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

Stigg · Dec 1, 2021

BunnyJ said:
I've uninstalled it with no issues. So.. I doubt the comments by any other forum than this one.

It was on the AOMEI Support Forum. :wink:

BunnyJ · Dec 1, 2021

Stigg said:
It was on the AOMEI Support Forum.

Guess what? I just uninstalled it and I was able to reboot my PC without an issue.

hdmi · Dec 2, 2021

Yesterday I used the bootable ISO of Acronis True Image 2021 by booting straight into it with Ventoy, to migrate from my M.2 SATA SSD (512 GB Phison PS3111-S11 B27) to my new M.2 NVMe SSD (2 TB Samsung 980 Pro) that I had ordered on Cyber Monday for another shin. The bootable ISO isn't even aware that Windows 11 is what's installed. It's all just disks & partitions, so there simply can't be any compatibility issues there. To restore the image onto the new SSD and make it boot, in the main screen of the bootable Acronis, Add new disk -> initialize disk as GPT -> follow all the usual steps to restore disk from image -> Open cmd, and then:
diskpart
sel disk 0
list vol
Find the volume number of the EFI partition. Typically this will be the only 100MB FAT32 partition, so it should be easy to find even if it doesn't have the 'EFI' label.
select vol <insert the number here>
assign letter=<insert any letter that wasn't shown by the 'list vol' command and that isn't the letter 'x'>
exit
bcdboot c:\windows /s <insert the letter here>: /f uefi

Reboot and go in the UEFI settings -> re-enable Secure Boot and change the Boot Order back to normal -> boot into safe mode -> reboot normal again -> :party:

FDretired · Dec 2, 2021

I originally began using Acronis over 20 years ago and paid for them. Newer versions would at times be incompatible with old images. This prompted me to look for other imaging program. After trial of a few I settled for Macrium Free . It has been 100% reliable.

steve17 · Dec 2, 2021

Bree said:
Does sound like a faulty install. You could try downloading the Reflect installer from Macrium and running that to reinstall Reflect.

It apparently was some problem in the Win11 installation. I reinstalled that, and of course Macrium too, and now Macrium works okay.

Bree · Dec 2, 2021

steve17 said:
It apparently was some problem in the Win11 installation. I reinstalled that, and of course Macrium too, and now Macrium works okay.

These thing happen sometimes with any version of Windows. Glad you got it fixed.

Dch48 · Dec 5, 2021

I'm in the AOMEI camp.

cereberus · Dec 29, 2021

This thread is tedious now. Use whatever tool suits you - just do proper testing and make sure it works.

What matters far more than which tool one uses, is the (probable) vast majority out there who never do a backup of any form at all.

All this 'use A, use B" is preaching to the converted LOL.

steve17 · Jan 3, 2022

One annoyance I have with various backup programs is when they confuse disk with partition.

I'm currently using Macrium but they do this in a couple of places.

P is not a drive. No drive has a letter. P is a partition letter. I know many people call the letters "Drive letters", but I find learning a new backup program confusing enough without this added confusion. When I see this, I have to wonder, "do these guys know what they are doing?"

SIW2 · Jan 3, 2022

The word drive has many meanings.

It can mean an area capable of holding an operating system. Typically that would be a formatted partition, it is possible to span a drive across disks.
Type echo %systemdrive% in cmd prompt and it will return the letter assigned to your current os drive.

The other meaning of drive is the mechanism that reads from and writes to the storage media ( usually called a disk ), which might also move or rotate the media (disk).

The drive and the media (disk) used to be separate. For example, the floppy drive and cd drive were attached to the machine and the storage media could be inserted . Now they are often packaged together, e.g. hard disk (and) drive.

It can be confusing. People will often announce thay have just bought a new "drive". Then they partition it up and have several drives on the "drive" .

Zardoc · Jan 3, 2022

Post from @Ghot

History...

Best/simplest backup software ever: Norton Ghost 2003 (wouldn't run on Win 7 so... bummer)

I started using Drive Image with XP. Loved the software. Then this is what happened below.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Drive Image (PQDI) is a software disk cloning package for Intel-based computers. The software was developed and distributed by the former PowerQuest Corporation. Drive Image version 7 became the basis for Norton Ghost 9.0, which was released to retail markets in August 2004. Ghost was a competing product, developed by Binary Research, before Symantec bought the company in 1998.

That's when I turned to Acronis. And I do agree that Acronis was warned for many years to stop bloating their software with useless junk. Now, if you disable the Cyber protect, bloatware is gone. Even runs only 2 services.

But again like I said, I don't want to run software with annual contracts, I only do that with Office 365 but that's my choice.

Bottom line Nigel said it right, it's a choice. But if you're going to compare do the research first. I did and I really like Macrium. I just wish that it had an auto Winpe inserted for recovery instead of a multi boot setup.

Ghot · Jan 3, 2022

Zardoc said:
Bottom line Nigel said it right, it's a choice. But if you're going to compare do the research first. I did and I really like Macrium. I just wish that it had an auto Winpe inserted for recovery instead of a multi boot setup.

Well stated.
But I would give my left arm... well somebody's left arm anyway, if Norton Ghost 2003 would run on Win 10 and Win 11.

These days it seems like all 3rd party programs try to do "everything" with one program.
I think all companies, including Microsoft, should make a basic program and then offer plugins for "extra" features.

It would be easier for the devs, and they'd make more money. They could charge for each plugin.

gmcgee78 · Jan 3, 2022

I use EaseUS TODO and Macrium 8 , both paid versions. I like them both but I use macrium the most. I haven't had any problems with either one. I like to have more than one because each will have different features I might need at times. Just use what you are comfortable with but use it often.

Zardoc · Jan 3, 2022

gmcgee78 said:
I use EaseUS TODO and Macrium 8 , both paid versions. I like them both but I use macrium the most. I haven't had any problems with either one. I like to have more than one because each will have different features I might need at times. Just use what you are comfortable with but use it often.

Hi gmcg78, Welcome to Win 11 forum. If it does what you want and you're happy with it, good for you.

hdmi · Jan 3, 2022

steve17 said:
One annoyance I have with various backup programs is when they confuse disk with partition.

I'm currently using Macrium but they do this in a couple of places.

P is not a drive. No drive has a letter. P is a partition letter. I know many people call the letters "Drive letters", but I find learning a new backup program confusing enough without this added confusion. When I see this, I have to wonder, "do these guys know what they are doing?"

View attachment 17545

P is a drive. Specifically, it is a logical drive. A logical drive can be assigned a drive letter and is what enables the user of the Windows OS to interact with a portion of one or more physical (disk) drives, or storage devices. So, a logical drive can comprise one or more disk drives and can use part or all of each disk drive's capacity.

steve17 · Jan 3, 2022

Zardoc said:
Post from @Ghot

Zardoc said:
That's when I turned to Acronis. And I do agree that Acronis was warned for many years to stop bloating their software with useless junk. Now, if you disable the Cyber protect, bloatware is gone. Even runs only 2 services.

But again like I said, I don't want to run software with annual contracts, I only do that with Office 365 but that's my choice.

I downloaded the latest Acronis from Western Digital. It looks the same as Acronis Cyber Protect. It is free for 5 years. I suppose other Disk makers have the same deal. Actually I think the Acronis is somewhat less confusing to me than Macrium.

Zardoc · Jan 3, 2022

steve17 said:
I downloaded the latest Acronis from Western Digital. It looks the same as Acronis Cyber Protect. It is free for 5 years. I suppose other Disk makers have the same deal. Actually I think the Acronis is somewhat less confusing to me than Macrium.

Hi Steve17, yes the WD version has cyber protect but does not have the scheduling options. You can disable cyber protect if you wish.

cereberus · Jan 4, 2022

steve17 said:
I downloaded the latest Acronis from Western Digital. It looks the same as Acronis Cyber Protect. It is free for 5 years. I suppose other Disk makers have the same deal. Actually I think the Acronis is somewhat less confusing to me than Macrium.

Free for 5 years for what was totally free in perpetuity with a drive purchase ?

With Macrium Reflect and most other major alternatives, the free version means just that i.e. FREE with no time bomb!

Edit 1: I downloaded it as pc had a WDS drive. Tried it by making backup but slower than Reflect. I will test a restore to a vhd.

Edit 2: As far as I can tell, no option to restore without booting from a usb drive or create a boot entry (probably can do manually with iso and creating bootable partition). With Reflect, I can initiate a restore from Windows 11, and it only goes to WinRE Mode if it needs to (updating OS drive). This makes it easy to clone/restore to vhds as no need to leave Windows environment.

Edit 3: managed to manually create boot entry and boot into WinRe mode. I could not find anyway of attaching a VHD (in Reflect, you can open a command prompt and attach vhd using diskpart). I am not saying this is not possible but not obvious if it is. If it is not possible, then this is a big weakness of this free version.

Like for like, the free version of Reflect is a lot more flexible and never expires. I suspect you could redownload 5yr trial again for ATI but I have no intention of wating 5 yrs LOL (drive will probably need replacing by then anyway).

About the only thing going for this ATI version (imo), is that its gui for beginners is pretty simple (Reflect's GUI for beginners is not the simplest but really does not take long to learn, if you follow ten/eleven forum tutorials. Having said that, I think AOMEI backupper is probably a better choice for absolute beginners, and no time bomb (albeit 5 years is a long time).

So in conclusion, these ATI free versions are ok if you just want to do relatively simple backup/restores (one plus is it has incrementals) but it is not that flexible and more advanced users will find it limiting, and would need to upgrade to paid version to get more flexibility.

Reflect's free version is more flexible, and even fairly experienced users find it adequate for their needs.

All imaging tools have pluses and minuses but I still firmly believe Macrium Reflect has more pluses than minuses than the alternatives but it does have one significant minus in the free version i.e. no incrementals, only differentials.

In the end, there is no right or wrong answer - select the tool that suits you. To me, it is no contest but hey, I am one user amongst a billion Windows users.

I bet that 95+ % of Windows users never make image backups, and a good fraction of those probably never make any backups at all.

Try3 · Jan 4, 2022

cereberus said:
Free for 5 years for what was totally free in perpetuity with a drive purchase ?

It's now, as Steve said, a different product. Whilst they are still calling it Acronis True Image for Western Digital, its description makes it clear that it is actually Acronis Cyber Protect for Western Digital.

I'd recently changed to using only Seagate's equivalent, DiscWizard, instead of a mixture of WD & Seagate across my computers. Seagate have tended to be slower than WD with updated versions and their current one, v25, is still a perpetual licence.

My currently-installed Seagate DiscWizard, v24, works on Windows 11 so I've got plenty of time to go before Windows' changes force me to change my imaging utility.
- I expect I'll change to Macrium since there are so many forum members using it already.
- My only disappointment with Macrium Reflect when I tried it was their attempt to cram up disk & partition details next to each other [as opposed to Acronis' well-spaced vertical layout]. I imagine I'll get used to it easily enough when the time comes.

Denis

Try3 · Jan 4, 2022

steve17 said:
I downloaded the latest Acronis from Western Digital. It looks the same as Acronis Cyber Protect. It is free for 5 years. I suppose other Disk makers have the same deal.

Steve,

Thanks for posting this interesting info.

I've updated what was previously a rather positive reference to the free ATI versions in File backup vs imaging, imaging utilities, backing up drivers [#3] - TenForums

Denis