Acronis or Macrium as a "home" backup solution?

Hello.
I don't know if I should buy Acronis or Macrium for my backup. I want to backup in the following way: 1 backup a week, incremental backup, keeping the last 4 chain of backup (so I want some sort of autocleaning for older chains). One backup job is in 2 parts, one backup for my system-drive and one backup for my document,email and game drive. I also want to be able to restore only one of the 2 backups (i.e. the system-drive). My backupdrive is an external USB 3.1 harddisc.

What should I choose?

Burgurne said:

I don't know if I should buy Acronis or Macrium for my backup...

When I was looking for a better system imaging than Microsoft's built-in 'create a system image' my search started with Macrium Reflect Free - and stopped there too as it turned out to be reliable and do everything I needed.

In fact, if you could make do with Differentials rather than Incrementals the free version should meet all your other requirements.

Why not try the free version then, if you like it, upgrade to the paid version to get Incrementals too. In fact, the free version lets you have a trial of the fully paid features, so you could 'try before you buy'. Any images made by the free version would be identical to those made by the paid-for one, so you wouldn't have wasted your time testing the free one.

You mean, that the "backbone" in Macrium is the same for the free and for the paid version? No missing options when doing 2 backup jobs, or with restore of systemdrive contra data-drive?
That sounds fantastic. I will give Macrium a chance. Thank you for your idea

Yes, the free version is the same code with the 'paid for' features disabled by the licence key that comes with the Free version. In theory you could upgrade it to 'paid for' just by changing the licence key to one you had purchased.

Scheduling, creating Backup Definition files, backup retention rules, all the options you need should be there in 'free' apart from Incremental images (and even that is available on a 30-day trial).




Edit: Confirmed - you can upgrade it to the Premium version by purchasing a key.

Macrium said:

The following dialogue is displayed at startup after the 30 trial has expired...
...At this point, you can either purchase a full license and continue with the additional features, ReDeploy (which is not included in the trial) and a year of Technical Support. Or you can revert to the Free Edition, but you will lose the additional features. However, you can continue to be able to back up your PC as Full or Differential images.

Converting Macrium Reflect Free to a 30-Day Trial - Macrium Software

RolandJS said:

MR free leaves Incremental ability - in or out?

Incremental images are a Premium feature. MR Free does not include it.

If you try to use a Premium feature in MR Free it will offer you a 30-day trial, but after the trial expires it will revert to the free version.

RolandJS said:

While MR (and others like Image for Windows) can make from within Windows backups, Acronis True Image requires its DVD or USB boot to make backups.

Thanks RolandJS, I didn't know that. Seems I made a wise lucky choice when I chose to test Macrium first

Try3 said:

No it doesn't.
I have been using it for years and have never had any such requirement.
You're thinking of restoring images - restoring an OS drive image does necessitate booting from the ATI boot disk.

Ah, that makes more sense. So does Macrium, but it also has an option to add Macrium recovery to the boot menu. You can do without the recovery usb in that case (though you should always have one handy, just in case the PC's drive is so corrupted it can't boot).