Macrium Reflect 8 Update Discussion

Bree said:

I would expect so. The Free edition is probably one of the best marketing tools Macrium have.

How many of us have started with Free, only to buy Home later? I know I did, not so much for the Premium features, more to show support for such a good and well supported product.

I did the same thing, although the free version does everything I need. Having Image Guardian does make me feel a bit more secure, though.

For everyone interested in the forthcoming features in v8, there's now this....


Created by Macrium Software, last modified on Dec 16, 2020

What's new in Macrium Reflect v8.0 Beta

We've been working hard to improve Macrium Reflect for the up and coming v8 release. There are many new features and improvements, requested directly or discussed in our forums, that are included now. The 'Coming soon' list below adds features not included in this initial offering, but we hope to complete them before final public release.

v8.0 Beta - Knowledgebase 8.0 - Macrium Reflect Knowledgebase

I agree, too.
Good to read that Macrium isn´t doing the mistake Acronis is doing: Switch to a Virus Suite nobody needs...

For me one of the most welcome new features is the ISO Date File Name Prefix.. This does what I have been doing by hand for all my images. It provides a meaningful alternative to that undecipherable IMAGEID, and an optional text string to include in the name. That's exactly how I've always named my backup sets - with the date and the name of the PC being imaged.

The other nice touch is Backup Comment Editing. The comments can be created and edited for existing backups.

Hi folks

I'm not sure why we always need "More and More Features" on what should essentially be a basic Backup system.

Nothing against Macrium -- works superbly and good customer service - but remember 99% of Windows users are probably basic "Home" users - not I.T professionals - and just a simple backup / imaging system is the best option for them. It's hard enough to get a lot of people to backup their systems at all !!!!

I'm sure people here must read on other sections of the Forums (and here we hope we are usually better knowelegable in I.T than the "bog standard user" ) - how many problems could have been resolved had the users just made a simple Image of their system before tinkering with it.

A lot of good software sometimes gets to the "Unuseable" or chuck it out state because "Features" and bloat comes in to what essentially should be a simple package.

I still use the basic built in DD linux command a lot (nothing can be easier or simpler than that) - to copy / clone parts of HDD's / partitions etc -- hasn't changed for Donkeys years -- and the rsync program for copying data to NAS backup - also been a part of Linux for more years than I care to remember.

Macrium Free for backing up Windows images works just perfectly.

Remember K.I.S.S (Keep it Simple Stupid !!!).

Please Macrium don't go overboard with "extra features".

@Bree - the ISO naming feature though sounds like a good idea -- if you know / can remember anything about the old IBM Mainframe systems e.g MVS/SP then they had an excellent cataloguing system called GDG's or Generation data groups - so you'd create say data1(0) which would be current, data1(-1) the previous one and data1(+1) the next one.
After running a job the data1(+1) would be data1(0), the data1(0) would become the data1(-1) and so on so it was easy to get the backup or data file you wanted. Really excellent system. !!


Happy Hols everyone and please stay safe - especially with these new variants of C-19 reported from various European Countries inc the U.K

Cheers
jimbo

jimbo45 said:

Macrium Free for backing up Windows images works just perfectly.... Remember K.I.S.S (Keep it Simple Stupid !!!). ... don't go overboard with "extra features".

The one weakness of Reflect was the user interface, which could at best be described as 'adequate'. It's certainly led to a lot of 'hand holding' for newbie users here on these forums.

The majority of the changes seem to be aimed at making a better UI - long overdue.

Bree said:

The one weakness of Reflect was the user interface, which could at best be described as 'adequate'. It's certainly led to a lot of 'hand holding' for newbie users here on these forums.

The majority of the changes seem to be aimed at making a better UI - long overdue.

Hi folks

@Bree

That's always a good idea of course -- improving the UI isn't "Featuritis" but worth while -- I do also like the idea of the ISO naming.

A decent mod I would like to see is to make it easier to add user notes / remarks about the backup you are taking -- it's not intuitive at all currently -- I'd be able to add notes easily such as "Backup - Windows 20H2 release --date xxxx" before installing yyyy" or whatever -- decent .txt file to be included with the backup set.

Cheers
jimbo