Want a Free Back-Up program

ish4d0w · 20 Jun 2021

Steve C said:

I installed an older version of True Image a while ago and it was fiendishly difficult to uninstall. The uninstaller left behind disk filters which were very hard to remove and could render the PC unbootable if you don't know what you are doing. Acronis support was useless. See Solved - Safe Removal of Acronis True Image Drivers | Windows 8 Help Forums

Oh I see. Thank you. Yes, I agree that this is unacceptable. But it was a long time ago and they had since improved a lot. Nowadays two products show up in Installed programs when you install Acronis True Image 2020: Acronis True Image and Acronis Drivers. Uninstalling the latter takes care of this.

I like Acronis because it proved to be very reliable on cloning and restoring images: it automatically fixes MBR/GPT boot record entries, UEFI boot entries, can also copy hard disk ID and preserve drive letters, making the system 100% identical to what it was before. It has a compression algorithm that is superior to both AOMEI and Macrium.

Macrium had always worked well for me, I had issues with Paragon on GPT (unacceptable), AOMEI worked relatively well but I also had boot issues with it, that never occured with Acronis.

SIW2 · 20 Jun 2021

Ghot said:

There's a new backup software also. Just read about it a week or so ago...

First Look at Hasleo Backup Suite Free, a new Windows backup software - gHacks Tech News

It works after a fashion. successfully made an image and restored, and it also does incremental and differential. But there is no scheduling and no obvious way to mount or extract individual files. Perhaps they will add features in due course.

artic · 22 Jun 2021

I downloaded and installed Macrium Reflect 7 free version. I can't get it to backup at all? I am attaching a photo of what I GET?I am trying to back up my system by doing a FULL Backup on to my External Harddrive and I just don't understand that message.

I truly thank everyone for your responses?

Steve C · 22 Jun 2021

You have included a partition to backup which is on the backup drive which is not permitted

artic · 23 Jun 2021

I want to thank everyone with your response and I went with

Macrium Reflect - FREE Edition

Many thanks and God Bless
Issue is now resolved

Steve C · 24 Jun 2021

This thread prompted me to start using SynchFolders to synchronise files stored on an external hard drive. I chose this one since it is free, simple to use and is kept up to date. I'm copying across Reflect backups from an internal drive to the external drive and had to turn off Image Guardian to enable the file synchronisation.

diosoth · 30 Jun 2021

I've been trying to find something for this purpose & so far have had no luck. I need to close my Win10 SSD, as well as my Win7HDD to SSD. None of the free options are at all friendly if the source & destination drives are not the exact same size. Macrium is apparently really difficult to manage this, can't do it automatically. Acronis is fully paid software. I tried EaseUS & AOMEI- EaseUS free won't support cloning, only backup. AOMEI claims to handle this in the free version of Backupper but partition adjustment is paid only(I got a beg screen asking for money/license key to proceed with the clone!). As it is, I have no way to proceed with what I need to do.

edit- it looks like the CURRENT version of Macrium can auto-trim the main data partition down to fit the new drive, provided the space is empty. Previous versions though did not support that. Running the Win10 cloning process now.