Macrium Reflect

[shankle]

        7-14-2019

Stats: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit 1903, Windows Defender
         Google Chrome, UEFI, Clonezilla-live, 1 SSD
    for Windows 10, 1 SSD for my stuff, External
    HD for backup
      
Hope I have put this in the correct forum.

I have been using Clonezilla-live for years. Lately
it has been causing me trouble. I tried Macrium
Reflect a while ago. Had no trouble with the backup
part. Then disaster struck and I could not get the
recovery part to work. So I uninstalled it and tried
Mini Tool Shadow Maker. Eventually it will probably
be a decent backup tool but I think it's going to
take a year or more.

I find the recovery procedure for Macrium Reflect to
be a nightmare. It is it because I was using the free
version? It certainly didn't work for me. I have no
way of testing if the restore will work before
disaster strikes. Hate to try Macrium Reflect again
and go through the same agony as I did before.
Is the home edition free or pay?

Your suggestions would be most appreciated.
          

[aw27]

I use Acronis True Image and it has proved itself in more than 1 occasion. Current price $24.99.

[Vortex]

Hi shankle,

I use wimlib and it supports the volume shadow copy feature to capture the image of live Windows :

https://wimlib.net/

A very nice forum discussing about Windows Preinstallation Environments for recovery purposes :

http://theoven.org/

[hutch--]

With my Win7 64 box, I paid for the professional version of Macrium Reflect and the one time I needed it, it failed. After days of p*ssing around trying to get it to image a disk that was just starting to show errors, I gave up and did a full re-install of Win7 64.

I have Acronis on my Win 10 64 box.

[shankle]

Thanks guys for responding.
Vortex - windows 10 pro 64-bit had a hissy fit when I tried to run
Wimlib. I have Windows Defender running and it flagged Wimlib
as bad and stopped.
I restarted the computer and tried again and the computer completely
ignored the instruction.

Hutch -  Since I am so poor/cheap, I was fooling around with the free
Version of Macrium Reflect. Years ago I tried Acronis with no success.

[Vortex]

Hi shankle,

wimlib does not contain any malware. Windows Defender's scan is just a false-positive. Here is Jotti's scan report :

https://virusscan.jotti.org/en-US/filescanjob/cpv15kktk1,6w1yswgk3l

[aw27]

I could not tell that someone using Windows 10 PRO, the paid ESET SS antivirus and that never goes online without the paid Sandboxie was almost living from charity and could not afford a decent backup software.

[iZ!]

I also used Macrium to clone my system disk onto a faster one. It worked without flaws while the system was running. The only thing that bothered me was what I noticed afterwards(on my new disk): there was a keylogger and a couple of other programs installed as well, but they were easy enough to find and remove. As I remember, one of them was actually called Macrium Keylogger.
I haven't tried if my old disk still works though..