Macrium Reflect--Home edition questions

markg2 · 25 Aug 2016

I replaced Acronis with the free Reflect version either per this forum or the Win7 forum earlier this year, and haven't looked back since.

I received an offer email from Macrium regarding the Home edition and saw a few abilities that might make 'paid' sense.

Although I haven't had the need for restoring a separate file/folder with Macrium, I did on several occasions with Acronis. As you know, the process involved mounting the image as a virtual drive then using explorer to copy/paste whatever older data to your current working drive. File and Folder backup is one possible reason to upgrade.

I'm not sure that what Macrium calls Item level recovery isn't the same as above?

I'm also not sure what is meant by SuperRapid Delta restore in relative time terms to the free version's restore?

I don't get 'Restoring an image to dissimilar hardware'. I always thought as long as the target drive was no smaller than the image source, imaging software didn't care what drive or what machine is the target?

Also, if anyone has a bit of pertinent additional information I'd be glad to hear.

Mark

dalchina · 25 Aug 2016

Restoring an image to dissimilar hardware:
ReDeploy a system to new hardware

ReDeploy modifies an existing operating system to work on new hardware or on a virtual machine (VM).

So the idea is to take an image of your OS from one PC, and restore it to a disk on a different PC with different hardware.

That means different drivers. So it means drivers which are not relevant should be removed or not copied over, and relevant drivers installed.

I've never tried this personally.

Not unique to Macrium- Easeus and Aomei offer it for example. Aomei Backupper (free) includes this feature

Comparison table:
Macrium Reflect Free

Note here Paragon- the 'best' is cheaper than Macrium...(!). Never mentioned on this forum.. maybe 'cos there's no useful free version?
The Best Disk Imaging Software of 2016 | Top Ten Reviews

cereberus · 26 Aug 2016

dalchina said:

Restoring an image to dissimilar hardware:
ReDeploy a system to new hardware

So the idea is to take an image of your OS from one PC, and restore it to a disk on a different PC with different hardware.

That means different drivers. So it means drivers which are not relevant should be removed or not copied over, and relevant drivers installed.

I've never tried this personally.

Not unique to Macrium- Easeus and Aomei offer it for example. Aomei Backupper (free) includes this feature

Comparison table:
Macrium Reflect Free

Note here Paragon- the 'best' is cheaper than Macrium...(!). Never mentioned on this forum.. maybe 'cos there's no useful free version?
The Best Disk Imaging Software of 2016 | Top Ten Reviews

I do not believe Paragon in the slightest is anywhere near the best. I tested it on a number of pcs and was totally underwhelmed at its reliability when trying to restore.

In order of preference from all the tests I did

1) Macrium Reflect
2) Easesus Todo
3) Acronis (not free)
4) Veeam Endpoint

I cannot say about AOEMI as it has been significantly updated since I did my tests a couple of years ago.

One thing I can say is Macrium Reflect has never let me down across a wide range of devices.

It is interesting people point out one limitation of the free version is the lack of incremental images, although it does differential images.

In fact, although diffs are less space efficient, they offer a higher data integrity. With a diff, if one gets deleted or corrupted, you can use the next diff either side to minimise impact. However if an inc gets corrupted or delete, all subsequent incs are useless.

Unless you are creating a lot of new data daily, diffs are tiny compared with initial image.

In any case, I always advise keeping data separate from OS/programs wich keeps image backups lean and mean. Then use File History Backup or whatever for data.

Steve C · 27 Aug 2016

markg2 said:

I replaced Acronis with the free Reflect version either per this forum or the Win7 forum earlier this year, and haven't looked back since.

I received an offer email from Macrium regarding the Home edition and saw a few abilities that might make 'paid' sense.

Although I haven't had the need for restoring a separate file/folder with Macrium, I did on several occasions with Acronis. As you know, the process involved mounting the image as a virtual drive then using explorer to copy/paste whatever older data to your current working drive. File and Folder backup is one possible reason to upgrade.

I'm not sure that what Macrium calls Item level recovery isn't the same as above?

I'm also not sure what is meant by SuperRapid Delta restore in relative time terms to the free version's restore?

I don't get 'Restoring an image to dissimilar hardware'. I always thought as long as the target drive was no smaller than the image source, imaging software didn't care what drive or what machine is the target?

Also, if anyone has a bit of pertinent additional information I'd be glad to hear.

Mark

Good decision to switch to Reflect. There is a way of recovering files/folders from the free edition. Find the image you want to recover files from. Right click the image to mount it as a drive then select the partition you want to use. That partition is then mounted as a drive from where you can copy the files/folders you want.