I used to test backup and restore after any update with version 7, I don't do that with version 8 anymore, but a recently unsuccessful update of Photoshop forced me to restore Windows, and it was accomplished (as usual) brilliantly by Reflect in less than 3 minutes, a program for all seasons
Macrium is unmatched for just such occasions- Even with my newfound spectacular results with Aomei Backupper, Macrium is right there and reliable as ever. Ever so good a choice.
I concur. I have even gone so far that I rather use restoring Win with Macrium within 10 mins max than using anything else when needed to revert after botched updates of Win/third party apps/drivers etc.
Just a quick question, a survey of sorts, for you Macrium fans (I am also very much one): When you do a new, fresh backup, do you choose imaging the "c: partition" option or do you choose the "image this disk" option. Thanks, Acadia
No difference, you can always select partition(s) to backup. In my case I have two scheduled backup tasks. The first is the system partition and the second is the data partition. Each task has its own backup schedule. In addition to Macrium I have Veeam which regularly backs up all partitions at once.
@Acadia - on a new, fresh backup (I'm not sure what this really means... following a CLEAN INSTALL or at the next scheduled FULL image), I use the "Create an image of the partitions(s) required to backup and restore Windows." This option pre-selects all partitions REQUIRED to be able to BOOT Windows when required. Depending on your System's BOOT configuration, this may include from 1-4 different partitions, most are fairly small. This is done because Windows may change many of them during certain types of operations (Updates, upgrades, etc.)... not just the OS ("C:\") partition itself. For older configurations that only include a BOOTable OS partition, that single partition backup is just fine... but todays more modern Systems, more partitions are required to insure the System BOOTs correctly (System Reserved, Windows Recovery, EFI BOOT <UEFI only> & the OS partition itself).
UEFI-based systems and even some newer Legacy BIOS partition setups require more than just the C partition. So if you back up only the C partition, then if you ever had a scenario where you had to restore onto a blank disk, you’d have to jump through some extra pre- and post-restore hoops for that backup to become bootable, because the C partition on its own would not give you a bootable system. My guidance for Reflect and non-Reflect scenarios is that when imaging a disk that contains a Windows partition, capture an image of the entire disk it resides on unless you have a specific reason for omitting certain partitions, such as a Data partition you might want to back up separately or an OEM restore partition you truly don’t care about. The option TheRollbackFrog mentioned above is handy for people who notice if, but that might exclude OEM partitions that some people might care about. It’s much safer to start by capturing everything and omit what you KNOW you don’t need than to start with only what you THINK is important and exclude anything you don’t recognize/understand.
While it’s true that you can always alter the partitions selected for backup whichever way you open the wizard, if someone does NOT do that and instead sticks with whatever is pre-selected, then there very much IS a difference between those two choices on most systems these days.
Although I totally agree with @Peter 123 , I chose not to start this discussion and possibly create a ******* contest among imaging product users . Each of us have our own set of requirements and in most cases, they are very different from one another... that seems to be very clear in @Gaddster opinion of Macrium Reflect. In my case, once the REFLECT UI is understood, the product works very well for me and is easy to use. In my case, fast restorations are more of a requirement than any other feature (I'm a heavy SnapShot user)... and to my knowledge, only IFW & REFLECT are most capable in that area (MetaFile DIFFERENCE restorations). Since REFLECT had this capability first, that's where I wound up (IFW is my secondary/backup imaging tool). As of a slightly aged survey (3+ yrs old), REFLECT has over 4-million users... I wouldn't really call that a "restricted/limited piece of software."
@Peter 123 I’ve found the discussion over Reflect’s UI to be interesting, mostly for the breadth of viewpoints. There are certainly several who gripe that something isn’t very intuitive or discoverable, or in some cases even intelligible once it’s been discovered. But at least on the Macrium forums, there seem to be far more people who come from AOMEI, Acronis, or EaseUS and find Reflect to be much easier to use and its interface easier to navigate. I have no independent perspective here because I haven’t used those other solutions recently. Maybe this all comes down to the reality that people all have different assumptions and expectations based on their individual past experiences, which then influence their opinions of how intuitive or well-designed a given interface is. That’s not to say that there isn’t SOME level of objectivity when it comes to best practices and easy vs. hard, though. I remember this concept in the context of MS Office 2007, the first version to use the Ribbon interface. That came about because when Microsoft conducted market research asking people what they wanted to see in the next release of Office, the top 10 requests were for features that already existed but were too hard to discover. So the Ribbon UI was the result of a bunch of expensive research into UI/UX design to fix that problem….and people who were used to the Office 97-2003 interface style hated it. BUT people who saw Office 2007 first, without the legacy of 97-2003 experience, found it much easier to use.
I remember that Office menu changeover very well. I hated it at first. It took me a long time to get used to it. Longer than I expected. I still don't think that it made things any easier for me, even after I got used to it.
While Macrium may be less intuitive to work with compared to other ones it has the upper hand technically and with backup/restore speed. It's worth taking the time to get used to it. The rewards come at the first need for a restore. As concerns the paid or free version, it depends on user requirements but I for one can say that the free version covers all my needs which I rate as average.
@jphughan Thanks for your - interesting as always - comment. I will just give a single example, a comparison of the first window which opens with Macrium Reflect on the one hand and with Terabyte's "Image for Windows" on the other (having taken the screenshot from their website, I do not use "Image for Windows" neither it is my intention to promote it, just as an example): What looks more pleasant and clear? With "Image for Windows" I know immediately what I have to do (= where I have to click) next. With Macrium maybe that I know it too, but only after some experience with the software and/or after studying some tiny text on the GUI. In reality it is even more confusing when I have connected the external disk where I save my images. Then the GUI is even more cluttered as all information about the external disk appears additionally in the same window. Here how it looks like: And a detail: I think that it is confusing that obviously I have two options in the same window for initiating the same operation, namely the creation of an image of my disk: Either "Image selected disks on this computer" (in the left part in the tab "Create Backups") or "Image this disk" (tiny written in the tab "Local Disks" under the partitions of Disk 1). I think, that's the point. So if someone is a beginner in creating backups and searching for a software with which he could easily learn to do this work, I would never recommend him Macrium Reflect. But to say it again: In general Macrium is o.k. for me and until now it worked without any problems.
Interesting discussion. It can also be introduced that Aomei Backupper is quite "upper hand technically" as well and very efficient in any of the same aspects or expectations. Just for the record or simple comparison. Simple overview example Currently i use Aomei/Macrium/Drive Snapshot (IFW aside in the wings)
I agree that IFW makes it easier to get started on those tasks. But Reflect’s opening interface gives you more information upfront. I have at-a-glance access to the online disks, their partition layout schemes, their partition maps, the file systems and usage of each partition, etc. I’m not saying that’s objectively better, but while I acknowledge that some people want a simple landing page that offers them only a few choices and minimal chances of getting “lost”, others might prefer an interface that immediately displays a fair amount of useful information — even if it might require some “studying”, as you put it. (And incidentally, Reflect’s “Local Disks” view has helped me diagnose MANY problems people report on the Macrium forums. They’ll write up some problem they’re having, and when they finally post a screenshot of that page, the underlying cause becomes clear. Their initial write-up didn’t include some key information because they didn’t realize the significance of what Reflect was showing them there.) Who says the external disk is necessarily where you will be saving images rather than a possible SOURCE? I’ve worked with many people who back up their external disks to NAS shares, or even other external disks. So the assumption that an external disk would only ever be a destination and the resulting claim that seeing it constitutes “clutter” is mystifying to me. “Image selected disks” images the disks/partitions that are checked in the Local Disks tab, and therefore allows you to define a job that might image multiple source disks in a single operation — and despite the name, it allows you to image only certain partitions from each disk, not necessarily all partitions on the source disk(s). By comparison, “Image this disk” captures an image of all partitions of the selected disk. Totally fair. I myself consider Reflect to be a power user application. The fact that it offers a single Home edition and MANY business-oriented editions might tell you something about the composition of Macrium’s customer base and therefore the audience they design for. But I think that’s ok. Since when does every application have to target the beginners in the market? Not everything has to be designed for the lowest common denominator, IMHO.
One of my systems is running the Macrium 8 Home Trial. After activating Macrium, do I have to recreate the recovery USB or pre-boot console?
Yes, then you'd have the proper Home Edition USB bootable drive which supports cloning/restoring to dissimilar hardware. In case you have a large USB stick like 128GB, check out this guide which will show you how to create the USB and set a partition on it dedicated to storing the images: https://youtu.be/WugrIShR6Jc
Perhaps here I can refer to a (minor) problem I always had with the landing page: In the tab "Create Backups" there are two options which are described as follows: - "Image selected disks on this computer" and - "Create an image of the partition(s) required to backup and restore Windows" My English is not very good and perhaps this is the reason for my confusion. But why do they use the word "image ...(disks)" (obviously as a verb) in the one case and the expression "create an image of ..." in the other. If the same operation is meant they should use an identical expression: a) "Create an image of the selected discs on this computer" / b) "Create an image of the partition(s) ..." Or does "to image" (a disc) have a different meaning than "create an image"?? But I cannot even find a verb "(to) image" with such a meaning in the dictionary (only with the meaning "imagine"). PS: The same applies to the words under the partitions. Here they also write: "Image this disk" (??). Obviously they mean: "Create an image of the disk": These are small details but they are confusing (especially when a user is not so acquainted with the English language and when there is almost no visual help on the GUI which could guide you).
The landing page shows all locally attached disks. Yes, it is intended to show you WHAT you can use as a source for an image or clone job. But some disks that could potentially be sources could also be used as destinations, of course. And technically a single disk could be both a source and destination in the same job. For example, my laptop has a single internal SSD. That SSD has the standard Windows partitions on it, AND an additional Data partition that I created. I have an image backup job that captures the Windows partitions on that SSD and saves the resulting image file to the Data partition on that same SSD. I then replicate those backups to an external drive later. But it is certainly possible to have destinations that do NOT appear in the Local Disks tab, such as destinations on a network share. Yes, the purpose of the Local Disks tab is to show you what can be backed up (or cloned). That tab is under the “Create Backups” tab, so the Local Disks tab is basically asking “Which of these items do you want to back up?” And all of the other tabs along that row next to Local Disks are also meant to be used for creating backups in other ways (from existing definition files/scripts/schedules).
