Backup / Sync Software Recommendations Please

Tasmania Green said:

Does Macrium store a copy of your backup on their computers? I know that some backup software creates an off-site copy and then a local copy on your external drive.

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A full Macrium image is a file. A big file. You can treat it pretty much like any other file.....copy it, move it, delete it, etc.

You can include whatever partitions you want in the image file. When you first create it, you cannot save it on a partition that is itself contained in the image. That is...if you choose to include the C partition in the image file, you cannot save that image file on C.

Other than that, you can save it wherever it will fit. The image file will be somewhere around 50 to 70 percent of the size of the occupied space on the included partitions. So, if you image C only and C has 200 GB occupied the image file will likely be 100 to 150 GB in size. That's using the default "medium" compression setting. There is a high compression setting, but in my experience it does not shrink the image file by much.

Macrium can make incremental images rather than full images. That is optional. I've never bothered with them.

Macrium will backup personal data files as well as system files, but it's not the ideal tool for that. In my opinion.

I think most of the common backup applications have a similar suite of capabilities. I'm using Hasleo on a couple of machines and Acronis True Image on others. Both have the ability do do system (boot) image backups and data backups. The backup types are also pretty much the same, complete, differential, or incremental. The ability to create bootable recovery media is also pretty universal with most backup suites.

The real difference is the user interface.

gunrunnerjohn said:

The real difference is the user interface.

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There are a couple of differences that I've noticed while testing Hasleo and Acronis (WD only version - not full, so YMMV).

First off, Acronis has a file that resides on the System Tray while Hasleo doesn't (I think it uses Task Manager to schedule it's backups while Acronis uses the main program running in the background, though i could be wrong).

Secondly (and more important to me personally), Acronis stops Direct Storage from running on qualified drives. It runs a program (ngscan) that stops Direct Storage. Direct Storage is a function of DirectX 12 that speeds up disk access during games, and since I stream games online that function means something to me...again, YMMV.

I've been using Macrium for a long time, using it as a free image on a USB drive. It's been sufficient for me. I do cold backups, so I can use it for free.

Stigg said:

Bvckup 2 | Simple Fast Backup

Bvckup 2 | Simple fast backup

Simple fast backup for Windows

bvckup2.com

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I've been using this for a long time..."fast" is an understatement.