Acronis True Image vs Macrium Reflect

Hello @DrEmpiricism,I'm evaluating Macrium Reflect for use in a software testing lab where restores are more common than backups. I wish to automate restores, and I am intrigued by Reflect's Powershell support. However, Reflect doesn't boast or document automated restores, just backups. Interestingly, I do see a restore command (reflect /r "%1") in the Registry, but I'm not able to make much use of it.In a post to this thread, you mentioned, "Of course this is a very simple script, but you can pretty much script anything, including a script that will do a complete format, partition delete and then restore in one executable command."Can you provide a sample of this or of a general restore? Any help is appreciated. Thanks, jerkc

I looked into automating the restore function of MR a while back and found that there is NO way to do this. Its never been implemented. If I remember correctly, years ago I asked about batch restores on their forum, and the answer was Not Supported.

The previous poster stated he seen a "/r" parameter, which there is, but its used to recurse thru folders if you specify a folder to perform verification.

Josey Wales said:

A new release of MR v7.1 is going to be released soon, my guess is a few days after 10.17.2017

Probably to coincide with the new windows upgrade releasing about that time. Seem like it was about this time last year when we all had issues after the creator update.

menace97 said:

I am another customer who used Acronis for many years. It certainly was great at the beginning, as anything that could restore one of my computers to a state that was usable without making a service call to a computer tech was amazing. It would work most of the time, but really, back in those days I really was grateful to have a chance at reviving an imaged version of my OS... it was like freakin' magic. As time went on though, as many of you Acronis users of many years such as myself would probably agree - features were added, but strangely, many great features were being removed. Every release I would notice something I had used was missing. Add those factors to the fact that it truly was performing worse (at least in my situations) than it had in the past. Sure it was marginally faster, but it was ridiculous how frequently my images would get corrupted (on different computers, using different software configurations). I just couldn't rely on it anymore.

It was actually over on Windows 8 Forums where I was constantly reading about the wonderful things users were saying about Macrium. It was a no-brainer. They had a free version that is VERY full-featured imho. I tried it for maybe a week or two, and it was an absolute delight to use. It was fast, consistent, and their community and company seemed on another level from Acronis. I bought it after a couple of weeks, and that was probably a year and a half ago. I wanted to not be limited to using only the full backup scheme, which is the way it works with the free version - but should be quite adequate for many people. I haven't looked back. It was slightly more expensive than Acronis (although now Acronis is aggressively cutting prices, it is quite inexpensive)... but if you're like me, a solid backed up OS and/or data hard to put a price on. I honestly have never had any issue with any single backup/restore this entire time with Macrium. It is so fast and absolutely reliable.

I've read recently in some reviews that NovaBackup seems to be the up-and-comer, and that Macrium's compression rate is only average. I wouldn't know how it compares, as I haven't used anything else in ages but my backups are certainly not nearly the gargantuan sizes Acronis used to create for me. In fact my incremental and differential backups complete so quickly and are a so tiny at times it amazes me.

So thanks for everyone on these forums for pointing me in the right direction... to Macrium Reflect.

Yea great write up. I really couldn't explain any better. I will add my experience. Being a long time user of Acronis I was happy buying the new version every year and only experienced 1 failure to restore in all that time. However in 2012 I bought a Asus Gaming notebook G75VW man it was fancy had an SSD fast CPU GPU, well I created my first full SSD Image right off the bat, just incase I ran into any issues while configuring the notebook and my software. Well yep I did crash that OS, and popped in my restore media and restored, to my great disappointment the restore would not boot. I finaly was able to get in touch with Acronis tech support, worked with them for a day or so. The really had no Idea. I ran several Repair installs thinking the boot manger would repair and let the SSD Boot up. Never happen. As I clean install windows 7 SP 1, I learned about UEFI and GPT volumes finally got the notebook working again. So I check with the Acronis support forum yep Acronis reports the support UEFI and GPT disk. Created another Image and tried to restore it and again it won't boot. This time I went in to there support forum and asked for help, eventually one of the user there had some Idea what was going on we created the partition required for a UEFI system to boot and that did work. Still this is not the ideal situation that I have to set up a disk/ssd before restoring. I looked around and found just about all imaging programs were having the same issue of not being able to create a bootable image. Eventually I found out about Macrium Reflect from the ROG Forum tried it and the first try perfect restore booted right up. I still continued to use Acronis on my MBR machines for another year or so while I tested out MR for routine daily back ups etc. Then in 2015 with Acronis latest UEFI compliant version I still could not create a bootable restore. I just gave up and purchased a 4 pack of MR Pro and I haven't looked bac since. Acronis has no tech support at all unless you have an issue restoring then its very difficult to get in touch with them. Worst part is after you do get to one , there techs don't know as much as you do.