Question Anyone use Macrium 7 to restore a Windows 11 installation?

[andrepartthree]

Hi guys .. I know this is a rather strange question and people will ask " Why not just buy macrium reflect 8?" (which I do plan on doing I just don't have enough money for licenses for all six PC's 😛 . will get to that in a minute)

So I was lucky enough to have Macrium Reflect 7 (free version) and so far it installs on my daughter's Win 11 desktop PC which I built myself (so no proprietary Dell or Lenovo or whatever software on the daughter desktop just my own purchased Win product key and a clean Win 11 installation) and macrium reflect 7 (free) also installs on my two acer win 11 laptops and generates backups without any problems.. but I haven't had the guts to actually test it and see if it will successfully restore a Win 11 backup. I was wondering if anyone had tested this and if so if it worked for them in a Win 11 environment?

I do absolutely plan on buying four Macrium 8 licenses for our three desktop PC's and one laptop my wife's own .. but even with the Macrium Black Friday sale prices that I'm desperately hoping they do again this Black Friday 2023 which (hopefully) drops the prices to $35 a license, $140 on four licenses is the most I can afford.. I don't want to whine or bore people with my financial woes but.. at times it's not fun living in Florida 🙁 .. our car insurance and house insurance prices have effectively doubled (insurance companies HATE Florida for a variety of reasons) and when you combine that with putting two kids through college it really puts a strain on the old wallet. Needless to say the insurance woes happened BEFORE I dropped money on six PC's (except for the two laptops for my kids which I was forced to buy them for school purposes)

So I'm getting a Macrium Reflect 8 license for the three desktop PC's (all are ones I built myself with the Win product key I bought myself that works) .. and a Reflect 8 license for my wife's acer laptop when I upgrade it to Win 11 only because I know she's going to save documents on the C drive instead of on the secondary drive like I keep hoping she will thus the need for backup software ... I'm not too concerned about those PC's far as Win 11 compatibility.

But as far as the daughter and son acer laptops I plan to just cross my fingers and hope that 1) reflect 7 free edition works fine on my son and daughter's Win 11 acer laptops should I need it to restore a Win 11 backup and 2) if not just use the acer bootable rescue media (usb thumb drives) I created and at least restore the son and daughter laptops to their original factory condition (not the greatest outcome)

Sorry yet another long wall of text I know I apologize I'm infamous for those.. basically just wondering if anyone can confirm they've used successfully used Macrium 7 free on a laptop running Win 11 to restore a Win 11 installation (doesn't have to be Acer, HP, compaq, some laptop sold to you by a manufacturer) and they've succeeded in restoring Win 11 from the backup onto the laptop.

thanks so very much to anyone who reads this and responds

 

[USAFRet]

I've used v7 to restore an OS drive.
Win 10, not 11.

But I see no reason why it would not work with 11.


In addition, my v7 Free installs upgraded to v8, no problem.

 

[aldan]

yep it works on win11 as well.ive been using the free version for like 8 years and its never let me down.no need for the paid version than i can see.

 

[andrepartthree]

I've used v7 to restore an OS drive.
Win 10, not 11.

But I see no reason why it would not work with 11.


In addition, my v7 Free installs upgraded to v8, no problem.

Thank you so much for your quick reply ... I can always count on your kindness and assistance as I have in the past so many times

Yep I had the same experience, the free version of v7 restored my Win 10 installation without any problems (granted that was on a desktop PC I built myself no idea how Macrium would perform with an acer laptop , if Acer has some sort of crazy software/bios built in that would mess with this) .. so I found myself hoping Win 10 and Win 11 are similar enough (I've heard some saying Win 11 is just "Win 10 with more bells and whistles" ) such that v7 free would restore OS drives on Win 11 too.

I was wondering though... I know in my case when I upgrade from V7 free to v8 , it works for at most 45 days (30 days then they give you 15 more for free) then the functionality just stops you cannot make new backups after that... I was wondering if that was your experience as well? To be clear I'm talking about an upgrade to free v8 without paying for a license.

 

[andrepartthree]

yep it works on win11 as well.ive been using the free version for like 8 years and its never let me down.no need for the paid version than i can see.

thank you Adlan this is very reassuring ... I do find myself wondering if for free version 7 users if it will start "looking" online and just stop working after a while if Macrium Reflect tells it to at some point in the future should Macrium decide they want "paid users only" (I could be wrong of course they offered the product for free for many years from what I've heard which was very generous of them ! ) ... although I have told Macrium not to bother trying to upgrade itself to v8 since I've found this results in it becoming an, at most, 45 day trial period before it stops being able to make backups completely...

The free version you are using.. have you ever used it to restore a Win 11 laptop by any chance?

 

[USAFRet]

I was wondering though... I know in my case when I upgrade from V7 free to v8 , it works for at most 45 days (30 days then they give you 15 more for free) then the functionality just stops you cannot make new backups after that... I was wondering if that was your experience as well? To be clear I'm talking about an upgrade to free v8 without paying for a license.

I have a paid license on my main system, free on all the others.

The laptop I'm using right now has v8, free.
No 30 (or 45) day limit.

 

[andrepartthree]

I have a paid license on my main system, free on all the others.

The laptop I'm using right now has v8, free.
No 30 (or 45) day limit.

thanks for that .. (scratches head).. the strange thing though is that a while back when I headed over to Macrium Reflect's website it mentions they only offer version 8 as a 30 day trial

Macrium Reflect Home | The complete backup solution for personal use.

The complete backup solution for personal use. Protect documents, data and operating systems using our upgraded Reflect X technology.

www.macrium.com

I downloaded it, installed it and sure enough after the 30 days they said "time's up " .. they did extend it by another 15 days and then that was it I couldn't create any more backups using Macrium 8 after that... I wonder if maybe Macrium 8 was free when it first came out and at some point they stopped offering it for free ...but "grandfathered" in the version that was free to those lucky enough to download/install it at the time so it went on being free ?

The systems you are using it on (and so sorry to be bothering you with this you've been so kind answering all my dumb questions on here in the past ) .. do they include laptops made by some manufacturer (acer, HP, compaq, that sort of thing) by any chance? I find myself wondering if said manufacturers would weave some sort of annoying (accidental ) restriction into their "version" of Windows and/or the BIOS to stop Macrium from restoring images properly.

Honestly I'm also worried about Macrium at some point stopping the free ride for us free users of Macrium 7 .. I could be wrong but.. I am guessing Macrium 7 free checks online with Macrium's servers every time you use it? If that's true I'm wondering if at some point Macrium will say "nope you can't do that anymore free user buy a license ! " .. if it wasn't for that worry I would just buy one license so I can say I supported them financially and use free Macrium 7 on the five other PC's I mentioned (which I have to admit would be a VERY attractive option if I could get away with it, I would love to support Macrium more than just the cost of one half price license come Black Friday but I'm serious these insurance hikes in Florida are killing our wallets 😛 .. sorry I know I'm whining again it's tough for everyone everywhere right now money-wise )

 

[USAFRet]

That is the state for NEW installs, today.

It wasn't always like that.

 

[aldan]

thank you Adlan this is very reassuring ... I do find myself wondering if for free version 7 users if it will start "looking" online and just stop working after a while if Macrium Reflect tells it to at some point in the future should Macrium decide they want "paid users only" (I could be wrong of course they offered the product for free for many years from what I've heard which was very generous of them ! ) ... although I have told Macrium not to bother trying to upgrade itself to v8 since I've found this results in it becoming an, at most, 45 day trial period before it stops being able to make backups completely...

The free version you are using.. have you ever used it to restore a Win 11 laptop by any chance?

yes,my wifes old dell laptop.went without a hitch.

 

[andrepartthree]

yes,my wifes old dell laptop.went without a hitch.

thanks so much for that Aldan .. that's incredibly reassuring, that Macrium works on a laptop despite the limitations I'm guessing a manufacturer puts on said laptop too

You mentioned it was an older laptop.. do you mind me asking what version of Windows (10, 7, 8 ) it was running? (not sure if you upgraded it to Win 11?) ..

 

[aldan]

updraded to win 11.

 

[andrepartthree]

updraded to win 11.

got it .. you upgraded the laptop to Win 11 then used Macrium Reflect to restore an image of Windows you made from it back onto the laptop.. thank you so much this is hugely reassuring ... I feel a lot better about Macrium's ability to work on our acer laptops now ... fingers crossed that Macrium Reflect 7 free edition will keep working until I have a chance to get the version 8 up and running on various PC's...

(apologies to everyone too I should have clarified a bit further.. my needs are really simple for backup software .. I know in theory you can tell Macrium to just do a backup every day and only backup the changes made since the last one.. think it's called an incremental backup? Could be wrong on that but anyways... I'm too paranoid to trust any backup software even Macrium to do that 😛 ... so I just do a manual backup every 3 months and make a point of saving files onto a different hard drive than the Windows drive (two 8 TB drives both of which have an exact copy of each other's files I just manually save to them both) , newest files or recently changed ones are saved onto a thumb drive which.. well hopefully norton is doing what it promised and really backing up those most recent files on the thumb drive online ... eventually when I stop being lazy thumb drive files are backed up on an external drive not normally connected to the PC.. I guess I could try having Macrium 7 free do that incremental backup in addition to my manual every 3 months backup and see how it works out )

 

[USAFRet]

got it .. you upgraded the laptop to Win 11 then used Macrium Reflect to restore an image of Windows you made from it back onto the laptop.. thank you so much this is hugely reassuring ... I feel a lot better about Macrium's ability to work on our acer laptops now ... fingers crossed that Macrium Reflect 7 free edition will keep working until I have a chance to get the version 8 up and running on various PC's...

(apologies to everyone too I should have clarified a bit further.. my needs are really simple for backup software .. I know in theory you can tell Macrium to just do a backup every day and only backup the changes made since the last one.. think it's called an incremental backup? Could be wrong on that but anyways... I'm too paranoid to trust any backup software even Macrium to do that 😛 ... so I just do a manual backup every 3 months and make a point of saving files onto a different hard drive than the Windows drive (two 8 TB drives both of which have an exact copy of each other's files I just manually save to them both) , newest files or recently changed ones are saved onto a thumb drive which.. well hopefully norton is doing what it promised and really backing up those most recent files on the thumb drive online ... eventually when I stop being lazy thumb drive files are backed up on an external drive not normally connected to the PC.. I guess I could try having Macrium 7 free do that incremental backup in addition to my manual every 3 months backup and see how it works out )

Yes, that is the Incremental.

I used that just last night, to recover the C drive in my main desktop.
Win 11 Pro, Macrium v8 Paid.

Had to recover the C, due to a seriously borked up software install.

 

[andrepartthree]

Yes, that is the Incremental.

I used that just last night, to recover the C drive in my main desktop.
Win 11 Pro, Macrium v8 Paid.

Had to recover the C, due to a seriously borked up software install.

As always very helpful USAFRet thank you so much