Macrium Free - can I store on private cloud and share

john1955 · Apr 24, 2023

Interesting that Macrium is showing one partition on my Win-10 disk as Primary - Unformatted. Does Windows 10 need that? I'm thinking I can delete it. Strange that I dont recall AOMEI or EASUS partition programs showing that 128MB as unformatted or I would have deleted it already.

john1955 · Apr 24, 2023

MilesAhead said:
I was using Macrium Reflect 8 Free. The feature that prompted me to pay for the Home edition was Incremental Backups.

That's good to know. I'm glad I read this thread,

Bree · Apr 24, 2023

john1955 said:
I changed the name and tt downloaded and installed the FREE version. They want your name address and telephone number so I had to make them up.....

When installing Reflect Free you are first asked if this is for personal or commercial use.

If you select Personal Use then registration is optional, you can untick the box for 'Register this installation of Macrium Reflect?' and the email and registration code boxes will be greyed out. Registration is only mandatory for commercial use.

cereberus · Apr 24, 2023

john1955 said:
. From what I've gleaned, the difference between paid and free is SUPPORT.

This is incorrect. The paid version offers several significant enhancements including;

1) incremental backups. Free version only does differentials.

2) Macriun Image Guardian - this protects 3rd parties hacking / tampering with images. So even if pc gets hacked, the image backups are safe.

3) Rapid Delta Restore (RDR) - this is like an incremental restore. It checks what is on pc, and only restores difference from backup rather than whole image. This is usually very fast maybe 1-2 minutes if image is recent. This is a truly awesone feature not found in virtually any of the mainstream rivals.

4) Backup speeds are up to twice as fast as paid version uses cpu cores more efficiently.

5) Rapid Delta Cloning - if you keep a live clone that can be hotswapped, you can update it by cloning differences.

6) Changed Block Tracking - Reflect keeps track of changes on the fly, which means RDR does not have to work out changes and is even faster

The paid version is far more feature rich. Anybody who has paid for it KNOWS how great it is.

Historically, Reflect has offered 50% off on Black Friday in November. Hopefully they will again this year. The 4 pack purchase option becomes very attractive as you only pay for 2 licences to get 4 anyway, and then 50% off that i.e.you get 4 licences for cost of one.

There is no guarantee the traditional 50% offer will be repeated of course.

Bree · Apr 24, 2023

john1955 said:
Interesting that Macrium is showing one partition on my Win-10 disk as Primary - Unformatted. Does Windows 10 need that?

That 128MB unformatted partition is the Microsoft Reserved Partition (MSR), the 100MB Fat32 partition is the EFI partition. Both are created by a clean install of Windows on a GPT drive in a UEFI system.

Microsoft Reserved Partition - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

From the position and size of your MSR partition this appears to be a Windows 8/8.1 system that was upgraded to Windows 10. A clean install of Win8 creates an 128MB MSR, but starting with Win10 that has been reduced to 16MB. This is a clean install of Windows 11 on one of my machines:

The EFI partition is essential, the MSR partition not so much. But at only a few 10's of MB it's hardly worth bothering about.

cereberus · Apr 24, 2023

Bree said:
That 128MB unformatted partition is the Microsoft Reserved Partition (MSR), the 100MB Fat32 partition is the EFI partition. Both are created by a clean install of Windows on a GPT drive in a UEFI system.

Microsoft Reserved Partition - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

From the position and size of your MSR partition this appears to be a Windows 8/8.1 system that was upgraded to Windows 10. A clean install of Win8 creates an 128MB MSR, but starting with Win10 that has been reduced to 16MB. This is a clean install of Windows 11 on one of my machines:

View attachment 58716

In reality, this partition is never used, but I have seen posts from Reflect Developers that say it is sometimes used if you have dynamic disks. I cannot verify if this is true. It is a rather moot point as dynamics disks are now a deprecated feature.

john1955 · Apr 24, 2023

cereberus said:
This is incorrect. The paid version offers several significant enhancements including;

1) incremental backups. Free version only does differentials.

2) Macriun Image Guardian - this protects 3rd parties hacking / tampering with images. So even if pc gets hacked, the image backups are safe.

3) Rapid Delta Restore (RDR) - this is like an incremental restore. It checks what is on pc, and only restores difference from backup rather than whole image. This is usually very fast maybe 1-2 minutes if image is recent. This is a truly awesone feature not found in virtually any of the mainstream rivals.

4) Backup speeds are up to twice as fast as paid version uses cpu cores more efficiently.

5) Rapid Delta Cloning - if you keep a live clone that can be hotswapped, you can update it by cloning differences.

6) Changed Block Tracking - Reflect keeps track of changes on the fly, which means RDR does not have to work out changes and is even faster

The paid version is far more feature rich. Anybody who has paid for it KNOWS how great it is.

Historically, Reflect has offered 50% off on Black Friday in November. Hopefully they will again this year. The 4 pack purchase option becomes very attractive as you only pay for 2 licences to get 4 anyway, and then 50% off that i.e.you get 4 licences for cost of one.

There is no guarantee the traditional 50% offer will be repeated of course.

I thought I deleted that comment after seeing the comment about the paid version being able to do incremental backups.
So perhaps the 30 day trial is a full version(?) If so it would be better to test drive the 30 day trial. I'll do that after testing the free version. I dont have a lot of data to backup often, My Quickbooks, email and AutoCad work is easy to backup to an external drive with File Sync. No where near as much stuff now that I'm retired.

Bree · Apr 24, 2023

john1955 said:
So perhaps the 30 day trial is a full version(?) If so it would be better to test drive the 30 day trial. I'll do that after testing the free version.

If you download and install the Reflect Home Trial version it will install the latest v8.1, currently v8.1.7469. This will have all the premium features available, but at the end of the trial it reverts to a 'Restore only' version. I have tested and confirmed this:

Your installed Reflect Free v8.0 can become a 30-day trial of Reflect v8.0 Home, just try to use any of the Premium features and it will offer an upgrade to a Trial version.

Unlike v8.1, the v8.0 Trial reverts to Reflect Free v8.0 at the end of the trial, meaning you can continue making backups.

pparks1 · Apr 24, 2023

cereberus said:
The paid version is far more feature rich. Anybody who has paid for it KNOWS how great it is.

Historically, Reflect has offered 50% off on Black Friday in November. Hopefully they will again this year. The 4 pack purchase option becomes very attractive as you only pay for 2 licences to get 4 anyway, and then 50% off that i.e.you get 4 licences for cost of one.

There is no guarantee the traditional 50% offer will be repeated of course.

I paid for it because the free version did so well for me that I felt like I wanted to give them money. So, I bought a 4 pack on some sale, wasn't quite the 50% discount, but it was about $110 for a 4 pack and that felt totally worth it to me.

the extra features are just a nice to have.

Bree · Apr 24, 2023

pparks1 said:
I paid for it because the free version did so well for me that I felt like I wanted to give them money. So, I bought a 4 pack on some sale....

Me too. I bought a 4-pack of v7 licences on a Black Friday 50% sale. When v8 was released I bought an upgrade for that 4-pack at a 50% discount. But I have more machines than licences so I still use Reflect Free on the others.

cereberus · Apr 25, 2023

pparks1 said:
I paid for it because the free version did so well for me that I felt like I wanted to give them money. So, I bought a 4 pack on some sale, wasn't quite the 50% discount, but it was about $110 for a 4 pack and that felt totally worth it to me.

the extra features are just a nice to have.

I saw a post on the Macrium Reflect forum asking why Restores were so much faster on paid version by at least 5 times compared with official claims of up to 2 times, worrying the restore had not completed.

The guy had not realised Rapid Delta Restore was the default operation.

To me (personally) RDR is definitely more than a "nice to have".

Before I install new (non uwp) software, I make an image backup, then install and test new software.

If I am unhappy, I restore to previous state in less than 2 minutes.

I prefer that to uninstall, as it 100% wipes any detritus of app in registry, appdata etc.

siliconbeaver · Apr 30, 2023

@Bree @glasskuter

Thank you for pointing me to here and for the link of Macrium Reflect download.

made a copy (Macrium Reflect rescue disk) and started to learn how to use it.

Winuser · Apr 30, 2023

jimbo45 said:
Even I think Norton Ghost (before symantec version) still works !!!

I was a big fan of Ghost before Symantec took it over. IMHO, Symantec ruined it.

siliconbeaver · Apr 30, 2023

Ghost is compact and neat (DOS mode only, size 1-2MB, can be on any <2MB floppy, flash card or USB. In contrast, any windows backup tools, at least 400MB)

It's useful for partition (OS and data) backup/image. but NOT working for boot sector. also it requests BIOS CSM. less and less market.

Davy49 · May 2, 2023

I discovered this free backup software, Free Windows Backup Solution for PCs and Endpoints has anyone ever tried it & if so what did you think of it.

Bree · May 2, 2023

Davy49 said:
I discovered this free backup software, Free Windows Backup Solution for PCs and Endpoints has anyone ever tried it & if so what did you think of it.

@cereberus has reviewed Veeam here:

backup options other than Macrium? - post #132