If Macrium Reflect X is too expensive, what will you switch to?

MikeWilliams_UK · May 11, 2026

kelper said:
But my laptops' touchpads do not work when I boot into some PEs.

Use a mouse

kelper · May 11, 2026

MikeWilliams_UK said:
Use a mouse

Read the thread!

SIW2 · May 11, 2026

hsehestedt said:
TIP: Once you identify what driver(s) you need, you can simply create a folder on the root of your PE media called $WinPeDriver$ and drop the drivers in there. PE will automatically load those drivers, and the associated devices will work in PE.

I thought that was a function of setup.exe. Has something changed?

ChrisinCabarlah · May 11, 2026

DiskGenius Free and then maybe even DiskGenius Pro

SIW2 · May 11, 2026

ChrisinCabarlah said:
DiskGenius Free and then maybe even DiskGenius Pro

It is handy for lots of things but there is no scheduling.

jimbo45 · May 11, 2026

The easist surely if you use physical vhdx (or vhd) files -- keep the windows system to say a max size of 80 GB and keep user data else where -- then just save the vhdx (or vhd) file to an external device via even Windows explorer -- cost €0.00, 100% Windows too !!.
Backing up User data is another story - but this method is for backing up the Windows system (OS) and some of the normal applications installed on it such as Office (non subscription model) etc.

To bare metal restore - use any bootable windows install media --> repair system --> command prompt and copy the vhdx file to your original disk, and if you need to re-install the boot loader just run bcdboot.exe -- enough examples on this forum. Typically in admin mode -- cd f:\system32
cd f:
bcdboot F:\windows /s: S /f UEFI where F is the attached vdisk with the windows system on it and S is the efi partition on the original disk. (the f in /f UEFI is not the F: disk !!! but a fixed parameter !!!!)

Cheers
jimbo

Asus272 · May 11, 2026

SIW2 said:
You could import the macrium files into the ashampoo winpe

or

mount the ashampoo winpe, export the drivers, then install them into the macrium/hasleo winpe
dism++ is easy to use for this

https://github.com/Chuyu-Team/Dism-Multi-language/releases/download/v10.1.1002.2/Dism++10.1.1002.1B.zip

i

I just had to use the boot.wim file created by Ashampoo instead of creating one with Macruim. It already had all my drivers because it has an option during the build process to include 'all drivers. I tested it this morning keyboard and trackpad work.

This has been a know problem with Macruim's software for over 3 years. I expect better from a paid version.

man00 · May 11, 2026

Has Windows killed Macrium 8?

Froggie · May 11, 2026

man00 said:
Has Windows killed Macrium 8?

We'll see...

hsehestedt · May 11, 2026

kelper said:
Thanks for the offer. I did try this earlier but there seem to be many drivers required. I'm happy to use a USB mouse. I don't know why Macrium don't design the GUI so people could use the keyboard to navigate - some fields just can't be reached with TAB and or the cursor keys, so you can't select a specific image to restore. I'll recheck Hasleo and Macrium X today to see what works.

It's not a Macrium Reflect. It's a Windows PE issue. They simply cannot include every critical driver known to mankind. Besides, Macrium allow you to add drivers so why not just add them to your reflect media using the mechanisms that they provide?

As for needing "many drivers", I seriously doubt it

hsehestedt · May 11, 2026

SIW2 said:
I thought that was a function of setup.exe. Has something changed?

Setup is based on Win PE so I suppose you are correct in that sense. I wrote my own program that acts like a better version of Ventoy (in my opinion

), and it is based on Windows PE. I use that folder with my boot critical drivers on it all the time with a 100% success rate.

kelper · May 11, 2026

hsehestedt said:
It's not a Macrium Reflect. It's a Windows PE issue. They simply cannot include every critical driver known to mankind. Besides, Macrium allow you to add drivers so why not just add them to your reflect media using the mechanisms that they provide?

As for needing "many drivers", I seriously doubt it

It is now moot since the latest versions of Hasleo and Macrium find the drivers automatically

hsehestedt · May 11, 2026

kelper said:
It is now moot since the latest versions of Hasleo and Macrium find the drivers automatically

Understood. My workflow is a little different. I setup my recovery disk and use that same disk on about 8 systems. So rather than create a different Reflect boot disk for every system, I do it one time on one machine and add the drivers for mutiple systems on a system where those drivers do not exist.

Quandary · May 11, 2026

kelper said:
It is now moot since the latest versions of Hasleo and Macrium find the drivers automatically

Maybe with your PC's but not my main daily driver. The MR8.1 recovery boot drive has no support for wi-f1 6E, and the HBS ED did not include support for my mousepad, keyboard, or any wi-fi.

SIW2 · May 11, 2026

hsehestedt said:
Setup is based on Win PE so I suppose you are correct in that sense. I wrote my own program that acts like a better version of Ventoy (in my opinion ), and it is based on Windows PE. I use that folder with my boot critical drivers on it all the time with a 100% success rate.

according to MS

The $WinPEDriver$ feature is intended as a method to provide drivers at installation time. However, it's a feature of Setup.exe, and as such isn't invoked until after Setup.exe launches.

Which implies that unless setup.exe is run, the the $WinPEDriver$ folder is ignored.

The winpe downloaded by various programs like macrium does not include setup.exe, neither does winre.wim

I wrote my own program

That explains it. My pe builds include a bit of code that searches for a particular folder and installs any drivers that are in that folder.

hsehestedt · May 11, 2026

SIW2 said:
The $WinPEDriver$ feature is intended as a method to provide drivers at installation time. However, it's a feature of Setup.exe, and as such isn't invoked until after Setup.exe launches.

Hmmm, I guess that I better check my assumptions. I actually do nothing special at least in that regard with my program. However, what I run far more frequently than anything else is indeed Windows setup. Yet, all my stuff like Reflect and other PE based programs work on those systems that need drivers loaded. Nut it is possible that this is because I integrated those drivers in rather than use the $WinPEDriver$ folder.

It's fully possible that I have jumped to a wrong conclusion due to it just working for me. I'll try to test this over the next day or two and report back what I find.

Glad we're having this discussion because if I have this wrong then I have some corrective work to do

Thanks for your research and posting what you found.

cereberus · May 11, 2026

hsehestedt said:
Hmmm, I guess that I better check my assumptions. I actually do nothing special at least in that regard with my program. However, what I run far more frequently than anything else is indeed Windows setup. Yet, all my stuff like Reflect and other PE based programs work on those systems that need drivers loaded. Nut it is possible that this is because I integrated those drivers in rather than use the $WinPEDriver$ folder.

It's fully possible that I have jumped to a wrong conclusion due to it just working for me. I'll try to test this over the next day or two and report back what I find.

Glad we're having this discussion because if I have this wrong then I have some corrective work to do

Thanks for your research and posting what you found.

Sort of related, my experience about adding drivers to winpe is that the main culprit is nvme drivers.

Graphics drivers are not usually that important usually unless very high resolutions.

Ethernet/Wifi drivers are only needed if backing up over a Lan.

People often over think this by and large.

If you create a winpe usb drive on a pc with an nvme, it will generally work on a pc without an nvme.

pseymour · May 11, 2026

cereberus said:
People often over think this by and large.

Yep. The conventional wisdom in corporate large-scale Windows rollouts is you only need network and storage drivers to boot, and you can skip the network part if you're not using the network of course.

SIW2 · May 11, 2026

hsehestedt said:
Hmmm, I guess that I better check my assumptions. I actually do nothing special at least in that regard with my program. However, what I run far more frequently than anything else is indeed Windows setup. Yet, all my stuff like Reflect and other PE based programs work on those systems that need drivers loaded. Nut it is possible that this is because I integrated those drivers in rather than use the $WinPEDriver$ folder.

It's fully possible that I have jumped to a wrong conclusion due to it just working for me. I'll try to test this over the next day or two and report back what I find.

Glad we're having this discussion because if I have this wrong then I have some corrective work to do

Thanks for your research and posting what you found.

many of the diskimaging pemaking modules will automatically include drivers from your running system

macrium includes a folder called drivers which it attempts to install when macrium program starts in winpe

KevTech · May 11, 2026

SIW2 said:
when macrium program starts in winpe

Screenshot shows WinRE not PE.

If Macrium Reflect X is too expensive, what will you switch to?

If Macrium Reflect X is too expensive, what will you switch to?

Ashampoo

Hasleo

Veeam

Acronis True Image

Paragon

Aomei Backupper

EaseUS ToDo

R-Image

Mini Tool Partition Wizard

ShadowProtect

Member

My Computers

Well-known member

My Computers

Well-known member

​

My Computers

Well-known member

My Computer

Well-known member

My Computers

Well-known member

My Computer

Active member

My Computer

Well-known member

My Computer

Well-known member

My Computer

Well-known member

My Computers

Well-known member

​

My Computers

Well-known member

My Computers

Well-known member

My Computers

Well-known member

My Computer

Well-known member

My Computers

Well-known member

My Computers

Well-known member

My Computer

putting the mental back in experimental

My Computer

Well-known member

My Computers

Well-known member

My Computer

Similar threads