Macrium Reflect vs Acronis

I used to pay for Acronis , several years ago .................switched to Macrium ( muuuuch more superior , compared to Acronis).
Totally removed the whole bloated Acronis software from my PCs , will never use it again ( its unreliable , bloated and very hard to uninstall competely from your system !)
Macrium is THE BEST...........!

jadinolf said:

Quadruple

Quintuple !!!!

Cheers
jimbo

+1000 for Acronis True Image Bootable Media ISO, and for these simple reasons.

1. Creating an image from a 'live' Windows ('live' = Windows is actively running on the system) is not always without problems, as Macrium relies on the VSS (Volume Shadow Copy Service) for this. Depending on how you have set up your installation of Windows, and also depending on what exactly you have running on it, the VSS might actually not work in any way at all. In fact I have eliminated my System Reserved partition because I don't use BitLocker, and, the VSS would never work for me, even, if I hadn't eliminated this partition. It takes to be an advanced user to understand the fact that VSS still comes with limitations, and that this is among reasons why some─myself included─users require better software that offers a more advanced featureset than Macrium. (See below.)
2. Unlike the Macrium bootable ISO, the bootable ISO of Acronis does allow the user to specify 'exclusions' (i.e. what not to include in the image about to be created).
3. Two words: incremental images.

f14tomcat said:

Excluding any part of an OS image on a backup results in a backup that is not a true image backup. By definition, an IMAGE is an exact copy of the original. If parts are excluded it cannot be an exact copy.

Wrong. An image isn't by definition always a sector-by-sector clone of an entire disk or data volume. A typical example of a file-based image would be an image that excludes only the drive's unallocated sectors. But a specific type of file-based image that also excludes unneeded files like, e.g., temporary files, various caches that can be regenerated after the image has been restored, hiberfil.sys, etc., still also meets the general definition of an image. Images that make use of specified data exclusions have been known to exist for a very, VERY long time now.

f14tomcat said:

I wasn't trying to nit-pick or be argumentative. In Macrium's terms, and Image is the whole thing, so a Restore puts you back to where you were, with everything just as it was. I've used File Image backups thru Macrium for a long time, and I know they are different. Not arguing, only explaining what I meant.

In that case, I must apologize for my being not clearvoyant enough to notice that you were only referring to the specific dialect language variety known as Macrium-speak.