RJM62
Touchdown! Greaser!
- Joined
- Jun 15, 2007
- Messages
- 13,157
- Location
- Upstate New York
- Display Name
Display name:
Geek on the Hill
I've been testing Macrium Reflect backup software for not quite two weeks of a 30-day trial. The software having passed every test I could hurl at it, I decided to buy it last night.
The short version: This software does everything it's supposed to do, and does it reliably and with no drama. I also tossed a support question at the publisher as part of the test and got a reply in about 20 minutes.
The slightly longer version: Macrium Reflect rivals higher-priced backup solutions in its functionality, options, and reliability. It also has a nice, intuitive interface, decent documentation, and sensible options. It installed and has run flawlessly on my Win10Pro machine (Intel i5-based).
Macrium Reflect creates image backups, bootable clones, and file / folder backups. It supports differential and incremental images and rapid cloning once the first clone is made. Forensic imaging and cloning (even unused sectors will be backed up) is also supported as an option. All functions can be scheduled to run unattended, and multiple schedules are supported. Image password-protection and password-encryption is supported, which I highly recommend given the current prevalence of ransomware.
The backups do seem to take more time than Acronis, and the images are a little bigger using the default (medium) compression. My initial 178GB image took a bit under 30 minutes (writing to a USB 3.0 external HD) and took up about 109 GB. The daily incrementals take two or three minutes. I haven't timed the weekly differentials. Refreshing the clone after about a week took about 10 minutes, including verification. Images can be mounted, assembled, browsed, and made writable if needed.
Images and file/folder backups can be made to a local disk, external hard drive, or network share. I don't know if tape drives are supported. Clones, of course, must be made to a hard drive that is compatible with the machine being backed up.
The recovery environment can be burned to a bootable CD,* written to a bootable flash drive, and/or or installed as a Window boot option. Of course, the media should be tested to make sure it boots and that the backups are accessible (especially if backing up to a network share). The recovery environment is based on WinPE and the interface is intuitive and straightforward.
Macrium also offers an almost fully-functional free trial (for obvious reasons, the restore to new hardware function is disabled in the trial) that does NOT require a credit card.
The software is available in multiple versions (Home, Workstation, etc.). They also offer a free version for home use that doesn't support incremental or differential backups, restore to new hardware, or possibly some other features (I didn't test it).
Long story short, I really can't find anything I don't like about this software. It does what it's supposed to do and does it better than some much-more expensive backup solutions that I've tried. If you're looking for a local backup solution, I suggest you check it out.
Rich
-------------------
* In a previous thread, I'd mentioned that the boot CD didn't work. However, I tried it again and found that the problem was actually an error on my part in setting up the BIOS boot order.
The short version: This software does everything it's supposed to do, and does it reliably and with no drama. I also tossed a support question at the publisher as part of the test and got a reply in about 20 minutes.
The slightly longer version: Macrium Reflect rivals higher-priced backup solutions in its functionality, options, and reliability. It also has a nice, intuitive interface, decent documentation, and sensible options. It installed and has run flawlessly on my Win10Pro machine (Intel i5-based).
Macrium Reflect creates image backups, bootable clones, and file / folder backups. It supports differential and incremental images and rapid cloning once the first clone is made. Forensic imaging and cloning (even unused sectors will be backed up) is also supported as an option. All functions can be scheduled to run unattended, and multiple schedules are supported. Image password-protection and password-encryption is supported, which I highly recommend given the current prevalence of ransomware.
The backups do seem to take more time than Acronis, and the images are a little bigger using the default (medium) compression. My initial 178GB image took a bit under 30 minutes (writing to a USB 3.0 external HD) and took up about 109 GB. The daily incrementals take two or three minutes. I haven't timed the weekly differentials. Refreshing the clone after about a week took about 10 minutes, including verification. Images can be mounted, assembled, browsed, and made writable if needed.
Images and file/folder backups can be made to a local disk, external hard drive, or network share. I don't know if tape drives are supported. Clones, of course, must be made to a hard drive that is compatible with the machine being backed up.
The recovery environment can be burned to a bootable CD,* written to a bootable flash drive, and/or or installed as a Window boot option. Of course, the media should be tested to make sure it boots and that the backups are accessible (especially if backing up to a network share). The recovery environment is based on WinPE and the interface is intuitive and straightforward.
Macrium also offers an almost fully-functional free trial (for obvious reasons, the restore to new hardware function is disabled in the trial) that does NOT require a credit card.
The software is available in multiple versions (Home, Workstation, etc.). They also offer a free version for home use that doesn't support incremental or differential backups, restore to new hardware, or possibly some other features (I didn't test it).
Long story short, I really can't find anything I don't like about this software. It does what it's supposed to do and does it better than some much-more expensive backup solutions that I've tried. If you're looking for a local backup solution, I suggest you check it out.
Rich
-------------------
* In a previous thread, I'd mentioned that the boot CD didn't work. However, I tried it again and found that the problem was actually an error on my part in setting up the BIOS boot order.