Windows 10: Acronis True Image vs Macrium Reflect

Hi there

I'm not so sure if you need all these extra things in a basic backup and recovery --a simple and easy backup that's what most people need anyway.

I always boot from bootable media -- I don't need to be running Windows when taking an image and certainly not when restoring both of which take what - 15 mins at most with an SSD - and also you don't get stupid errors when your Windows HDD is nearly full of V.S.S errors and the like because the backup hasn't got space for the Volume snapshot or partition lock. This problem is similar to pretty well all backup products run from within a running Windows system though - not particularly a Macrium problem.

It's hard enough to get the average user to do Backups anyway --just look at the zillions of posts where users have had problems (especially on the A/V section) which could have been simply resolved at a stroke - probably at the most within an hour - usually far less -- had they just taken a basic backup.

Users who know what they are doing or are a bit more "Computer Savvy" and possibly have bigger LANS / NAS boxes etc might need all these extra features but IMO Macrium is probably pitching at the wrong set of users. Corporate / Enterprise / SME's also need a more sophisticated product and these sorts of features might be just what is wanted.

I can't think of ANY reason why I'd need to either upgrade currently or buy the PAID product - sorry Macrium - I think the Free product is good - but you should be aiming your pitch at the Millions who never take backups - some of those might go for the paid versions later.

I'd also see if you can get a Linux version out as loads of people are using things like Linux on a NAS box. There are tools on Linux available for backing up regularly - but not really for casual users so a gap in the market is obvious here.

On Linux I'm using GRsync in case there's anybody from Macrium looking - so as this is free you can see what you are up against.

To the Acronis support person - thanks for getting back -- support in the past was hopeless -- but I gave up using your product a while ago - not because it was expensive or unreliable - but the sheer nonsense and difficulty of your activation system (this was back several years) just made me bin the product and look for alternatives -- and until I became a user of several NAS systems I was quite happy with Free Macrium -- did exactly what it said on the tin (and a bit more if you knew where to look).

It's nice also to see support personnel from these companies read the Forums !!!.

(Wish people from B.T would too -- but that's another issue -- I believe it's popularly known in the UK as Bovine Telecomm or B/S Telecomm !!).

Cheers
jimbo

 

When I moved from Acronis to Macrium, I first tried the Macrium free version. It does the backups, but I bought the package anyway. My way of supporting the company. If we all just used the free version eventually it would go away.

A comment on removing Acronis. The last version I had was the 2013 version (with Win 7). I removed Acronis and ran their clean up tool. I still had a lot of registry entries that I had to remove manually to fully get rid of Acronis. There were so many that I had considered doing a "clean" install of Win 7 but I manually edited the registry and got rid of them.

 

That's the same problem I had - see post 23 above.

 

Hi there

That's not true generally -- usually a PAID for version is aimed at serious I.T users / Enterprises etc.

A Free version might bring notice to some of the buyers in these large corporations about the software which they might never have heard of. Word of mouth is often the best and most effective way of advertising (and the cheapest).

In general if you look at typical software bought by large I.T shops for office computers you have to say on the whole UGH !!!! I have much better at home.

There's NO POINT (unless you are a multi-lottery winner) in simply spending money buying features you don't need just because you feel duty bound to the company -- It's like donating a few more cents to say SHELL every time you fill up with Gas.

Cheers
jimbo

 

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.

 

Very well written post, I actually did the same as you, went from the bloat ridden Acronis to Macrium, also bought it. Never looked back. Very good post sir!!!! *Thumbs*Thumbs

 

The free version of V6 supports differential backups since day it was released (end 2015). They are not quite as space efficient as incremental backups but still way smaller than full backups.

 

Hi there

These days when you can get several TB of HDD for not much money - I don't think saving even a GB or so on a backup is significant any more --what IS important that the backup works reliably and runs reasonably quickly. In that aspect Macrium performs MORE than adequately.

However if companies want to add more features - I'd love something that replicates the Linux GUI version of rsync -- GRSYNC
which apart from all sorts of choices allows me to copy files from Directory / HDD to another one which don't exist on the target / are older etc etc. Should be easy to replicate from the backup image but I don't see any function like that though - unless I've missed something.

Cheers
jimbo

 

Not sure exactly what you are saying about copying files but it is easy enough to use xcopy or robocopy commands that will copy files from one directory to another only if files are newer or do not exist on target directory i.e.files the same are not updated.

 

Hi there

yes there's plenty of software - but I was thinking wouldn't it be nice if one could use 1 piece of software -- after all these companies add more and more "features" often non of which I want or need !!!! - and the restore part of Macrium would seem an obvious place to have this feature !!

Typical example of over bloat and "feature-itus" was NERO - so much bloat after a very good initial product -- now it's almost an OS in its own right !!!!!!.

Cheers
jimbo

 

Good to read the well informed contributions in this thread. A timely one for me. I ran into problems with Win 7 failing to load. Tried a few things but concluded, reluctantly, that l'd have to go for the nuclear option. I'm a reasonably well informed PC user but not a professional IT person so it's possible that a few well chosen command line instructions wld have saved me all the bother. Anyway l'd faithfully taken images of my OS Partition using Acronis True Image 2013 and with the recovery disc and fingers crossed l set restore to work. All seemed to go well until the end when the dreaded word " failure" appeared. chkdsk found literally thousands of errors. I could have tried again with Acronis but decided to do a clean Win 7 install. Not difficult but very, very time consuming.

As a home user l just want my backup and restore software to work reliably. In this instance Acronis let me down leading to many hours extra work, although in fairness the Acronis backups did allow me to restore some critical files stored on the C partition.

My Acronis product is a few years old but is built to work with Win 7. Have considered buying the latest version but despite the praises of some PC mags user experience of Acronis seems to be mixed at best.

I'm now trying Macrium Reflect free and backups seem to work very well although l notice a few VSS error messages in the log? Not sure whether l can safely ignore these. The recovery disc works but only when l come to do a system restore will I really find out how good Macrium is. I have a NAS and various backup programmes for my personal data.

Not sure whether it was worth the time spent but a clean Win 7 install does seem to have improved my PC's performance. I must resist the temptation in future to install free programmes which often turn out to be troublesome.

My biggest bugbear was getting Bluetooth to work so I could play music from Spotify through my hifi speakers. Got there in the end but what a pain. If artificial intelligence and algorithms etc . are so wonderful why do we all spend so much time trying to get Windows to work.

Two questions if I may:

1) I tried in one operation to restore the recovery, hidden and OS partitions with Acronis. Was this a mistake ? Shld l just have restored the OS ?

2) I'm thinking about installing a second HD on my PC to keep the OS image. Is it possible in the event of disaster to switch to making the backup image bootable ? Sure it's not that simple !

David

 

hi David, regarding question 1, restoring all the partitions at once is fine. I have done that many times with Acronis and Macrium. Insofar as the VSS errors, the paid version of Macrium has a menu option for repairing VSS. You can give that a try but as long as you verify the image as soon as it's made you will be fine. You can also avoid using VSS by making your images by booting to the Macrium Rescue USB stick. Regarding question 2 I'll leave that to someone else who is more knowledgeable about such things but I will say that it's always better IMO to have you images stored separately from your PC. I use a NAS as well. As long as the NAS is shut off except for running or restoring images your backups are protected from ransomware.
Bob

 

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,

 

Which version are you evaluating?

Assuming it is a paid version, why not seek support from its own support forum where the real experts should be able to advise?

 

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