How much do you trust Macrium Reflect?

While MR7 probably will never fail me, I know that hardware can fail from time to time, an operator error during backup or restore process can lead to a failure. I guess like a previous poster indicated -- MR7 90-95%, and I add: 5-10% hardware & operator.

I voted 100%, because the poll question was "How much do you trust Macrium Reflect?", not how much faith do you have in the firmware between the keyboard and chair, or possible lightning strikes, or any other myriad and/or plethora of hardware/operator malfunctions.

It works well and consistently......

next

f14tomcat said:

I voted 100%, because the poll question was "How much do you trust Macrium Reflect?", not how much faith do you have in the firmware between the keyboard and chair, or possible lightning strikes, or any other myriad and/or plethora of hardware/operator malfunctions.

It works well and consistently......

next

I agree. No imaging tool can handle defective hardware or PEBCAK related issues.

I have said this time several timed but MR (and Easeus Todo but very slowwwww) was the ONLY tool of all the main players that could backup and restore those 32bit (mmc drive) uefi devices. All the others failed for various reasons.

As an aside, I was on a forum for my tablet, and users there had developed a complicated linux based procedure to do image backups (creating a custom iso in effect), as nobody could get any Windows based imaging tools to work.

I replied - simply use Macrium Reflect and the procedure developers got the hump with me questioning MR reliability and maintainability using statements like

"I used it over five years ago and it was crap".

Nothing like professional jealously - LOL!

jimbo45 said:

Hi folks

Only one fail on a restore and that was because the target HDD was faulty (actually the the sata card it was connected to was the culprit.)

Personally I wouldn't worry about the reliability of the backups -- however DO TEST a restore from time to time and it is sensible to have more than 1 backup -- external HDD media is quite cheap these days -- what would your time be worth re-ripping say 4,000 audio cd's - even if you could find the originals, recovering all your multi-media files, photos etc and other data. You'd also have to find all serial numbers of any products installed plus drivers / updates etc etc -- a long and time wasting process -- typical windows system can be backed up - especially if source and target on SSD's in around 10 mins - even with modest hardware.

Backing up multi-media plus other data will take longer but as that rarely changes you only need to do it once and then just update changes e.g new music etc.

Message to those using NAS servers -- don't forget to back these up as well from time to time - they do fail sometimes (not often but as these usually contain a decent amount of data then recovery can also be a real pain).

4TB passport USB3 external self powered pocket size drives make good backup media --these are cheap and easily stored off line.

@cereberus


Most Linux distros (and hence could be OK for NAS) have a GUI front end for rsync which is an easy tool for Linux backups including just update files that have changed etc etc -- really simple. The graphical interface is called GRSYNC.

The NAS I'm currently have in daily use has 2 X 10 TB of data in RAID arrays so imaging the HDD´s isn´t actually a viable option. Sharing Windows directories to the NAS backs up my Windows (and any client connected as well) data files and the 2nd backup updates those files to external USB 3 Passport drives formatted XFS.

The GRSYNC job runs nightly as a "CRON" job -- i.e scheduled job. If any Host windows machine is down that day then the next time the job runs and that client is up then it backs up as normal so no data is missed.

For system I always image the windows HDD (it's on a dedicated SSD) with macrium.

Cheers
jimbo

If you have Pro, a great way of quickly testing an image backup is to use viboot to mount drive as a virtual machine.

You can do similar in Home with vmware etc but it requires you to have to boot from a Macrium Rescue virtual cd in the vm to restore the image.

Another good way to test is to restore image to a virtual hard drive and create a boot entry to make a temporary dual boot device.

I like Acronis and Macrium.

Acronis really has the lead on technology, so I feel very comfortable with it.
Macrium is still a new player to me and it will take a bit of time to evaluate.

As for trust, I don't, lol.

P.S. Is there money riding on this thread?

Since 99% isn't an option, I went with the optimistic side - 100%. It has always worked when I needed it, what more can I ask? As a backup to Macrium, I have tried a couple others, Aomei and EaseUS Todo. Currently using Aoemi three days per week in addition to Macrium, just in case. Guess that makes me a little less than 100%.

JohnBurns said:

Since 99% isn't an option, I went with the optimistic side - 100%. It has always worked when I needed it, what more can I ask?

A button pusher to do it for you?

Compumind said:

I like Acronis and Macrium.

Acronis really has the lead on technology, so I feel very comfortable with it.
Macrium is still a new player to me and it will take a bit of time to evaluate.

As for trust, I don't, lol.

P.S. Is there money riding on this thread?

Nah - Acronis is way behind Macrium Reflect at the domestic user level.