I have used Rollback Rx before and really liked it until the day that it basically ate my laptop. I have heard a lot about Macrium Reflect on this board and it sounds good. Can anyone tell me the difference between these two programs? They sound basically the same. Has Macrium ever totally wiped a hard drive (as did Rollback)? Not sure if I would be brave enough to try Macrium but am curious. Thanks in advance
Ive been using it since 2012 with many restores, clones, with zero failures. I use the paid for version. so I also use the same Home version MR for my local back up routine on 5 computers. All to external drives either eSATA or USB 3.0. Scheduled Back ups run flawlessly. The product is very well supported here on this forum and by the Manufactures if your using the paid for product. On here for the free version.
You don't need the paid for product for Images, or Clones, you do need the paid for version for Scheduled back ups, incremental back ups and a few other features which include support forum and product support. The MR crew are very quick to fix any issue that come up from time to time. The product is very well supported and maintained.
Backup and Restore with Macrium Reflect Kari has written this really great Tutorial and you get any help you need on the same thread
The two are quite different programs. Rollback Rx (which I don't use) seems to be a super-charged form of 'system restore', in that it appears to work by undoing changes to restore the system to an earlier baseline.
Macrium Reflect (which I do use) creates an image of the partition(s) of your PC, usually stored on an external HDD, which you can later restore in whole to your hard drive (or a replacement drive, if the original dies). Because Macrium is replacing the whole partition with an image taken when it was known to be working there's no chance of it getting 'confused' as to what needs changing, as your Rollback RX appears to have been.
I up the vote for Macrium, I have been using the free home version for 5 - 6 years without any issues (at least no destructive issues, i think once it needed a patch to fix rescue disk creation and once for reading images, you can mount images and pull individual files out) but issues are fixed extremely quickly.
I imagine that Rollback might not take into account that the registry is no longer backed up by default (unless it has been updated), I could see how that would cause major issues for an app like that.
As others have said above, support on Macrium site and on these forums for Macrium Reflect is excellent.
I have used several including Acronis and easus and rollback and Macrium.
Macrium is the easiest to use and quickest to restore with little problems.
Hasn't failed me yet but the others have.
Rollback RX aims to reverse changes over a specific period, and do that quickly. As such it's a lot faster to use than restoring entire disk images.
Whereas disk imaging, where the images are saved securely (e.g. off-line to external storage). can be used to recover your PC by restoring to a new disk or even a different PC, with Rollback RX, if your disk fails, you can't recover.
(Rollback RX claims to recover unbootable cases).
Disk imaging (manual or scheduled) is likely to be at longer intervals than Rollback RX snapshots.
You can keep disk images as long as you wish as a secure backup: as Rollback RX snapshots are on the same disk, I think, their longevity is limited. The snapshots take up disk space: disk images are saved on a different disk.
The process of disk imaging performs an integrity check on the used part of the partitions imaged.
I recall having a problem with Rollback RX when I tried it once many years ago - it had to be uninstalled when upgrading Win 10 . I've no idea if that's true now.
Rollback RX free is no longer supported. Macrium Reflect (free) is supported.
You could use both- disk imaging as your ultimate security; Rollback Rx as a means of quick reversal and System Restore on steroids.
(But note- if the problem originated before any of your earliest restore points or disk images- you have a problem. Further, if the disk image created before the problem occurred is old- you will overwrite all data on that partition with an old version, potentially losing data - so data backup for specific faster changing data is also good idea).
There is in fact no such thing as a separate 'free' version of Macrium, only a free licence key. The installed software determines if if is 'free' or 'paid for' from the key that it has. You can upgrade from free just by buying it and changing the key. As such, it gets all the same software updates as it would if you had paid for it.
Purchasing Macrium does let you post on their forum though, 'free' users can read but not post there.
And to add to your note of clarification and amplification, by 'supported', which I guess is too vague, I meant offered updates periodically. That by contrast with Rollback RX (free, unsupported) where a final version remains available for use and which will not be updated, unlike the Pro version.
Last edited by dalchina; 17 Feb 2020 at 09:36.
On Macrium's website in product comparisons it looks like Macrium Reflect Free is a limited version of Macrium Reflex Home (paid).
There are differences such as the Free version only does Differential Backups, while the Home version will do Incremental backups also.
So I'm a bit confused about the "just a license key" statement. I'm considering changing from Acronis so I'm curious also.
Macrium Software | Product Comparision
Quote