Windows 10: Backup/Recovery tools - Acronis vs Macrium

Please forgive me for not reading the whole "Window 10 Recovery Tools" thread before posting this, but that's a very long thread.

I am a long time user of Acronis True Image. Lately I've run into a few peculiarities that have me looking at alternatives. A number of people have recommended the free version Macrium Reflect, but I need the paid version to meat my requirements. I would like more information to help me decide. (Other products can be suggested, of course.)

My requirements are:

• I have to run the backups on 3 devices - 2 desktops and 1 laptop.
• The laptop backup goes to a NAS drive.
• I need to run full disk image backups on all 3 devices.
• I need to run file/folder backups of some files on the NAS drive from one of the PCs.

I've done 1 recovery using Macrium and 2 using Acronis. I had a couple false starts with Acronis because understand the process. I don't remember how easy the Macrium process was. I found configuring the backup process less straightforward with Macrium than with Acronis, but I recently discovered that Acronis has an exclusion list and was excluding files from its "Entire PC" backups. (Grrr!) All recoveries were successful.

I've had to recover old data a number of times. I've done it successfully from the Acronis backup and have walked through the process with the Macrium. Both work with no problem. Macrium mounts the backup image faster than Acronis, but I don't think it gives an option of the drive letter to use in mounting.

Tthe free version of Macrium Reflect does not take file/folder backups, and the cost of a 3 (actually 4) device license for Macrium Home costs quit a bit more than a 3 platform license for Acronis.

The Acronis doc says only file/folder backups can be taken to a NAS, but I'm taking "Entire PC" drive backups of the laptop to my NAS drive. I know for a fact that the Acronis stand-alone recovery systems cannot access a NAS drive. I would have to copy the backup to another drive before doing a drive recovery. I have not idea what the Macriun capabilities are regarding NAS.

I suspect I will continue using Acronis, but I would like to hear what other people think I should do.

:)

 

Win 10 Oem pre-installed inaccessible_boot_device

To restore an Acronis WD Edition partition backup you need an Acronis Recovery CD.

Image Backups are not interchangeable, each product (Acronis, EaseUS, Macrium, Paragon and Windows) has it's own format for the Image Backup file. Therefore you must create a "Recovery CD" using each product's utility to create the CD to be able to restore
their backup to your disk drive.

Example: Acronis image backup file stored on an external USB drive requires an Acronis recovery cd (which you boot from) to restore the Acronis backup to your disk drive.

:
http://www.pagestart.com

 

How do I backup to an external hard drive?

Use a backup program such as Acronis True Image Home or Macrium.

 

Macrium free is OK for #'s 1-3, for #4 it will not backup individual files but why would that be an issue? a copy/paste script will do the job...

 

Or use File History Backup which is built into Windows for #4 designed to do this.

 

I just tried that. I had ignored it in the past because I thought it allowed only the standard user folders and libraries. I just tried adding some of the folders on my NAS drive and it failed with error code 0x80070032. I looked for possible causes but could find none that match. (Yes, I tried turning off my security package.) I'll try this again later, but continue using Acronis for now.

 

BTW, in item #2 I should have said "over wireless". I've read that Macrium does not support this. Acronis doesn't support it, either. However, I've read a couple posting that describe adding wireless support to WinPE so I suspect the capability could be added. I think the Macrium recovery system is WinPE-based; I know that Acronis has both a Linux-based and a WinPE-based recovery system. Do people mod the Macrium recovery system? I know people mod the Acronis WinPE recovery tool so I don't see why this support could not be added.

 

For No# 4 you can use SyncBack Free , or one of the two paid Versions.... it does Scheduled as well and seems to work well ,though I just upgrade to Win10 and have Run it on 10 yet.

 

I recommend Paragon Hard Disk Manager Pro. It's not exactly cheap but very reliable and comes with every feature one can imagine.

 

Backing up over wifi is likely to be very slow. Probably easier just to backup image to an attached drive, and manually copy over wifi to external target at your leisure.

 

It's a bit slow, but not unreasonable - especially for incremental backups. What you described would certainly be faster, but there are some logistics problems. If by "attached drive" you mean an external drive, well, we don't usually have one attached to the laptop. There's no reason we couldn't just attach one whenever we want to take a backup. (That would mess up any scheduled backup, but the laptop is powered up so irregularly that a schedule wouldn't work anyway.) If by "attached drive" you mean an additional internal drive, we don't have one. We could carve out a 2nd partition in the one drive we have - essentially cut the drive in half - and backup to that partition, but then we would have the same problems of copying off of the laptop (over wifi) that we have with backing up over wifi.

 

You don't want to put backups or System Images on the same physical Drive , even if on a different partition , the drive dies and you lose both sets of Data that way.

 

Hi - I have tried using Acronis True Image 2016 to clone my new gaming laptop SSD running Win 10 Home BUT (as I had run into problems attempting to do so) I have now found from my local computer service tech that the present build of Win 10 (and Win 10 Home??) do not as yet permit the cloning process? I too, have been a long time user of Acronis cloning software, that is until now!

Acronis recommendation was to place the new (empty SSD) in the computer by removing the "old SSD" and then cloning if from the "old SSD" - however doing this would wipe out my two year manufactrer's warranty on my laptop. Hope this is of news for you. Cheers.

 

The backup to a second partition on the same drive would have just been a temporary staging area before the backup could be copied somewhere else. But that option buys nothing: if I have time to transmit the copy the backup across wifi, I have time to take the backup across wifi.

 

Difference is in resources used, and reliability.

I agree that backing up to a second partition is not ideal but pretty much ok if just a temporary stopgap.

The backup will be fairly quick compared with a wifi backup. Backing up over wifi will consume more resources and if it fails eg a glitch in wifi, yiu have to restaet the backup again.

With a straight copy, it will be faster, using wifi to its limit, and if it fails you still have the backup in place.

Actually you can backup over wifi to a NAS if you wifi bridge link two routers - as far as winpe is concerned you are using ethernet.

Also, backing up over wifi is afaik only an issue in the winpe environment.