Windows 10: View Poll Results: What backup / imaging software you use?

After running Acronis for years, and kept seeing Acronis becoming more bloated on every new version they released, I changed to Macrium Reflect about 1 year ago now. MR does a great job, does need or take up huge amounts of hard drive space, does not load, or need 3 or 4 extra apps to run, as does Acronis. (Uses a lot less memory) Makes a bootable Rescue Media Disk, which is a MUST have. Does all this and its FREE. Very dependable software. Highly recommend on here by lots of our members. *Smile

 

I have always been focused on recovery since in my previous life, that is what I specialized in. In the PC world I started using Ghost. It worked great, but it became difficult to use due to new hardware technologies and many times it never did get updated. I searched for a replacement and landed on Acronis. I started with version 8 and upgraded several times to ATI2014. There it was used on a Windows 7 Desktop system and really worked well with no issues. My old laptop had died 2 years ago so I got a new one which had Windows 8 installed. Unknown to me, ATI2014 would not support Windows 8. I had to upgrade to ATI2015.

Surprise, the UI was in my mind poorly designed. It worked under Windows 8.1 but it didn't have support for USB 3.0 on the Linux recovery side. I joined a very large vocal group on their user forums complaining about the inability to restore your system. The alternate solution was to build their PE disk, but its rather convoluted, but I did and it worked. Since I really was not happy with ATI2015, I started a search for other backup solution. They included Acronis, Aomei, Easytodo, Macrum and a couple of other not widely used products. I bench marked them all for performance, ease of use and most importantly the recovery. All passed the last test with the exception of 2 of the lessor known products. Since I already had purchased Acronis, I continued to use it, but I also perform similar backup steps with Aomei and Macrum Free version.

Shortly there after Windows 10 was announced and of course I tried several Preview version and install the upgrade on the Win 8.1 laptop. All of the backup products were tested under Win 10 and all worked just fine. However I decided to keep Win 7 on my desktop until the foreseeable future. 2.5 months ago, the Win 7 system died (mother board - it was 8 years old). So I built a new system and installed Window 10 Pro on it + ATI2015 + Macrum + Aomei. Both Macrum and Aomei functioned properly, ATI2015 did not. Its Linux recovery literally crashed trying to access a USB 3.0 backup device and the newly rebuilt PE disk, didn't even see the USB 3.0 devices. It seems that their PE builder uses Win 8.1 ADK, which does not support these new USB 3.0 Devices. I needed to make a decision, which was to Purchase Macrum Reflect Home (4 Lic versions).

I always have been a fan of Macrum's UI and its functionality. It is now on both of my W10 systems as the primary backup tool.

Again as several others have stated, If I win, I will donate the version to who ever needs it the most.

 

I'm back using Macrium Reflect.

I have tried Windows 7 built in backup. It's very limited in my opinion
About a year ago I tried Aomei for some time. I don't remember why I didn't stick with it.
Probably in a year their have been many changes in Aomei. When I get in the mood I will give Aomei another try.
Just a few weeks ago I tried EaseUS.
I do all my backups SSD to SSD on one computer and SSD to Hard drive on the other.
What I notice was when the settings in EaseUS and Macrium were as close as I could get them, Macrium was over twice as fast as EaseUS.
Macrium Reflect was also over twice as fast when doing Clones also.
Both programs worked as they should. The speed was the only difference I noticed.

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Something I did notice. When using Disk Management formatting getting ready for use with a backup program their was always a little bit left on the formatted drive that sometimes caused a problem.
When I format using Mini Tool it does a cleaner job leaving nothing behind. Things seem to work better using Macrium Reflect and Mini Tool in conjunction with each other.

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Hi All,
Glad to know you haven't forgotten me. Busy with other things atm, so haven't been posting much.

I think I was the first to enthuse about macrium, way back in the Vista days over on VF. It was then picked up by Shawn and others. Became very popular on that forum, then transferred to SF and here. At the time, I think it was the only free imaging solution.

 

Yeah Si, and here I am portraying you as Aomei... shame on me... LOL!

 

I do use Aomei. Switched from macrium a while ago. They both do the job. Just some difference in features, UI, etc.

 

I had used the inbuilt backup on previous Windows versions but more often I had problems using it on Windows 10, used Macrium free version & recently it got me out of a problem. Wouldn't be without it now.

 

I have been using Retrospect Professional, now Retrospect Desktop. Retrospect: Backup Software for Small Businesses. More advanced features than a simple backup program. Advanced filtering/selecting. Can restore an earlier version of a file by date. Has saved my butt more than once.

There are also server- and multi-server versions for business. Also support Linux, Solaris, MacOS, etc.

I back up my entire LAN from my desktop system.

 

I started using the free version of macrium on my little home server about 2 months back.

Last month my os drive decided to stop working. Macrium to the rescue, did a restore and my server was up and running in no time.

I am impressed with Macrium and would not mind winning a licence. /Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

 

Macrium for me, the most stable backup software that doesn't let down and doesn't cause boot problems but fixes them *Smile

 

Yep! If you boot to the recovery media you have the option to automatically repair Windows boot loader, plus another lesser known option is inide of Windows you can also fix VSS(Volume Shadow Copy Service) problems:

 

I use Paragon Hard Disk Manager Pro. I love the fact that it offers a complete solution to all backup and hard disk management needs. And it's backup engine is rock stable, I've not encountered a single error so far, images are always restorable. I formerly worked with Acronis True Image but at some point all my images became corrupted so I lost faith in it.

 

Macrium, SyncToy and robocopy scripts

 

For people like John and I who don't have a lot to backup a Clone might be the answer.

A Clone allows one to just boot into it and your on your way to happy computing again.
No need for a clean install with all those pesky upgrades and updates.

 

Me too, very easy program to use and never had any problem with it *Biggrin