me) and doesn't need discs/usb in case of an unbootable machine.
Personally i don't transfer backups or do special tasks with them; i use only the core purpose: backup & restore my system on the same hardware.

Size would be an issue before but now with TB discs not much anymore. Of course, you can say that you need every bit of space you can get; hence, you choose another solution.

@Peter2150 my System Partition is around 30Gb , take 15mn to do a full image, a bit less to restore. I usually do a backup once, after a clean install with all my priority softs installed.