Poll on Backup software

SlicEnDicE · Mar 26, 2024

Well said @cereberus

I 100% agree!

cereberus · Mar 26, 2024

hdmi said:
Please stop making me laugh while I'm trying to enjoy my Belgium chocolate... it gives brown specks all over my Logitech K800 Wireless Illuminated keyboard.

You are so patronising. Now I remember why I blocked you.

Photographer_K · Mar 26, 2024

Photographer_K said:
I just downloaded and tested Macium (Home Trail), Aomei (Free), and EaseUS (Free) on my virtual machine, and made a system backup,

Backup time:
Macium 7:04
Aomei 6:35
and EaseUS 6:18 (winner)

Image size:
Macium 16.5 GB
Aomei 15.8 GB (winner)
EaseUS 19.1 GB

Then I made another incremental backup,

Backup time:
Macium 1:42
Aomei 3:02
EaseUS 1:09 (winner)

Image size:
Macium 2.09 GB
Aomei 200 MB (winner)
EaseUS 214 MB

Although I have not verified the reliability of the restore, there are already many doubts.

1. Macrium currently does not have a free version anymore, and even the trial version requires registering an account, strictly verifying the email address, and entering the verification code during installation before it can be used. The other two can be downloaded and used for free.

2. The interface of Macrium is really unfriendly, which made me confused several times during operation. The other two did not.

3. Macium's backup speed is not fast, and the incremental backup file is 10 times larger than the other two, which I think is completely unacceptable.

Why do so many people vote for Macium? Is there something wrong with my testing method, or has macrium changed so much in the last 2 year?

I did more testing this week and improved my testing methods. When I disconnected from the network and tested, Macrium no longer showed large incremental backups.

During repeated testing, I found that the remaining disk space has a great impact on the backup speed, so I upgraded my testing method: before testing each product, delete the old virtual disk and recreate a new one.

Step:
1. Create a new virtual disk 1
2. Macrium runs 5 times full backups
3. Macrium runs 5 times incremental backups
4. Delete virtual disk 1 and create a new one
5. AOMEI runs 5 times full backups
6. AOMEI runs 5 times incremental backups
7. Delete virtual disk 1 and create a new one
8. EaseUS runs 5 times full backups
9. EaseUS runs 5 times incremental backups

Information:
System backup, all default settings (Compression: Medium/Normal)

Source: virtual disk 0
*: 30.57 MB used / 100 MB
*: 0 KB used / 16 MB
C: 35GB used / 480 GB

Destination: virtual disk 1
E: 480 GB

____________________________________________________________

Result (Average of 5 tests)：

Full Backup_Time:
Macium 8:15
Aomei 5:24 (winner)
and EaseUS 6:31

Full Backup_Size:
Macium 15.7 GB
Aomei 15.4 GB (winner)
and EaseUS 16.5 GB

Incremental Backup_Time:
Macium 0:34 (winner)
Aomei 2:10
and EaseUS 0:42

Incremental Backup_Size:
Macium 30.2 MB (winner)
Aomei 34 MB
and EaseUS 55.9 GB

____________________________________________________________

The current conclusion is that if you mainly use full backup and will not use a very complicated interface, AOMEI is the better choice. If you mainly use incremental backups, Macrium is the better choice.

Of course, this test only shows the continuous testing results on a new virtual machine. I will conduct longer actual tests on my own PC recently.

Photographer_K · Mar 26, 2024

Photographer_K said:
I did more testing this week and improved my testing methods. When I disconnected from the network and tested, Macrium no longer showed large incremental backups.

During repeated testing, I found that the remaining disk space has a great impact on the backup speed, so I upgraded my testing method: before testing each product, delete the old virtual disk and recreate a new one.

Step:
1. Create a new virtual disk 1
2. Macrium runs 5 times full backups
3. Macrium runs 5 times incremental backups
4. Delete virtual disk 1 and create a new one
5. AOMEI runs 5 times full backups
6. AOMEI runs 5 times incremental backups
7. Delete virtual disk 1 and create a new one
8. EaseUS runs 5 times full backups
9. EaseUS runs 5 times incremental backups

Information:
System backup, all default settings (Compression: Medium/Normal)

Source: virtual disk 0
*: 30.57 MB used / 100 MB
*: 0 KB used / 16 MB
C: 35GB used / 480 GB

Destination: virtual disk 1
E: 480 GB

____________________________________________________________

Result (Average of 5 tests)：

Full Backup_Time:
Macium 8:15
Aomei 5:24 (winner)
and EaseUS 6:31

Full Backup_Size:
Macium 15.7 GB
Aomei 15.4 GB (winner)
and EaseUS 16.5 GB

Incremental Backup_Time:
Macium 0:34 (winner)
Aomei 2:10
and EaseUS 0:42

Incremental Backup_Size:
Macium 30.2 MB (winner)
Aomei 34 MB
and EaseUS 55.9 GB

____________________________________________________________

The current conclusion is that if you mainly use full backup and will not use a very complicated interface, AOMEI is the better choice. If you mainly use incremental backups, Macrium is the better choice.

Of course, this test only shows the continuous testing results on a new virtual machine. I will conduct longer actual tests on my own PC recently.

Macrium Reflect Free v8.0.7783
(It is not easy to find a free version download link in the official website forum, but incremental backup is still only available for trial)

AOMEI Backupper Standard v7.3.4

EaseUS Todo Backup Free v2024

wags1 · Mar 26, 2024

Photographer_K said:
I did more testing this week and improved my testing methods. When I disconnected from the network and tested, Macrium no longer showed large incremental backups.

During repeated testing, I found that the remaining disk space has a great impact on the backup speed, so I upgraded my testing method: before testing each product, delete the old virtual disk and recreate a new one.

Step:
1. Create a new virtual disk 1
2. Macrium runs 5 times full backups
3. Macrium runs 5 times incremental backups
4. Delete virtual disk 1 and create a new one
5. AOMEI runs 5 times full backups
6. AOMEI runs 5 times incremental backups
7. Delete virtual disk 1 and create a new one
8. EaseUS runs 5 times full backups
9. EaseUS runs 5 times incremental backups

Information:
System backup, all default settings (Compression: Medium/Normal)

Source: virtual disk 0
*: 30.57 MB used / 100 MB
*: 0 KB used / 16 MB
C: 35GB used / 480 GB

Destination: virtual disk 1
E: 480 GB

____________________________________________________________

Result (Average of 5 tests)：

Full Backup_Time:
Macium 8:15
Aomei 5:24 (winner)
and EaseUS 6:31

Full Backup_Size:
Macium 15.7 GB
Aomei 15.4 GB (winner)
and EaseUS 16.5 GB

Incremental Backup_Time:
Macium 0:34 (winner)
Aomei 2:10
and EaseUS 0:42

Incremental Backup_Size:
Macium 30.2 MB (winner)
Aomei 34 MB
and EaseUS 55.9 GB

____________________________________________________________

The current conclusion is that if you mainly use full backup and will not use a very complicated interface, AOMEI is the better choice. If you mainly use incremental backups, Macrium is the better choice.

Of course, this test only shows the continuous testing results on a new virtual machine. I will conduct longer actual tests on my own PC recently.

I’m curious as to why the focus on backup time. My MR backups are scheduled to run when I’m not using my laptop so I honestly don’t care about the backup time, as long as they aren’t unusually long. I really don’t even know how long they take although I suppose I could look in the MR logs if I needed to know.

glasskuter · Mar 26, 2024

@Photographer_K Thank you for your thorough testing. Your findings are quite interesting. Here's my 2 cents of what I hope anyone reading this looooong thread will take away from it.
There is no right or wrong backup solution. What is important is that every user take the initiative to protect themselve from data loss with whichever imaging app works for them. We preach it's importance every day here, but so many readers still ignore our sermons on the importance of doing it because they think disaster is never going to happen to them.

I compare backing up data to having auto insurance. Hopefully it is never necessary to use it, but if one owns a car long enough, an accident will happen sooner or later. It may be nothing more than a fender bender or a collision with a grocery buggy, but it will happen. Likewise, if one uses a computer long enough, at some point, disaster of some kind will strike.

Like with anything else, opinions vary. For those of us who have been imaging for years, it has become second nature. We know what we like and what works for us when we need it to. Our stock in whichever application we use is not measured by a few extra minutes in backup time or a few extra gigabytes of storage used in an image, but in the trust we have garnered from actually recovering our systems using our application of choice.

I repeat, there is no right or wrong backup solution. Use whatever method you want. If you want full coverage computer insurance, make regular system images. If you want insurance with a big deductible at least backup your personal data to the cloud or, I cringe to say it, even copying and pasting personal files is better than nothing. Just use something.
If your data is important to you, cover your ass. No one is immune.

jimbo45 · Mar 27, 2024

Winuser said:
Because it's the backup program we prefer the most.

Because it's stood the test of time, relatively simple to use and most importantly IT WORKS. (The last FREE version is still working even on the latest Canary release).

Cheers
jimbo

wags1 · Mar 27, 2024

wags1 said:
I’m curious as to why the focus on backup time. My MR backups are scheduled to run when I’m not using my laptop so I honestly don’t care about the backup time, as long as they aren’t unusually long. I really don’t even know how long they take although I suppose I could look in the MR logs if I needed to know.

I just checked my MR logs. My last full BU was 132 GB and took 22:54 and my last incremental was 5.358 GB and took 1:39. About as fast as I could expect with my current environment.

SIW2 · Mar 27, 2024

what is the model of the nvme that came with Dell/XPS 15 9530 ?

hdmi · Mar 27, 2024

wags1 said:
I’m curious as to why the focus on backup time. My MR backups are scheduled to run when I’m not using my laptop so I honestly don’t care about the backup time, as long as they aren’t unusually long. I really don’t even know how long they take although I suppose I could look in the MR logs if I needed to know.

It's because most people almost never need to restore a Windows system image. Also, each time after I have spent a fair amount of time and effort on installing/setting up whatever it was that might justify making a new image so as to avoid the potential risk of me having to go through all these numerous/tedious and/or time consuming steps all over again, that's when I'll usually consider making a new image ASAP. The "ASAP" here often magnifies that importance, i.e. of being able to make it reasonably fast when the next logical step is to take only a short break whilst letting it finish usually before continuing to use the computer with all the aforementioned changes having been applied to it. "Reasonably fast " = subjective, but for most people it usually translates to a "well-balanced" (also subjective) tradeoff between the time it takes to complete the task and the size of the resulting image file. It makes sense to often want to start using newly installed/upgraded software almost immediately after, just like it makes sense to often want to make the new image typically first. That is, when there should be no real reason to delay it of course.

kelper · Mar 27, 2024

@wags1

If you schedule backups on your laptop, do you keep an external HDD os SSD connected all the time? Or are you backing up one or more partitions to another partition on the same 'disk'?

wags1 · Mar 27, 2024

SIW2 said:
what is the model of the nvme that came with Dell/XPS 15 9530 ?

Type - M.2 2280 solid-state drive, Interface - PCIe Gen4 x4 NVMe, Drive -
PC801 NVMe SK hynix 1TB

wags1 · Mar 27, 2024

kelper said:
@wags1

If you schedule backups on your laptop, do you keep an external HDD os SSD connected all the time? Or are you backing up one or more partitions to another partition on the same 'disk'?

My local scheduled BUs are written to a Synology NAS - DS220+.

wags1 · Mar 27, 2024

hdmi said:
It's because most people almost never need to restore a Windows system image. Also, each time after I have spent a fair amount of time and effort on installing/setting up whatever it was that might justify making a new image so as to avoid the potential risk of me having to go through all these numerous/tedious and/or time consuming steps all over again, that's when I'll usually consider making a new image ASAP. The "ASAP" here often magnifies that importance, i.e. of being able to make it reasonably fast when the next logical step is to take only a short break whilst letting it finish usually before continuing to use the computer with all the aforementioned changes having been applied to it. "Reasonably fast " = subjective, but for most people it usually translates to a "well-balanced" (also subjective) tradeoff between the time it takes to complete the task and the size of the resulting image file. It makes sense to often want to start using newly installed/upgraded software almost immediately after, just like it makes sense to often want to make the new image typically first. That is, when there should be no real reason to delay it of course.

Thanks for the answer. It all gets back to fact that we all use the BU solution(s) that best fit our specific requirements and as has been stated, their is no right or wrong answer.

kelper · Mar 27, 2024

I have a Synology DS112 NAS with 1tb Western Digital red hard drive (not 112j). I might try that.

Can backups occur if the laptop is sleeping?

SIW2 · Mar 27, 2024

wags1 said:
Type - M.2 2280 solid-state drive, Interface - PCIe Gen4 x4 NVMe, Drive -
PC801 NVMe SK hynix 1TB

Are you pleased with it?

wags1 · Mar 27, 2024

kelper said:
I have a Synology DS112 NAS with 1tb Western Digital red hard drive (not 112j). I might try that.

Can backups occur if the laptop is sleeping?

It depends. If your laptop uses regular sleep mode (S3) then yes, MR has no issue with waking the system and running the BU (it can be configured that way when you setup the BUs). But if your laptop implements Modern Standby (S0) then you would either have to disable Modern Standby and turn on S3 (if possible) or work around it.