Macrium Reflect vs. EaseUS Todo Backup Home

Servo · Mar 26, 2022

Having bought Aomei and reflect, and now a free version of EaseUS from these forums. I now have a wider choice of backup software, all have good points and bad, which we won't get into.
EaseUS is the easiest to use, making the thumb drive was simple and worked fine. I'm sure any security issues would be looked at, and maybe updated. For us very old people this would be my choice

glasskuter · Mar 26, 2022

OK. I tried my new free software. First thing I did was make boot media. Inserting my raid driver was simple. T then checked the integrity of the boot media and that went ok, too. Booted back into Windows and did my first backup. It beat a full Macrium backup I made this morning by one minute and the backup size was 1.2 gb larger, both negligible in the scheme of things. Tomorrow, I'll restore the image I made today and see how that goes.

One feature I really like about it is the image does not have to be mounted and unmounted to explore the backup. That's a real plus.

What I don't like about it, is the program interface. It's way more basic than Macrium (not as attractive either) I haven't figured out how to set certain options. For example, I have Macrium set to verify every image it creates. I don't find that in ToDo. It's almost like they dumbed down the interface to appeal to novice users, which I guess is a good thing.

What will really tell the tale is when it comes to restoring to dissimilar hardware which I'm not able to try right now.

What I've done in the past is retain several Macrium backups, and one I would make for good measure with an older version Of Acronis. I certainly have no intelligent reasoning for that since Macrium has never failed me. It's just something I've always done. I'm glad to have this newer app to take the place of Acronis for future alternate backups since Acronis has 9 services running, ToDo (and Macrium) only one.

Will ToDo do the job? Yes, it will, but Easeus developes all kinds of software, from partitioning to data recovery and everything in between. Macrium, on the other hand, is strictly in the backup business. I like that. I trust that.

badrobot · Mar 26, 2022

I am done with EaseUS today. I gave it a chance. But the bootable disk is only giving me nothing but BSOD.

cereberus · Mar 27, 2022

badrobot said:
I never really like the idea of having multiple boot entry on one PC. I feel like it's gonna go south anytime. So instead of adding a Macrium partition on my OS drive, I just created a small partition on my external back-up drive and copied my Macrium rescue drive there. I just call up the boot menu if I need to boot up from rescue partition. It is definitely faster than USB flashdrive. The backup images are on the same 2TB external drive as the rescue partition.
I just transfer the external drive to my other PC if I need to restore or create an image.

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badrobot said:
I don't play around with compression settings. Maybe that is where the difference is.

Had a thought - Reflect by default verifies image, Easesus does not - you have to specifically choose to do that. Although I tend not to bother with verify, many do, and it is a bit of a weakness not to be able to do it automatically.

cereberus · Mar 27, 2022

cereberus said:
Had a thought - Reflect by default verifies image, Easesus does not - you have to specifically choose to do that. Although I tend not to bother with verify, many do, and it is a bit of a weakness not to be able to do it automatically.

Just done another backup and Eaesus was quicker - I have noticed Reflect is slower backing up OS drives that data drives - I presume that is influence of VSS. I could not tell if Easeus uses VSS or some bespoke system?

Etbh789 · Mar 29, 2022

cereberus said:
Well I have just tested Easeus Backup, and the UI has changed dramatically and is geared to click and go, and is fine for new users. Adding drivers was easy.

But trying to use the advanced features like incrementals seems to be really non intuitive.

Overall rather slower (5 mins for a backup rather than 3 for Reflect).

It has one potentially useful feature - smart backup which is, as far as I can tell, auto backups changes every 30 minutes.

I think it gives AOMEI Backupper (for those who like simplified interfaces) a good run for the money as a basic use tool (especially as free for 1st 100).

I have always found TODO to be very reliable in the past, and have no reason to suspect that has changed. It restored fine albeit slower than Reflect.

It has the same weakness that is in AOMEI i.e, you can only recover one partition at a time.

I intend to use it as a secondary backup tool - although Reflect has never let me down, it does not hurt to have a different backup just in case..............

In my opinion, I (personally) would never buy a TODO Home licence but it does have a couple of features not in free version of Reflect, making it worthwhile grabbing of the free 100 licences.

If you have licences for Macrium Reflect Home, that you are, almost certainly, a fairly advanced user of Reflect, and there is no incentive to use TODO Home other than as insurance.

In terms of features, it really compares more with AOMEI than Reflect. So if you want a basic "click and go" tool, it is fine but if you want advanced features like Rapid Delta Restore (truly awesome feature of Reflect), then no contest.

Just got time to read the opinion here now. That's very informative. Some functions are quite deep, which can be very time consuming to find when need.

Etbh789 · Mar 29, 2022

badrobot said:
From my thread... image backup speed comparison...

Macrium Image Backup: How long does it take to create one?

On the same machine, a clone could take longer right? Usually it will as writing uncompressed files normally takes a bit longer than compressing and writing image but it is not a 100% certainty.

www.elevenforum.com

That's really good to EaseUS. And it will be more objective if both small and big amount file backup speeds are compared.

Etbh789 · Mar 29, 2022

The-Hive said:
I tried EaseUs and couldn't really get on with it, I prefer Macrium for Images and Aomei for file and folder backups. There was absolutely nothing wrong with EaseUs Todo seemed to work well

The UI, the backup mode, etc. will influence your general thoughts. These three tools share great similarities in function but vary giantly in these aspects.

Etbh789 · Mar 29, 2022

badrobot said:
Ok, I think this EaseUS starts to suck a little bit. I tried creating an emergency disk. I was able to complete the task after 4 failed attempt on the same USB drive. And when I boot up on the flashdrive, nothing but BSOD.
Am I missing something?

Your USB might have an issue. By that, you can try with a different USB or DVD. If still can't work, then need to check the detailed logs and blue screen codes.

Etbh789 · Mar 29, 2022

boromyr said:
Easeus is great for backing up files and folders, you can browse backups with Windows explorer and restore them quickly. However, it should be noted that ESET reports that an EaseUS driver is being used by currently circulating malware.

HermeticWiper: New data-wiping malware hits Ukraine

ESET researchers have found that hundreds of computers in Ukraine have been hit by new data-wiping malware called HermeticWiper.

www.welivesecurity.com

After cleaning EaseUS it seems to work the same, at least for me.

That's actually not the issue of EaseUS. It can be any other software tool with legitimate drivers. The malware made use of the very very very old version of the software where the driver could be made use of relatively more easily compared with nowadays. And that's a general situation for all software years ago. No worry about that. The recent versions can be totally trusted.

badrobot · Mar 29, 2022

Etbh789 said:
Your USB might have an issue. By that, you can try with a different USB or DVD. If still can't work, then need to check the detailed logs and blue screen codes.

Tried 2 USBs.
Nah, I am not gonna borher or waste more time with this. My computer is not broken. Macrium works fine for me.

The-Hive · Mar 29, 2022

I couldn't create a rescue disk for 3 attempts so gave up with the program as I don't have the confidence in it to rely on for important backups

badrobot · Mar 31, 2022

This is weird. The USB recovery disk I created on my R9 3900x-X570 pc is giving BSOD on boot up. I tried and installed EaseUS on my old 4790k PC and created a USB recovery disk there and it is booting up fine. When I tried the same USB on my 3900x PC, it booted up fine.

badrobot · Mar 31, 2022

The-Hive said:
I couldn't create a rescue disk for 3 attempts so gave up with the program as I don't have the confidence in it to rely on for important backups

It seems to have a problem with R9 and i9 CPUs.

The-Hive · Mar 31, 2022

I have checked out all the speeds etc and think it is just the rescue media which is giving issues (for me) but I get the impression from various comments that because it is simpler to use it is not as good ! things to not have to be complicated to work well. IMO it's just some people seem to like a complicated program as they think it's more advanced

badrobot · Mar 31, 2022

The-Hive said:
I have checked out all the speeds etc and think it is just the rescue media which is giving issues (for me) but I get the impression from various comments that because it is simpler to use it is not as good ! things to not have to be complicated to work well. IMO it's just some people seem to like a complicated program as they think it's more advanced

If you have an old PC, create a USB media from there (no need to add drivers) and it will work on your i9 PC. It worked for me that way and I don't understand why. Not saying I am switching. Just trying to figure out what the problem is to help EaseUs do better (they are watching this thread).

The-Hive · Mar 31, 2022

Thanks @badrobot I finally created one on my i9 (3rd try) but I have lost confidence in the program, thinking if it failed creating rescue media it may fail restoring, I actually quite liked the program so maybe install it again in the future

badrobot · Mar 31, 2022

One thing about the UI, it is so passive. The "Tools" should not be a dropdown menu. It should be a toolbar so everyone will see immediately what can you do with it.

The-Hive · Mar 31, 2022

As a person who had never seen it before, I had no trouble with the tools dropdown

badrobot · Mar 31, 2022

First time to restore an image with EaseUs. It took 3x longer than I expected. And there's one invasive thing it did. It turned off system restore and reset it. Also, it takes the liberty to delete "extra" partitions so you will end up with small unallocated partitions with a few MB in size.