Windows 10: Acronis True Image vs Macrium Reflect

Incoming novel!

In my opinion, there really is no question when it comes to full disk imaging and backup creation - Macrium Reflect is superior. Yes, I've used both quite extensively.

Acronis True Image is good because it has a nice GUI and very little ambiguity. It's a good choice for regular home users who want to set up a fairly reliable backup solution. Full disk backups are slightly smaller than Macrium's backups; however Acronis' backup speed is significantly slower than Macrium's and also omit a lot of advanced options that Macrium has available to users. That said, the advanced features still make Macrium great for novice users because the meat of the software is straight-forward and simple. I'd actually argue that Macrium Reflect's simple partition and image backups (which most people use backup solutions for) are easier create and schedule than Acronis True Image's.

Macrium Reflect is excellent despite the lack of a glamorous, or "pretty," GUI like Acronis True Image has. Mind you I use Macrium Home Editions and Server Edition (I primarily use NovaBackup for my Windows server). Macrium Reflect, for home use, has a plethora of options that makes it stand out. For example Synthetic Full backup creation, which is great for people who may have only a fairly small amount of drive space to save backups. Basically, their Synthetic Full backup option creates only ever one full backup, followed by incremental backups. Once the maximum amount of incremental backups has been reached, it will merge that first full backup into the first incremental backup made in the backup chain. Following the merge, it will do another incremental backup. Then, the next time the backup schedule runs, it again will merge that full backup with the next incremental backup in the chain. This process continues indefinitely. This is a good way to 1) not have to create regular full backups on a weekly/monthy basis, and 2) limit the amount of incremental backups most people store.

Secondly, Macrium's deployment features are superb with SSD Trim, Rapid Delta Cloning and Rapid Delta Restore. Deploying to new hardware is extremely easy, and most importantly, works perfectly once the system is booted. SSD Trim is fantastic when going from a regular HDD to a SSD or SSHD as well as aiding in the longevity of the SSD/SSHD itself and makes the restore process much faster by being able to bypass the read-modify-write process. In combination with Rapid Delta Restore (only copies changed data blocks) makes restoring backups - even with 30+ incremental/differential backups in its backup chain - incredibly fast.

Thirdly, the ability to write PowerShell scripts to manage the software is extremely useful to those of us who may write (and love) PowerShell scripts. I personally write a PowerShell script for just about anything just because, well, I love PowerShell, so this is icing on the cake for me. As an example, having a script that will perform sequential backups at the time of your regular scheduled backup. This will allow you to only have 1 scheduled backup in Windows, but when the backup runs it will also perform any other additional backups, and without having to schedule them separately. It's truly a great feature for those with multiple harddrives, or file and folder backups, that do not want 5+ tasks scheduled at different times. So basically you can have a simple set of lines, for example:

And have it run backups 1-3 on a single scheduled task. Best part? Macrium Reflect can create PowerShell scripts right from the program itself. 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.

Fourthly, uninstalling Macrium does not require a separate tool like Acronis does. It does not add a bunch of services nor the probability of uninstalling it "wrong" rendering Windows' internal VSS corrupt. Besides that, Macrium's support is fantastic (Acronis' is not too stellar).

Lastly, Macrium has viBoot as an available download (which is free). This allows you to mount any backup image as a VHD and browse it. You can make changes to it if necessary and then run a full/differential/incremental backup right from viBoot. Of course both the main Reflect backup software and viBoot allows you to take any backup image and turn it into a VHD to use with Windows Hyper-V (or other software).

On the flip side, Acronis True Image definitely has a prettier GUI, and its file and folder backup option is easier to schedule though lacks independent file and folder backup and restore options that Macrium has. For example, being able to determine how you want reparse points to be handled more extensively.

Both have AES backup protection (if you decide to use it) which is great. Acronis has a sizable amount of options available for backup procedures. Acronis allows smartphone backups via its phone app. And as I stated above, Acronis' backups are generally smaller than Macrium (when the type of backup is identical). They're not much smaller, but they're smaller.

In conclusion, both are great for home users. Both will do your backups seamlessly and both have been proven to be reliable for disaster recovery. However, where Acronis has made its program nice to look at, Macrium has made theirs more and more reliable under any circumstance. I personally much prefer the features Macrium Reflect allots its users, especially for those running RAID and/or other somewhat nontraditional setups.

 

Another great feature using Macrium + viboot is the ability to easily take a current pc install, backup as a Macrium image, boot into it using Viboot, go to audit mode, and use sysprep to remove hardware drivers, then save image


Then you can restore image to real or virtual machines different to the original host pc, and reinstall it. This gives you a simple means of deploying image across different devices.

 

"...I think Acronis makes the process of creating boot media much easier..."
"...Macrium free is all you need to do backup/restore and you don't even need to create CD/USB to boot from..."
Yes, Acronis' usb or dvd boot often is a little bit easier to make than Macrium Reflect. However, it is a very good idea to make a Macrium Reflect usb and/or dvd boot. Never assume a dual-boot always will work.

 

Hi,

Exactly. You can even incorporate Macrium PE version on a FAT32 partition of the external back up drive and boot off of that too.
Also, always test your rescue media so you're certain it's bootable.

Cheers, *Wink

 

Used Acronis for Windows 7 and 8.1 stopped using it because incremental weekly backups corrupted routinely and one system backup failed and had to reinstall, this can't happen even once. Used Macrium to clone and setup OS, worked without bugs but would like to set clone size for possible larger drive or OS migration. Acronis 2015 a free Crucial OS migration software failed to work with BCDEasy or Windows P.E. Rescue Media would not restart but with a clean Windows 10 MBR using Windows 10 Rescue media would work. I looked up reviews and many say pass on Acronis as data migration because of corrupted results. Under a perfect world Acronis works but that never happens in a disaster.

 

Hi folks

When testing you also need to ensure rescue stuff is not only bootable -- but that the restore actually works -- no point in doing all these backups if when you come to use one it fails with Disk / I/O or other error !!!!.

Try it first on a VM -- simply on the VM set the ISO file as a bootable "Virtual" DVD and from the VM -->boot into firmware choose boot from the ISO file. Then see if your restore is OK.

Note -- if you are using HYPER-V you might have to use a shared network drive to access the image file -- direct USB connections are somewhat lacking in HYPER-V. If you use VBOX or VMWARE for running VM's then no probs attaching USB devices direct to the VM.

If testing on REAL hardware with a stand alone boot system make sure that any hardware RAID drivers are incorporated into the bootable media -- Macrium is fine with loading external drivers when creating boot media. Not sure about Acronis these days though.

Cheers
jimbo

 

Good point from Jimbo45. I was using windows image, and needed to restore due to a drive crash. Image works well but does not restore well (or at all?).
Solution was to create a VHD from the image, convert it, copy the partition to a new windows restore and then tell windows where to boot.
...A lot of work for what should have been a simple image restore.

 

I was a user of Acronis going back to before 2008. But several weeks ago I reached my limit with the crashes, required reinstalls to fix corrupted databases, its inability to remain connected to my two NAS units, and delays in shutting down windows because of "pending Acronis activities." After trying Macrium Free for a week I bought the paid version for all 4 of my PCs. The interface is simple and straightforward; it just works. Later this month Macrium will release a new version that will backup and restore even faster. You just can not beat it. If you have any doubts go to the Acronis support forum and read about all of the issues users are having.

 

Hello SoFine409,
Thank you for taking the time to share your review on Acronis software! My name is EkaterinaSurkova and I'm writing to you on behalf of Acronis Customer Central. I'm really sorry to know, that you've faced issues with our products. Reliability and protection of sensitive data are the core of our business and we are always striving to provide the best customer experience we can. Being our long-term customer would you give us a second chance? [Removed], so that we can raise a support ticket and help to address the described issues.

[Removed - All assistance must be provided in the open forum]

Have a great day!
Ekaterina Surkova
Acronis Customer Central

 

Acronis product support hasn't been great. I had problems removing low level disk drivers/filters two years ago. Acronis support declined to assist and told me to look on a user forum. After much Googling I eventually found a solution and solved the problem myself - no thanks to Acronis support. The original problem was poor Acronis software design since the uninstaller did not remove some important residual traces of Acronis software. See Solved Safe Removal of Acronis True Image Drivers

 

Hi SteveC. I read your thread about the issues of removing Acronis. It was interesting and I have a couple of observations of my own experience. When I ran the Acronis uninstaller I had none of the residual left overs that were noted in your referenced thread. That's the good news. Maybe Acronis has improved their uninstall routine.
Since I knew about the issue of residual traces from Acronis, my first attempt at uninstalling Acronis involved running the Acronis Cleanup Tool in lieu of simply using the programs uninstaller. Regrettably that caused major issues. VSS would no longer function and therefore I was unable to create either system restore points or use Macrium as it uses VSS to create a system snapshot. Fortunately I had made a full image backup from which I was able to do a recovery. After the restoration I uninstalled Acronis the normal way followed by an uninstall/reinstall Macrium and all went well. In fairness I must speculate that running the Cleanup Tool without first running the Acronis uninstaller and with having Marcium installed at the same time may have been contributing factors. That said I also have concerns about the Acronis Cleanup Tool. Glad we all have our systems running again.
Bob

 

In the end, the most undeniable reason for most users to use Macrium Reflect apart from the various technical points (that do not affect most users) is simply the base version is free for personal use. Frankly Acronis is not worth the money for most users when there are a number of quality free alternatives eg Macrium, Aoemi, Easeus, Veeam etc.

People can say you should not expect things to be free, but equally a company cannot expect people to pay for what people get for free. To use a paid version, the product has to offer something special to all users, not just a small minority and (imo) Acronis fails to do that.

 

Hi Ekaterina, and thank you for responding. Since I have uninstalled Acronis from my 4 PCs, I see no point in opening a support ticket but the offer is greatly appreciated. That said, I am willing to search through a full image backups of a point in time when Acronis 2015 was installed on my system and share with you any logs that might be helpful in improving your product. Please let me know specifically what logs/file might be helpful and where I can email them.

For your benefit the most important issue that I had when I was using Acronis was that of connecting to and maintain a connection my NAS units. Connections where always slow to establish and would sometimes be lost while validating. Retrying them would always reestablish the connection but that required me to be at the keyboard during the entire backup and validation process. The other issue that I had was it was never possible to delete an existing backup through the interface. Trying to do so caused the Acronis interface to become unresponsive. On several occasions this resulted in a corrupted database and the need to reinstall the program and add all the backups to the menu, one at a time. I believe that this is another manifestation of loosing connection to the NAS. Deleting backups therefore required a two-step process, first removing them from the menu and then manually deleting them from the destination. In addition connecting to the NAS destination was especially difficult from the USB Rescue environment. It was painfully slow and required many attempts to prompt Acronis to search for locations.

Again thanks for your offer to help and let me know if you need any logs from me.
BTW, you have a beautiful name.

 

See the thread on Macrium V7, and it is obvious the new version will be so far ahead of any other tool. As our resident guru Kari says, integrating ViBoot into Reflect is phenomenal.

In fact, the new version looks so great, I will seriously consider buying a licence rather than just using the free version - partly as a thanks to Macrium for their great and continually improving tool over the years.

Acronis - eat your heart out!

 

Hi,

Precisely. I feel exactly the same way.

Cheers, *Wink