Windows 10: Deciding between AOMEI or Macrium...basic Backup

I'll second that!

 

Got my vote too!!! Best there is *Smile

 

Can anyone comment on Macrium Image Guardian which is only in the paid version? Supposed to thwart ransomeware. If it works, it seems like a no brainer to pay for it...

 

Macrium Image Guardian - KnowledgeBase v7 - Macrium Reflect Knowledgebase - KnowledgeBase v7 - Macrium Reflect Knowledgebase

- it doesn't protect your PC, only the image files.

If you keep your image files offline, that's pretty good protection.

 

Well, I use Aomei Backupper Standard for months and I haven't find any flaw of this tiny program, which maybe because I have not that much complicated and advanced requirements. All I want is to backup my PC as well as personal stuff to one external drive. Aomei does incremental backup and weekly backup which happen to be my favorite. And it is free. If the OP wants a solution for basic backup, Aomei is not a bad choice.

 

"...Macrium Image Guardian will protect all existing local backup files from un-authorized modification or deletion..."
Yep, I had to temporarily turn off MIG in order to delete a couple of old MR images, to make room for new ones on my external media.

 

Yes I'll throw in with the MR crowd, with the 1709 release, I created an image and have attempted 4 times now with out success to install this update. That 4 times I have restored this image I created just before running the 1709 upgrade. I'm perfect until I figure out why 1709 won't work for me.
This has been true for me since 2012 when I had to leave Acronis because they were unable to restore a booting UEFI Image. I won't look back until MR loses interest in the program and allows it to start failing.

 

AOMEI is really good. For full backups, it runs a little faster than Macrium, but on Incremental or Differential backups, it is painfully slow vs Macrium. Generating a 4gb incremental file, takes about 2-3 minutes in Macrium and 35 minutes in AOMEI.

 

I use Macrium, a purchased V6 version. I tried the free V7 but ran into a conflict after the Fall Creator's upgrade so I went back to my V6.

The V7 problem will probably only show up if you use a system monitor such as the "Win Patrol" that I use. With V7 it has an entry in the startup and after the Fall Creator's upgrade every time I started Win I would get a pop up notice from Win Patrol about a "new" Macrium startup program. I checked the Win Patrol pop up to allow but still every time I booted Windows I would get the notice. I finally got tired of it and went back to V6. V6 does everything I need. As far as the "problem", whether its actually Macrium or Win Patrol or even Win 10??? Doesn't matter, for me. But, I still recommend Macrium Reflect.

 

I'm another that is now running AOMEI, mainly because of the rumoured imminent demise of Windows own utility (although it made it through to the Fall Update).

AOMEI is the quickest of any program I have used. A couple of minutes to image the C drive and around 1 min for subsequent incremental images. Restores seem to take a couple of minutes to initialise and load the required files (running from within Windows) but then carry out the restore very quickly, just another couple of minutes with an SSD.

Like Macrium and also Windows own imaging utility, AOMEI used with the default Windows VSS technology does not correctly backup and restore a W10 system. No one seems to care or bother over this which I find slightly bizarre......

You will find certain files missing such as Windows Update history and certain personalised settings relating to Photo Gallery and user created albums. There could well be more but these are the ones I have encountered. This is because all these programs use the Windows provided VSS routine. In order to overcome this you should select AOMEI's own proprietary VSS technology from the 'options' and apply it as a global setting.

AOMEI is also feature rich offering various file/folder backup options alongside system imaging, and as a bonus has excellent and helpful support.

 

I have the paid version of AOMEI Backer Upper Pro. It is a good program. On my 250 GB SSD to external HD, it takes about 4 minuets to do about a 40 GB backup. I have had excellent customer support, and very fast. It may be there, but I haven't found how to retrieve just one file from the backup, like you could with Nero Backup.

 

Utilities, Explore Image

Page 36 of the Help file available from Menu, User Manual top right of its GUI.




Last I tried ( over a year ago) its images of Windows weren't compatible with Laplink and Easeus programs used to automatically install programs to a new PC or OS build from an image of the previous one. Support confirmed this. May have been corrected by now..? But that won't bother most people.

I didn't like some of the very obscure error messages or the way it failed to handle even the simple case of starting to create an image without the USB drive even connected, and failing to give an appropriate error message.

However it has a much simpler GUI than Macrium.

Beware it keeps backup jobs on C: - which may not be ideal. Maybe that can be moved now.

 

Page 36 of the Help file available from Menu, User Manual top right of its GUI.
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Thanks dalchina, I had not got that far. It works, I tried it.

 

Another great Macrium feature is ViBoot where you can run an existing image backup as a hyper-v VM. The other day, I wanted to check some previous settings, loaded up an image backup in hyper-v and got answer in a few minutes. This feature is in free version.