Macrium Reflect free = 31.5mb vs Paragon free = 103mb!

Does anyone know what the reason for the difference is? I have Paragon 2010 or 2011 pro on my old XP PC but had also used the free version and loved it. I keep reading how you folks love MR and will probably purchase it during the next sale. Having said that, I feel like I'm abandoning Paragon and need to know why there is such a difference in the size and/or is it even worth worrying about it. Thank you!

 

I believe that the Paragon contains the Linux rescue ISO, where you can build the recovery CD, whereas the Macrium contains the plug-ins only.

Best regards,

 

Thank you!

 

Hi ratchet

As far as I am aware, Macrium free installer also contains both x86 and x64 versions in addition to their standard recovery CD that is an ISO file of about 8MB if I remember correctly. I still have version 4.2.3775 installed on Win7 although I use Terabyte IFL for cold imaging and restore now.

Macrium is light, in comparison to Paragon. Keep in mind as someone mentioned, Paragon also contains their boot CD data which is about 62MB I think? Big difference in Paragons boot recovery CD as it allows both backup and restores, while Macrium Free boot CD is for restoring only, very minimal.

I had problems with Paragon Backup Home Free when I tried it last year. Tried one restore and it fooled with my BCD in Win7 and thought I was running Vista, and after that first restore, it gave me a boot screen offering dual boot, when all I had was Win7. I remember contacting Paragon to get assistance with this and I even had a support ticket, and they never even replied, so I dropped them.

Thankfully, at the time, I then used a backup image created by Macrium, and it worked flawless and got me back to the way it should have been and of course fixed the BCD screw up from Paragon. Macrium Free always performed well for me, but most of them compared to Terabyte products, terabyte in my opinion simply offers the most precise tools to handle about anything one needs with their backup and restore requirements, along with BIBM that is a small but very complete package offering multi boot OS management if one desires to try that with another OS, or you can just use it to perform about any kind of partition/disk work. No bloat with Terabyte, nor with Macrium for that matter, but I prefer terabyte products personally.

That is not to say Paragon is bloatware, because the installer does include a much more capable boot CD environment than Macrium does, but in my experience, Macrium performed excellent in both image creation time and restoration as compared to the problems I had with Paragon.

 

Noted and thank you!

 

You are welcome my friend. Hope it helps in some way, and I also hope you have better experience with Paragon than I did.

Now that I think of it, I think my email to support was about another issue I had with them in regards to how their software was mounting created images, and there were event viewer errors stating problems as is common in some imaging apps. I definitely remember they never took the time to get back to me, so this was in addition to the restore issue I mentioned. In any case, their support was truly lacking. Just wanted to correct my statement about why I contacted support, sometimes my memory recall is not what it once was LOL, but now I remember there were these two issues mentioned, and my support ticket was about the image mounting.

have a good day!

 

With Macrium Reflect FREE you get only the WinPE plugins. You can download the WAIK, which is 1.7GB and build your own WinPE recovery environment. With the PAID version they give you the WinPE recovery environment and it is a separate download of about 145mb. Same with the Paragon paid version, the download is about 145mb.

However, it is very easy to build the WinPE recovery environment with the FREE version of Macrium, if one has the WAIK.

For PAID version of Macrium one gets the incremental and deferential imaging. Also with the PAID Macrium version one gets the WinPE recovery environment on boot-up, where as one can built this for the FREE Macrium version with EasyBCD.

People get turned off to download the 1.7GB WAIK (Windows 7) and another 1.2GB SP1 WAIK (Windows 7 SP1). However these download are must for other things too.

Also, if one want to build the WinPE recovery environment for IFW, one needs the WAIK as the plugins are readily available. TeraByte don't give you already built WinPE recovery environment for their PAID version like Macrium, Paragon and others do. The WAIK download is a must to build the WinPE recovery environment for IFW.

However, lately due to this criticism, TeraByte is giving plugins to build the WinRE (not WinPE) recovery environment on boot for IFW which doesn't require the WAIK download.

P.S. The 145mb ~ 180mb downloads of Macrium and Paragon are not bloatware, they just contain the WinPE recovery environment, which can be used for COLD imaging and restorations. Where as, the IFW doesn't contain the WinPE recovery environment.

P.S. For Paragon FREE the download contains the Linux recovery environment, and for this reason it is about 54~60mb, which can be used for COLD imaging and restorations.

P.S. The reason the FREE Macrium and Paragon versions and the PAID version of IFW don't contain the WinPE recovery environment, because Microsoft charges them licensing fees.

Best regards,

 

WAIK is also needed to build the Paragon WinPE. Use of WAIK SP1 is optional, not needed.

 

Very true, as I understand that they have recently changed this, due to hefty licensing fees from Microsoft.

With my purchase of Paragon Hard Disk 11 Suite, I was given the WinPE recovery environment as download. The download link is still available in my account, and I can download it as many times as I want to, due to minor upgrade to this software.

With my purchase of Macrium v4, family pack of 4 licenses, I was allowed to download the WinPE for a total of four times only. One download for each license. Patches are given for minor upgrades to the same version, so to build the latest WinPE for the program.

With my upgrade purchase of Macrium v5, family pack of 4 licenses, I was again allowed to download the WinPE for a total of four times only. One download for each license. Patches are given for minor upgrades to the same version, so to build the latest WinPE for the program.

For the FREE version of Macrium and PAID version of IFW, a newer minor update requires rebuilding of WinPE on each minor update to the program.

Best regards,

 

don't judge a program by its size (or if you do, consider that smaller might be better).

personally I prefer drive snapshot which is only about 4 MB installed (or you can just run the main 300 KB exe as portable). i like it because it's small, efficient, and offered good batch file support and top notch backup speeds (within a bunch of backup programs i tested several years ago). image for windows/dos/linux is very small too and popular. the number of options they give can be confounding though. Image for DOS is the best imo if you like to boot to DOS to make backups (booting to DOS is significantly faster than loading any version of a Windows Recovery Environment or even most linux recovery OS, but then again, DOS is limited).

macrium is good too, I especially like that they offer a 64-bit version and fast incremental backups (in the non-free version). personally i've never been a fan of paragon. another program to look at is Active@ boot disk. they provide the best ready-to-go boot disk of any backup software (but i prefer to build my own Win7PE and add the backup and other programs to it manually as a plugin).

as far as large backup programs go, take a look at acronis true image or acronis backup & restore. i think some versions of those programs take over a gigabyte of space installed (their boot disks are big too). acronis has the most bells and whistles of any backup programs, but they are also bloated as hell.

in the end more size sometimes means more bells and whistles, sometimes more bloat, but most of the time a little of column A and a little of column B, so i wouldn't judge a backup program by it's size. test them for backup speed on your system instead, and check if their boot disk supports things like USB 3.0 and whatever encryption software you use, or any other specific features you might need.

 

I did not read all the responses, so if someone has already pointed this out I apologize for the repetition.

Paragon free is 103 MB because it is in an uncompressed .msi form. If you compress it to an .exe form it will reduce in size to about the same size as the Macrium installer.

 

Relative to memory loss, I think we are just kind of "overloaded"! I BSOD my brand new PC that I built from installing Privatefirewall. I started a thread about it and later thought and gee,is this deja vu? Sure enough, I had the exact issue 74/25 as I found my thread. It's bad enough that I tried it again but really bad that I didn't initially recall it! My excuse: I'm old!