Solved Maybe this will help you decide victor in Acronis/Macrium debate

Ghot · Apr 17, 2023

lenovomi said:
@Ghot got your point ... yes was thinking to stay with ati2021. .. u moved to macrium for a what reason?

precisely - havent heard / read any technical arguments just empty words "bloat"

Same reason, 2nd time... Macrium runs fewer Services and fewer Processes, in other words... same answer as in posts #95 and #97.

You can run whatever backup software you want, obviously.
The important part is that you DO use backup software.

lenovomi · Apr 17, 2023

@Ghot got it .. .but number of services/processes is nothing that can put one software on top of the other etc.
but yes.. like u said ...

thing is thread was to decide between 2 software, and arguments for such a decision was not there ... if so ... these were all unimportant things.

Ghot · Apr 17, 2023

lenovomi said:
@Ghot got it .. .but number of services/processes is nothing that can put one software on top of the other etc.
but yes.. like u said ...

thing is thread was to decide between 2 software, and arguments for such a decision was not there ... if so ... these were all unimportant things.

Maybe to you. To me they are very important things.
But if, as you say, they aren't important to you... then go with Acronis.
It's still good software.

pparks1 · Apr 17, 2023

@hdmi
You mention a free rescue media version of Acronis TI 2021 that you can get, free directly from Acronis. I was poking around a bit and I thought you had to be a paying customer of Acronis to get this rescue media created? Got a link for where to get this?

I used to be an acronis customer years ago, used that until Windows 8 ( I believe) and went to Paragon backup and restore. I did use Macrium on the side for all of my testing boxes, VM's and such. I felt that I got a ton of use out of Macrium and it worked great for me, so I was willing to buy a 4pk license for Macrium 8.

hdmi · Apr 17, 2023

lenovomi said:
@hdmi no idea what is this and for?
could u elaborate a bit on> run Sandboxie-Plus with multiple sandboxes some of which are located on a ramdisk using Romex Primo Ramdisk with SCSI, NTFS, Dynamic Memory Management (DMM), Compact Mode.

Sandboxie-Plus is a project on GitHub (currently still actively maintained) that started after Sophos abandoned Sandboxie and released its source code into the public domain (the original documentation has also been preserved). Sandboxie was written by Ronen Tzur, who then sold it to Invincea before Sophos acquired Invincea.

In a nutshell, the program can be used to run/install other programs/processes (including most popular web browsers) in an isolated environment (called a 'sandbox') with restricted access to resources and parts of the filesystem that the user can specify. The main principle is more or less similar to Windows Sandbox, but allowing the user to have much more flexible control with advanced settings and added usability features. If a process runs sandboxed, then if this process attempts to make changes to any part of the filesystem that is not located inside the sandbox, these changes are intercepted by a driver that is managed by Sandboxie-Plus, and are redirected to the sandbox in such a way that modified copies will be kept in there, thereby effectively isolating these modifications so no modifications are made to the part of the filesystem that is not located inside the sandbox.

It also is possible for the user to 'punch holes' in a sandbox with features like 'Direct access' and 'Full access', etc., and various other security related settings either can be strict or can be more relaxed, as the user can specify different on each different sandbox, individually. But it certainly doesn't stop there. There's also a feature called 'Privacy mode'. And more. The driver runs stable and has been tested quite thoroughly for well over a decade, and it hasn't gone through any drastic changes. And the whole project has been being open source for several years now. Some say it is in constant beta. Personally, I, say that free open source software being under active development with such a high quality level is a sign that the world isn't completely messed up yet.

So, even though, unlike a VM, it doesn't virtualize the hardware, there is considerable overlap between what it can be used for when compared to running a VM, as a VM can ALSO be used for software isolation, but isolation is NOT the primary goal of a VM. Running a whole separate OS (or separate instance of the same OS that the host uses) in a VM is not always practical or feasible. The same also holds true about processes running in a VM not being able to access the hardware directly. Granted, Sandboxie-Plus does have its own limitations too, but then, there's pros and there's cons to running in a VM also. And, one does not exclude the other, as you could always decide to install Sandboxie-Plus on a Windows installation that is running in a VM or is running as the host outside the VM─or install it on both.

As for Romex Primo Ramdisk, it is a commercial (paid) software that combines absolute top notch performance in its class (ramdisk software) with advanced features. The settings that I use to create my ramdisk volume with it are SCSI, NTFS, DMM, Compact Mode. Doing this emulates a real physical disk (via SCSI) formatted as NTFS, and uses up not more RAM space than really should be needed to hold the ramdisk content in memory thanks to DMM with Compact Mode, which makes a huge difference compared to other ramdisk software─free or paid.

After I edit the settings of Sandboxie-Plus to point the sandbox location of some of my sandboxes to a folderpath on the ramdisk, I see a significant bump in performance each time when Sandboxie-Plus adds bigger than average-sized content/modifications to one or more of these same sandboxes, for example. Each time when I (or one of my scripts/programs that I wrote myself) uses FastCopy to populate one or more of these same sandboxes with (additional) content that also is bigger than average, I see a similar bump in performance.

Over the years Sandboxie-Plus has changed my perspective about needing to run a VM for what I do, as has Romex Primo Ramdisk. One way to completely eliminate the need to restore a system image to a VM is to eliminate the need to run a VM altogether. But a VM still has its merits. Just not for what I do, it doesn't. YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary).

hdmi · Apr 17, 2023

pparks1 said:
@hdmi
You mention a free rescue media version of Acronis TI 2021 that you can get, free directly from Acronis. I was poking around a bit and I thought you had to be a paying customer of Acronis to get this rescue media created? Got a link for where to get this?

See post #94. You can just download it directly to your USB flash drive that you have already previously formatted with Ventoy. Change your boot order in BIOS to boot from it and be sure that BitLocker is not enabled on your main OS drive (and also disable Secure Boot if needed), you don't have to install True Image 2021 to be able to do any of this stuff so there's also no bloat. None whatsoever...

pparks1 said:
I used to be an acronis customer years ago, used that until Windows 8 ( I believe) and went to Paragon backup and restore. I did use Macrium on the side for all of my testing boxes, VM's and such. I felt that I got a ton of use out of Macrium and it worked great for me, so I was willing to buy a 4pk license for Macrium 8.

Dru2 · Apr 17, 2023

lenovomi said:
@Ghot got it .. .but number of services/processes is nothing that can put one software on top of the other etc.
but yes.. like u said ...

thing is thread was to decide between 2 software, and arguments for such a decision was not there ... if so ... these were all unimportant things.

I see nothing worth arguing over as anyone can call anything "bloat". And no matter what you say, they're gonna call it bloat simply because they have nothing else to say. Nothing but post count noise.

Movin on.

lenovomi · Apr 18, 2023

Dru2 said:
I see nothing worth arguing over as anyone can call anything "bloat". And no matter what you say, they're gonna call it bloat simply because they have nothing else to say. Nothing but post count noise.

@Dru2 precisely.

hdmi · Apr 19, 2023

Dru2 said:
anyone can call anything "bloat".

Using the method that I have described, nothing will be installed on the computer, therefore nothing can be called bloat by anyone. So it's not post count noise. lol

Stigg · Apr 19, 2023

So, who's the victor?

hdmi · Apr 19, 2023

Stigg said:
So, who's the victor?

Macrium is the best...
...to recommend to others whenever you don't have time to explain why it isn't.

bob3d · Apr 19, 2023

Stigg said:
So, who's the victor?

I don't think there is any victor, just personal choice. My choice is Acronis because it is quite simple to use, both backing up and restoring. But to say which one is "better" is a personal decision, not a rigorous analysis of each software.

pparks1 · Apr 19, 2023

Stigg said:
So, who's the victor?

If there was an answer to that question, it's the software that everybody would unanimously use. But we all have different wants/needs/budgets/preferences/requirements, etc.

The important thing is making a backup. The best tool for you is the one you can use to save your bacon.