Question What is the best alternative to Macrium Reflect Free?

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modeonoff

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Jul 16, 2017
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Hello, the community recommended me to use this program in the past. Given that the free version is no longer available and even the one-time purchase has limited updates and fixes for the current version only, what is the best alternative? What do most previous users of the free version use from now on?
 
Unsure if this will be helpful for your situation, but there is often software available from manufacturers of drives (SSD mostly) and I've used software from both SK Hynix and Samsung successfully. As far as any generic software for cloning is concerned I can't think of any current free options.
 
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modeonoff said:
Hello, the community recommended me to use this program in the past. Given that the free version is no longer available and even the one-time purchase has limited updates and fixes for the current version only, what is the best alternative? What do most previous users of the free version use from now on?
Click to expand...
I recently did a comparison of the common similar tools.

The "free" versions of all of them (where they exist) have pretty much the same limitations as the 30 day trial of Macrium.
The paid versions of all of them basically differ only in price. $40-$80.

There is no more comprehensive 'free'.


But...for the price of a single AAA game, you get years of functionality. Backups, clones, scheduling, etc.
 
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modeonoff said:
What kind of bad things could possibly happen if I continue to use the free version of Macrium Reflect 8?
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When did you get and install this?

My free Macrium Reflect v8 installs are lifetime. These were Upgrades from previously installed v6 or 7 installs, upgraded to v8. Lifetime.

If you got this recently, full usefulness is only 30 days. After that, it only works for 'recovery' of a previously built Image.
 
I've set for Clonezilla. This is a text interface and if you've never used it before, it comes with a learning curve.
However, the wizard you that you follow should be pretty straight forward to follow.
 
Grobe said:
I've set for Clonezilla. This is a text interface and if you've never used it before, it comes with a learning curve.
However, the wizard you that you follow should be pretty straight forward to follow.
Click to expand...
As mentioned here in many places, CloneZilla is good for a direct clone, now.
And depending on specific hardware and conditions.

Not really good for an ongoing series of backup images.

All depends on what the user wants to do.
 
modeonoff said:
I tried Norton Ghost about 30 years ago and True Image few years ago. They could not recover my PC when I needed them the most.
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This doesn't depend on the software alone.
If you don't do a full clone for example but only image the data then the images don't have any boot info so they won't recover any boot issues, this goes for any and all cloning tools.

I have used norton ghost a lot and it always worked as supposed. It won't work on any new disks though.

Also windows has an in-build imaging system, the whole windows installing procedure depends on it, DISM if you can learn some cmd commands it would do well, you can use your normal windows installation media to get into the rescue environment and use dism to restore or make new images.
It even has the append-image option that adds new files to an already existing image for incremental backups.
 
TerryLaze said:
If you don't do a full clone for example but only image the data then the images don't have any boot info so they won't recover any boot issues, this goes for any and all cloning tools.
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Macrium Reflect Images do include all the boot info and partition.

Recovering from a full drive Image out to a new drive is indeed fully bootable.
 
USAFRet said:
Macrium Reflect Images do include all the boot info and partition.

Recovering from a full drive Image out to a new drive is indeed fully bootable.
Click to expand...
Yes, that's what I'm saying, if you only image the OS drive in a standard system that has the boot info on the boot partition then it won't boot if the boot partition isn't repaired or re-created in some other way.
Also he was talking about ghost.
 
TerryLaze said:
Yes, that's what I'm saying, if you only image the OS drive in a standard system that has the boot info on the boot partition then it won't boot if the boot partition isn't repaired or re-created in some other way.
Also he was talking about ghost.
Click to expand...
Not sure what you're saying.
There is no "some other way" needed.

The boot partition is part of the Image.

No idea about Ghost, never used it personally.
 
TerryLaze said:
There is full image and there is taking an image of only a certain partition, you know that. If you only image your C drive it might have the boot info or it might not.
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Well, yes.
If you don't do it properly, it won't work.

Similarly, you can make a "clone" of only part of it as well. For instance, just the C partition.
Which also wouldn't be bootable.
 
USAFRet said:
When did you get and install this?

My free Macrium Reflect v8 installs are lifetime. These were Upgrades from previously installed v6 or 7 installs, upgraded to v8. Lifetime.

If you got this recently, full usefulness is only 30 days. After that, it only works for 'recovery' of a previously built Image.
Click to expand...

I installed it sometime in 2023 under your recommendation. As I recall around November-December, there was an upgrade which stated that it was the last one and they were ending support. To be specific, the one I am using now is v8.0.7783.
 
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