Solved Backup Software suggestions other than ACRONIS

Pre-ordered a MS Surface Laptop Studio and would like suggestions on a backup program. Laptop will have Win 11 pre-installed.

I have been using ATI for years, but don't like their new subscription policy.

I was an avid Acronis user but and also didn’t like the subscription method. I now use Macrium Reflect and wondered why I didn’t change years ago

I have a copy of MR from 2018* - when the laptop gets here I may consider trying that - not sure why I never stuck with it when I was using it.
* may have to update to a newer version

The most popular program in this forum is Macrium Reflect. It has a free version which meets most persons needs. If you are used to Acronis, you will find Reflect easy to use, as you will understand all the basic concepts.

I ditched Acronis years ago in favour of Reflect and it has NEVER let me down.

Version 8 has yet to be directly released as free version, but yiu can download a trial of the paid version, and get full access to paid features for 1 month, and if you choose not to pay for advanced features, it reverts to free version (with advanced features deactivated). It still gets updates.

You can mount an image backup in virtualbox or Hyper-V as a virtual machine which is a really great feature.

Other users also recommend AOMEI Backupper as its gui is easier forbeginners, but product is not as rich as Reflect in terms of features.

There are some excellent tutorials on Reflect in tutorials section but they are a little out of date based on V7 but not still quite usable.

If you prefer you could download V7 free version and upgrade to V8 free version when released. In terms of backup reliability, V7 is just as good as V8, and arguably better as is has been around for a few years and bugs are rare.

edit: I see you have an old version of Reflect so it is no stranger. Download V8 trial and you will wonder why you paid for Acronis if free version meets all your needs.

A lot of users actually updated to paid version, more as a show of support to a superb product.

For clarity - users here (myself included) have no affiliation to Paramount (owners of Reflect) but just know how reliable and flexible it is.

Free Version D/L done - thank you 2 for the suggestion

Here's a quickie pictorial guide...
For step #2, substitute your own drive letter.

Ghot said:

Here's a quickie pictorial guide...
For step #2, substitute your own drive letter.

Click to expand...

Save image - THANKS!

FWIW - I do complete drive backups - usually one a week - nothing fancy

Dumped Acronis a couple years ago because it was taking over my system. Been using AOMEI Backupper for my data drives with good luck since... Though I also use Windows 7 Backup for a daily image/copy of the main OS drive.

The problem with Macrium Reflect is that it will fail if the disk cloned has problems. It will not ask to ignore errors and continue, just as Acronis does. To make sure it will not fail if you clone a problematic disk you must choose the sector-by-sector (forensic) option and this requires a same capacity or larger target. This is not cost effective when you want to replace a large hard disk with an SSD, especially if your data need a much smaller disk, such as 120GB or 240GB and you are forced to use 480GB or larger to fit sector-by-sector. If your disk has no issues and you just backup Macrium Reflect is fine.

spapakons said:

The problem with Macrium Reflect is that it will fail if the disk cloned has problems. It will not ask to ignore errors and continue, just as Acronis does. To make sure it will not fail if you clone a problematic disk you must choose the sector-by-sector (forensic) option....

Click to expand...

There is another simpler way to make sure Reflect doesn't fail on bad sectors. Before you start a backup edit the Reflect defaults. in the Advanced section tick the 'Ignore bad sectors when creating an image' (and optionally log any bad clusters found).

Macrium only has one Service and three processes. I lost count with Acronis when I used that. :)


And... best of all is the "Fix Windows boot problems" on Macrium's bootable rescue media.





Plus the neat little things in the lower left corner.
Best thing to come out of the UK, since Yorkshire pudding.


















Macrium Reflect 8 User Guide <---- soon to be available as downloadable PDF.

Well, it seems I don't use Macrium as frequently as I use Acronis, so I didn't know that. Thanks you for the info, appreciated.

Macrium as well, but I'm a paid user. I take DAILY automated backups.

I don't understand all the fuss about Acronis/MR. Granted, I only use the WinPE version of Acronis, not the full suite in a live OS. Same for my use of MR.
From my years of experience, even when I use the "high compression ratio" option, disk imaging by Acronis has always been ~50% faster than that of MR. AND, the disk image file it produced has been consistently smaller than that from MR by more than 30%.
So for me, I use Acronis, Terabyte Image for Windows and Active DiskImage for my disk/OS backup needs. MR is just too over-rated IMHO.

24c said:

Pre-ordered a MS Surface Laptop Studio and would like suggestions on a backup program. Laptop will have Win 11 pre-installed.

I have been using ATI for years, but don't like their new subscription policy.

Click to expand...

Macrium Reflect .....brilliant, free version works well for me and it's simple to use. Several people use it in the forum and they were very helpful to me

I also used Acronis for a long time -- and then when I needed to do a recovery, it failed on me due to some confusing drive lettering issue -- so I found MR and have stayed with it since.

But I agree that corrupted disks can be a problem -- even though I use SSDs exclusively now, I run into the same issue that the backup fails and I have to run CHKDSK on both the source and target SSDs, with no problems found in most cases, to get MR working again.

So, I have edited the settings to do verification scans on the target volume prior to running a backup -- that seems to have fixed the problem even though the scans never find anything wrong.

I like Paragon Hard Disc Manager and have used their products for years. They also do a Backup and Restore application free for individuals - Free Data Recovery software | Paragon Backup & Recovery Community Edition

Bree said:

There is another simpler way to make sure Reflect doesn't fail on bad sectors. Before you start a backup edit the Reflect defaults. in the Advanced section tick the 'Ignore bad sectors when creating an image' (and optionally log any bad clusters found).

View attachment 8437

Click to expand...

I believe that may only be an option for images, not cloning. I only do images though.

I used the paid-for version of Acronis for several years then through these forums found out about Macrium. I've been using the free version and find it a lot easier to understand and I've never had any problems with it and will continue to use it.

Win 11 forum people never fail to deliver suggestions/experiences. Laptop should arrive on 10/5, after reading all this info, I have no clue what I am going to do - - all good.