Acronis True Image Alternatives

Without a doubt Macrium Reflect is recommended - high reliability - external drive yes, either live in WIndows or in rescue WinPE environment - network location, yes live in Windows, Yes in rescue WinPE environment if Ethernet (but not WiFi). Plenty of discussion in TenForums about it.

Any interest?

I'm sure you'll get plenty of response on MR. I know there are also many AOMEI Backupper and EaseUs Todo Backup proponents here.

Even though I personally use Macrium Reflect Free because I like the GUI Interface and also can be used as a mini partition manager to move/resize/swap partitions around.
Another good one is: Free AOMEI Backupper
which in fact gives you more options such as the ability to backup Folders which Free Macrium does not provide. In addtition, it also bundle the Windows Recovery in its WinPE so you don't need to create an extra stick for it.

The free version of Macrium Reflect Free is adequate for most users requirements, but if it is for commercial use, you require a licence.

The paid versions support incremental and differential backup, but the free version only does differential backup, but for domestic use, differential backup is adequate

Incremental backup is where you initially make a full back up and each subsequent incremental backup stores changes since last incremental backup.

Differential backup is where you initially make a full backup and each differential back stores all the changes since initial backup.

Supposing you had four files A, B , C, D all same size of 1GB each.

So if you had files A and B backed up in full back up, then added file C in an incremental backup, and then file D in next incremental backup. Total storage would be 2+1+1 = 4GB.

If you used differential backup, 1st would contain file C only (same as an incremental backup). However 2nd would contain C and D ie all changes from initial full backup, and total storage would be 5GB.

In reality, it does not make much difference as the relative size of changed files is small compared with initial backup.

AEOMI free version does both as stated earlier.

The other major feature of the paid versions of Macrium are that you can restore a backup to different hardware (same bit type of course), and it will sort out the required drivers for you. This is handy for companies with multiple PCs.

Incidentally, I found Macrium Reflect Free (tests a year ago) was the only package of all the main contenders that could backup and restore my Linx tablet which uses a rather unusual 32bit eufi firmware configuration, the others either crashed or simply assumed 32bit must be bios, and would not work.