Restore Comparisons using Macrium Easeus, Aoemei & Hasleo

rfxcasey said:

Used Macrium Home for years. What folks fail to realize is the HUGE problem with Macrium is the home license only supports minor updates. At some point, a Windows update broke Macrium functionality and the only way to fix it was to buy another home or pro license to get the update that fixed the issue. The won't even allow me to upgrade my older version for the reduced upgrade price. Customer support told me to pound sand. I can't do business with a company that leaves their customers high and dry.

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Acronis True Image is even worse I remember when I was using Windows 8.0 and upgraded to Windows 8.1 the version of Acronis that I was using and had just recently purchased was not compatible with Windows 8.1 and I was supposed to buy the yearly upgrade.

The only Version on Macrium that doesn't support updates from 8.0 to 8.1 is the free version but is still supported through 2023. The Home version will be continually supported until EOL.

As @Bree has mentioned many times a previous\current Macrium version had\has a lifespan of approx 3+ years ? + 1 year extended support which is unheard of in the current subscription based enviroment.

IownAmoneyPit said:

As @Bree has mentioned many times a previous\current Macrium version had\has a lifespan of approx 3+ years ? + 1 year extended support which is unheard of in the current subscription based enviroment.

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Sometimes far longer than that. While Macrium only promise 1 year of extended support after the next version is released, Reflect v6 got its last update more than two years after v7 was released. This was an essential fix needed for Windows 10 version 1903 which broke all versions of Reflect until they were patched.

Macrium Reflect v7.0.1994 - 27th February 2017 - Initial Release

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What's New 6.3.1865 - 8th May 2019

• Support for Windows 10 1903
  This update adds support for Windows 10 1903 and prevents disk images failing with 'Error Code 9'.
  Please upgrade to this release for support with Windows 10.

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cereberus said:

Your expectations are completely unrealistic

You only have an issue if you run V7 on a Perpetutal licence and pick up an issue that has been fixed in a later version.

Even the Version 7 was supported for one year following release of V8.

Do you seriously expect Paramount to support old versions forever free of charge?

There is no company in the world that will offer perpetual updates on old versions UNLESS you pay an annual maintenance cost.

Of course, you could move to a lease based system like Acronis but I bet you would whinge about that even more so.

There is an easy answer to your issues - pay up for new major versions (usually heavily discounted at 50%) like the rest of us within the 1 year grace period. It is hardly Paramount's fault you failed to splash the cash in a timely manner - it is 100% your fault.

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Hum, that's funny because 99.9999 percent of all the other software I've purchased, even going back to the days of Windows 7, and even including Windows 7, still works on my machine like a dream. And no, I don't run Win 7 as my daily OS. Windows 7 didn't just magically stop working one day out of the blue. I expect what I paid for, working software. From your response you sound like a paid promoter of Marcum. Either way, I'll never give them another cent. It's the end user's choice and I've switch to an alternate imaging system.

Sad to see that Drive Snapshot was not mentioned as an option. It has been rock solid for me for more than a decade. I have never had any issues with any partitions being mangled or failing to restore. Nor has the boot menu ever been an issue. Extremely lightweight and fast.

rfxcasey said:

Hum, that's funny because 99.9999 percent of all the other software I've purchased, even going back to the days of Windows 7, and even including Windows 7, still works on my machine like a dream. And no, I don't run Win 7 as my daily OS. Windows 7 didn't just magically stop working one day out of the blue. I expect what I paid for, working software. From your response you sound like a paid promoter of Marcum. Either way, I'll never give them another cent. It's the end user's choice and I've switch to an alternate imaging system.

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Get lost - I have no affiliation with Reflect whatsoever.

You are being totally ridiculous - Reflect is designed to back up Windows and older versions will continue to work ad infinitum BUT if MS make a change to Windows that means V7 no longer works, or you come across an old bug that has been fixed, Reflect V7 will not get updated as it is no longer supported. That is no different to 99.9999999999999999999% of software that gets updates - old versions are no longer supported.

Don't flipping blame Reflect for your lack of understanding and ridiculous expectations to get support for ever for a one-off payment!

Mark Phelps said:

I have been using MR for years and in some cases, since I have a file server on which I store the weekly backup images, with PCs that can not connect to it, I was copying the backup image to a portable HDD and copying it then to the file server. I did not know the image was being corrupted in the process as I got no error indications in the copy operations.
...
Since then, I have changed to using a portable SSD but still do verify operations after copying the images to the server -- and still find some that fail verification.

glasskuter said:

I never copy images. In several Macrium articles I've read, even they do not recommend copying images. If one absolutely HAS to copy, always run a verify on the image afterward.

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I connect an external SSD to each of my machines about once a week, and copy my older internally stored (separate disk; separate drive) MR images to that. Then I can delete the older MR images from my internal, local storage disk, and delete any older MR images from my external SSD.
The final step is to verify the copied images on the external. That's quick and easy from within the MR GUI.
I have my backup profiles (xml files) set to auto verify when imaging is complete. That and the fact that I have verified the copied images on the external leaves me with half a dozen verified recent images on my local storage disk and half a dozen verified older (copied) images on my external. None of this is complicated, none of it is time-consuming, and all of it is absolutely reliable.
In over ten years of imaging and restoring with MR, I've never once had a failure.

I've used Macrium (V8.1 now), Aomei V6.5.1 (freeware for the Increment option) for quite some years and Hasleo over the last 4 months or so. All of them in Incremental mode. All of them have restored without hitch - and I do feel happier with all 3 programmes on tap. Backups every two weeks and because each programme does this with only a few clicks I don't find this routine onerous; set Backup running and then do something else. I regard Macrium is "best" in the sense that its' external USB boot has an option for repairing restores that themselves refuse to boot.

However, the point of this comment is that recently I found Hasleo V3.4 refusing to start, with some weird RAM conflict error notice. This occurred in both my Win7 and Win11 installations.

I emailed Hasleo support and received a helpful opening reply within 30 minutes. Following that, and given the time difference between my geographical location and Hasleo Central, with commendable speed I was emailed repaired executables to test for 1) diagnosis of the issue; 2) resolution. Three of these were supplied in succession. I supplied Event Notice logs and a .dmp file once.

The third "update" resolved the issue for both Win7 and Win11. Hasleo Backup and Restore function properly and reliably now, so Hasleo Support did what it says it will, at the very least in this instance, and quite quickly.

So what was the culprit ? Our best analysis - updates to my AV programmes. Win11 AVG Free, Win7 BitDefender Free.

Acronis
No comment!

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Hi,
What's up with this ?
Why are you excluding acronis to good/ to bad

ThrashZone said:

Hi,
What's up with this ?
Why are you excluding acronis to good/ to bad

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Not free unless you buy a hard drive plus I have had bad experiences with it .

glasskuter said:

Making sure an image can be restored correctly is just as important.

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I agree, but what can you do if a restore makes your computer unbootable as happened to me? Do you restore to a Virtual machine?

kelper said:

I agree, but what can you do if a restore makes your computer unbootable as happened to me? Do you restore to a Virtual machine?

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Well, I always have a Macrium Reflect backup which has never let me down before I test alternatives.

I use the Macrium viboot facility as well to open an image file as a vm.

Restoring any backup from a different tool to a vm is always worth doing but at some time you need a leap of faith, making sure you have a backup from a tool you trust.

Of course, you need to make sure all valuable data and drivers of working installation is backed up in case (worst case scenario) you have to clean install. Never happened to me in years (last time I came close was with Windows 8 following a mobo failure but even then I had a (cough cough cough cough) Acronis backup and got there in the end.

When my EaseUs ToDo restore failed, it was onto a eMMC 'disk'. Maybe that was a factor. DiskGenius and Windows could not find any bad sectors.

kelper said:

When my EaseUs ToDo restore failed, it was onto a eMMC 'disk'. Maybe that was a factor. DiskGenius and Windows could not find any bad sectors.

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Never had issues with emmc drives.