Macrium Reflect Free vs. Acronis TrueImage

ClippyBeer said:

That pretty much sums up my thoughts on drive imaging. There's no need to deride someone else's choice of imaging software. If you have something that works reliably, use it! There's AOMEI/Paragon/Terabyte users here too. Even if Acronis True Image 2021 was good, for me that means a huge investment in time to thoroughly test it with all my computers.

With Ventoy, testing the bootable ISO of True Image 2021 takes up very little time. Testing the rest of the package will not be necessary because you already know it beforehand the fact that the world will burn to a crisp if you do, so this knowledge should save you even more time.

Time is something that I don't have much of lately so I will be sticking with Macrium because it has proven reliable. Reliable=I restored my computers to the same state as when the images were created. Read my previous post, I was a longtime Acronis user until I ran into a snag using it with a UEFI laptop.

If you can't get an UEFI computer to boot straight into the bootable ISO of True Image by using a USB flash drive that's got Ventoy on it and you also already verified against data corruption, then most likely you will not be able to use the computer to boot anything off the USB flash drive.

I started with Norton Ghost 5 using DOS 5 bootable diskettes to image DOS/Windows 95/98/NT.

Same here. And cloning them with DiskDupe, and then later VGA-Copy. (In fact my first floppy drive was an external Philips VY-0010 that I was using to run MSX-DOS during the mid-1980s.)

Anyone here use new versions of Symantec Ghost?

Nah. The last time when I used Symantec Ghost was like almost 20 years ago. I ditched it in favor of Acronis True Image Home bootable ISO back then (always the bootable ISO only, as there simply is no reliable way to backup a normal installation of Windows on a normal PC aside from booting into a separate environment first, because if you don't, then it isn't a question of IF you'll run into trouble, but WHEN you'll run into trouble).

hdmi said:

Nah. The last time when I used Symantec Ghost was like almost 20 years ago. I ditched it in favor of Acronis True Image Home bootable ISO back then (always the bootable ISO only, as there simply is no reliable way to backup a normal installation of Windows on a normal PC aside from booting into a separate environment first, because if you don't, then it isn't a question of IF you'll run into trouble, but WHEN you'll run into trouble).

Yep that's true, Symantec Ghost was outdated for a long time, but believe or not, I used that software and successfully restored my system image yesterday

VictorXu1 said:

Yep that's true, Symantec Ghost was outdated for a long time, but believe or not, I used that software and successfully restored my system image yesterday

Believe it or not, the dd command on Linux will get you there too.

What was Symantec Ghost is now Veritas System Recovery. It's not a totally terrible program although I do have a few gripes about it.

I have been using Reflect now for 3 years as Acronis is just too bloated. I still also use Acronis 2016 some.
Actually felt guilty and bought copy of Reflect and don't even use any functions that require a purchase. I have restored files and images with both with no problems. Booting from C D. However would not want or need all functionality in today's Acronis. I make an image to USB external drive, then disconnect external drive until needed to restore or do another backup.

What is the problem with VSS? I notice some of you want to get around using VSS in Reflect.

I guess it is clear I do not understand the VSS logic. I thought it was like when I worked in the mainframe environment (retired back in 2004 after almost 40 years) that all the data was backed up and all the data was restored when restoring an image- regardless of if a change made to data. Sounds like only changed files are restored with Macrium Reflect? I may have to read up on VSS, but it sounds like from what you said is that VSS is a file that is backed up and when restoring only changed files are restored and the VSS data is the key to determine what files were changed? I don't think my ATI 2016 works that way, anyway no mention of using Microsoft VSS. Like I said I still use ATI 2016 on my Saturday's images and Macrium Reflect 8 on Wednesday's images. This way I figure one of them ought to work if restore is needed. So far since I retired no problems with either, but only used Reflect for around 3 years and the paid version for about a year.