on macrium is it better to buy home edition or use free edition

on macrium is it better to buy home edition or use free edition it is expensive so which will have more features is buying it a waste vs tree edition

Depends what features are important to you. There are several imaging programs which have have both free and paid versions.
They do the same basic job, but differ in the User Interface, ease of use, extra features that come with the free versions vs paid versions.
compare the features
Macrium Software | Macrium Reflect Free

Up to you which one you like. Try a couple and see. I usually recommend Aomei Backupper- the free version does the job and has the advantage of being easy to use.
Best Windows Backup and Restore Software | AOMEI Backupper

There is a giveaway of O&O diskimage Pro v12 at the moment, which is usually not free - lots of features, but you may not have any need for them.
Registration for your FREE license of O&O DiskImage 12

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The smallest that I know of is drive snapshot - pretty use to use, and doesn't have much in the way of dependencies -e.g. no drivers need to be installed in winpe. Not free but there is a trial you could have a look at.
Drive Snapshot Backup - 1

Nobody else can decide for you.

There is a giveaway of O&O diskimage Pro v12 at the moment, which is usually not free - lots of features, but you may not have any need for them.
Registration for your FREE license of O&O DiskImage 12
Cheers, just got that myself!

martyr said:

on macrium is it better to buy home edition or use free edition it is expensive so which will have more features is buying it a waste vs tree edition

The free version has all the main features you need. It can make and restore full images and differential images (just the changes since the full image, so smaller than a full image). None of the features in the Free version are limited in any way, they work the same as the paid-for version. Buying it just adds some extra features.

What do you get for paying for it (apart from a warm feeling from supporting such useful and well supported software)?

Incremental images. As you make more changes to the system, a differential will get larger. When you restore you need the full image and one differential. With incremental images you save only the changes since the last incremental, so it's smaller than a differential. To restore you use a full image and all its subsequent incrementals.

Image Guardian. This prevents changes being made to your images (eg, by ransomware).

Rapid Delta Restore. This compares what's already on the hard drive with what's in the image. Only the differences are restored, potentially making for a faster restore.

File and Folder imaging. Does what it says on the tin, you can select specific folders and files to image. You don't have to image the whole partition if all you want to back up is your user folder.

None of the above are essentials, the Free version is probably sufficient for most home users. But the choice is yours.....

Macrium Reflect Free is fine for most purposes - note you can mount any partition on an image file as a virtual drive and copy files/folders from the backup in addition to doing a full restore.

will check it out.

dwarfer66 said:

There is a giveaway of O&O diskimage Pro v12 at the moment, which is usually not free - lots of features, but you may not have any need for them.
Registration for your FREE license of O&O DiskImage 12
Cheers, just got that myself!

This question has come up many times in the past. "Why buy when you can use for free ?". To most people its a good deal. To me it depends on what that software means to me ie: does it save me $ ?, Does it save me time ?, How valuable is it ?, Is it reliable ?, Is there a feature I could use, but isn't in the free version ?. If it meets my goals, I usually will buy the paid version but the company has to demonstrate their products reliability long term which means I will use their "Free version" for some period of time. Some times I'm forced to buy because of a feature I need/want, is not available in the free version. They still have to be a reliable player and they have to demonstrate a commitment to provide support long term. Other than that, They are not going to get my $.

I have to admit that I was a software developer of all sized systems (Mainframe, Office sized systems, and PC computing) most of my professional career. I may be a little bit bias, but if the software developer can demonstrate their support for their product, then by all means, BUY IT and be happy. I know they will !

Many others have said that the bought it in the end, despite Free doing all they needed. They just felt Macrium did such a good job they wanted to show support.

They are certainly on the ball as far as support goes, going that extra mile to fix a bug that was caused by something in a Skip Ahead Insider build. Others may have waited for MS to fix it, not Macrium.

No wonder we love Macrium Reflect. What other package could issue a fix in 48 hours !?

New Windows 10 Insider Preview Skip Ahead Build 18234 - September 6