backup options other than Macrium?

Image for Windows for imaging, SyncBack Pro for file-based backups.

Macrium Reflect for Imaging. FreeFileSync for file & folder backups.

I use EaseUS ToDo and have successfully restored from disk images made with this a number of times. Also, Microsoft still includes 'Back up and Restore (Windows 7) in Windows 11, as it has in earlier operating systems. This just works for creating an image of the entire C: drive. Very simple to use and only needs a Windows start-up drive in order to restore the entire system from the image.

The backup process creates a folder called 'WindowImageBackup' on the backup drive. Not had any trouble restoring from this either and it has sometimes been a dice-up which backup to use. Fairly confident in both.

I feel it best to have a fallback position just in case a restoration failure ever happens. It might never be known whether a successful restore can be done from what should be a good back-up until is comes to the crunch of using it.

Edit: I should add that I haven't needed to do a restore in Windows 11 yet. The above has been the case with operating systems prior to this and I think should be the same with W.11.

mart44 said:

I use EaseUS ToDo and have successfully restored from disk images made with this a number of times. Also, Microsoft still includes 'Back up and Restore (Windows 7) in Windows 11, as it has in earlier operating systems. This just works for creating an image of the entire C: drive. Very simple to use and only needs a Windows start-up drive in order to restore the entire system from the image.

The backup process creates a folder called 'WindowImageBackup' on the backup drive. Not had any trouble restoring from this either and it has sometimes been a dice-up which backup to use. Fairly confident in both.

I feel it best to have a fallback position just in case a restoration failure ever happens. It might never be known whether a successful restore can be done from what should be a good back-up until is comes to the crunch of using it.

Edit: I should add that I haven't needed to do a restore in Windows 11 yet. The above has been the case with operating systems prior to this and I think should be the same with W.11.

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I would be careful about using the Win 7 imaging tool. I had failures in both backup & restore way back in the Win 7 days. That's what made me investigate 3rd party solutions and ended up with MR v4. I started with the free version but soon bought the Home version mainly to get the WinPE recovery environment, the Linux recovery environment the free version had at the time was a bit iffy. I have been using MR ever since.

kado897 said:

I would be careful about using the Win 7 imaging tool. I had failures in both backup & restore way back in the Win 7 days. That's what made me investigate 3rd party solutions and ended up with MR v4. I started with the free version but soon bought the Home version mainly to get the WinPE recovery environment, the Linux recovery environment the free version had at the time was a bit iffy. I have been using MR ever since.

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Yes, experiences can always vary.

I have a lifetime licence for EaseUS. That's the primary program and backups have been made. I have made an image using Back up and Restore (Windows 7). Backups made using this in the past have restored the system successfully but I'll try using it next time to see how things go. Having said that, I don't delve into computers or need to get a new start as much as I used to. This hopefully means I won't need to restore images any time soon.

Created individual files are backed up on the second internal drive and two external ones.

I have been in the industry for 40+ Years so wanted a backup program that was complete with familiar routines for backups, I tried a lot of different options but finally settled with Aomei Backupper, and purchased the professional version [I still deal with Clients data and the Pro package gave a few extras that made the outlay acceptable for me]

The free version should have a set of options to cater for any home user providing both image and more traditional file based backup - you simply need to setup a backup once and can then either schedule the run by various parameters or as a manually triggered as required backup.

glasskuter said:

Most any free version of ANY software you use will nag you to buy their premium version. That's pretty much standard in the computing world.
There are others out there but the majority of users here use Macrium with quite a few of us liking it so much we repaid the folks at Macrium by buying their premium version. Maybe this thread will give you ideas for options.

Poll on Backup software

A poll to see which imaging programs people use. You can select up to three options (eg some people use more than one program or use a regular imaging program plus a cloud based one).

www.elevenforum.com

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Naah. That's called "freemium" software.

Except for Windows and couple of games - most of the software i run on my PC is actually/truly free (be it closed or open source). Again, except for Games - where indeed there's still no room for comparison between free and paid (single player experience - that is) - i could always find a solid/capable alternative that's truly free. Tho, to be fair... if you're new to the Windows world (cause the Mac world is a tad different) - or simply a beginner (maybe even learned about Windows in school - while surrounded by paid software - which some companies trick schools into using - so their students get used to those apps and latter buy them for personal use) - then i can see how one could reach this conclusion. Here's just couple of sites - which could change your minds, sites i find helpful at finding all kinds of free goodies:

Portable: Latest entries - The Portable Freeware Collection

All-in-one installer: Ninite - Install or Update Multiple Apps at Once

OpenSource: Best Open Source Windows Software 2023

A famous developer of free Win tools - for advanced windows setting: freeware utilities: password recovery, system utilities, desktop utilities - For Windows

Or you could simply try a major software hosting site - and browse by "freeware" such as: https://win.softpedia.com/index.free.shtml?scroll_flt (tho, this option is sometimes a hit or miss - as in - some of the software is actually "freemium").

And yes, there are times - where some paid app is the most comfortable option - but that's usually valid for Professionals (as in - those are apps intended for professional tasks where, eventually - you can make enough money for them to be worth the investment). As i noticed - paid versions tends to be more focused on automated features (dumbed-down - if you will) - while some of the free alternatives are more focused on functionality (more focused on what the app can do or extra features - instead of prioritising a simplified GUI / which can be a mistake in terms of popularity), thus - the extra steps can imply a learning curve. Same can be said about back-up software.

On topic, there's Duplicati - a back-up app that's more or less comprehensive: : https://duplicati.com/


Or FreeFileSync - if you're looking for something more simplistic: FreeFileSync


To name a few, cause there's also others - which to some extent are capable than the ones mentioned above - but less user friendly and you might need an external drive for that (for example - Clonezilla does have such requirements: "The destination partition must be equal or larger than the source one.").

Hi folks

For Disk copying / cloning there's zillions of possibilities -- Macrium 8 Free isn't going away any time soon. However IMO for a good solid FREE data / folder backup program --is for people to learn to use rsync in linux (test and play with VM's) and it's simple GUI GRSYNC. Beats any of the others hands down - just try it and see. Any Linux distro will have rsync as a std command and grsync is usually included in any of the repositories. No problem with recursion / long file and path names etc etc and beats ROBOCOPY many times over.



For Paid software on Windows just get the pro / appropriate version of Macrium. support has always been good and having tried a load of various windows backup things Macrium has for me always been reliable.

Note also whatever you use DO TEST THE RESTORE. Many instances are on the web of people having made a backup seemingly OK ind there's a problem when they want to restore data.


Cheers
jimbo

mart44 said:

I use EaseUS ToDo and have successfully restored from disk images made with this a number of times. Also, Microsoft still includes 'Back up and Restore (Windows 7) in Windows 11, as it has in earlier operating systems. This just works for creating an image of the entire C: drive. Very simple to use and only needs a Windows start-up drive in order to restore the entire system from the image.

The backup process creates a folder called 'WindowImageBackup' on the backup drive. Not had any trouble restoring from this either and it has sometimes been a dice-up which backup to use. Fairly confident in both.

I feel it best to have a fallback position just in case a restoration failure ever happens. It might never be known whether a successful restore can be done from what should be a good back-up until is comes to the crunch of using it.

Edit: I should add that I haven't needed to do a restore in Windows 11 yet. The above has been the case with operating systems prior to this and I think should be the same with W.11.

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The Windows backup tool is a deprecated feature and MS have not maintained it for years (clue in in name). They recommend using 3rd party tools.

Many users here have experienced problems with restoring with it and I certainly did on a number of occasions.

I strongly recommend you choose a different supplementary back up tool if you so desire.

jimbo45 said:

Note also whatever you use DO TEST THE RESTORE. Many instances are on the web of people having made a backup seemingly OK ind there's a problem when they want to restore data.


Cheers
jimbo

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The key issue is people often do not want to test a restore in case it does actually fail and user is left with a drive that will not boot.. To those people that always leaves an element of uncertainty.

However, there are a number of ways of testing the restore without overwriting the existing drive at all.

1) Temporarily replace existing drive with a new drive and restore to new drive
This is perhaps the best option but involves taking drive out etc.

2) Install as dual boot on a second drive if you have one.
The minor issue with this is you can end up with boot files on original drive unless you disconnect it first. The you need to select which drive to boot from bios.

3) Install as dual boot on same drive
This involves shrinking C drive, and installing in unallocated space.
Does require a bit ok knowledge about disk partitioning.

4) install as dual boot in a virtual hard drive
This is the least intrusive method as you do not need to partition drive - just create a vhdx file, restore to it and add a boot entry.
This is a really great way of testing your backups without messing around with drive removals, partition resizing etc.

5) Restore image to a virtual machine.
Macrium Reflect has a great feature called Viboot whereby you can select an image backup and restore it as a virtual machine with Hyper-V or Virtualbox.

To be fair, you can actually do the same with any other virtual machine tool by creating a vhd in vm and restoring image to it (booting from recovery iso inside vm) but it is more of a palaver as you have to do things manually unlike Viboot which is much slicker.

Overall, I strongly recommend Option 4 as it only requires a modest element of user knowledge and is totally reversible.

mart44 said:

Also, Microsoft still includes 'Back up and Restore (Windows 7) in Windows 11, as it has in earlier operating systems ..... Not had any trouble restoring from this either.....

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kado897 said:

I would be careful about using the Win 7 imaging tool. I had failures in both backup & restore way back in the Win 7 days.

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My first use of Back up and Restore (Windows 7) was in Windows 7 itself, making a system image of my Win7 PC before it got the free upgrade to Win10 in 2015 which I then restored to a spare HDD. I used it exclusively from then on, both for imaging and restores. On my W10 test machine that by now has images every version of Win10 from the 1507 initial release up to 22H2 that would be a monthly restore of each currently supported version, the Patch Tuesday CU applied, then a new image made. By the time I stopped using it and switched to Macrium Reflect Free in 2018 I was painfully aware of all its limitations and faults.

It's biggest failing was that, for no apparent reason, a perfectly good image could suddenly become unrecognisable for the restore which would report 'cannot find a system image'.


The final straw for me was when Microsoft broke system imaging in the release of 32-bit Windows 10 version 1803, and didn't bother to fix it until the release of version 1809.

Those still looking for a free straight forward backup util should have a look at Hasleo Backup Suite.

I have looked at hasleo. In my tests it is not particularly quick and it doesn't have anything extra fancy like exclusions, but it seems to do the basic job ok, and its free. Like many others it uses it uses a proprietary format which cant be accessed by other tools, as far as I know.

SIW2 said:

I have looked at hasleo. In my tests it is not particularly quick and it doesn't have anything extra fancy like exclusions, but it seems to do the basic job ok, and its free.

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Interesting, since my experience with it has shown it to be pretty quick on both backups and restores.

I did a comparative test a little while ago. I am not sure a couple of minutes here or there matters much to most people. Does the job, not hard to use and it's free, can't complain.

It might matter to people whose hobby is making images multiple times a day. Or to somebody who prefers read/write format or wants exclusions and other fancy stuff.

For those interested, 9to5toys.com has a special going on for AOMEI Backupper Pro for $28.99 which ends in 6 days. It's a 41% discount.

AOMEI Backupper Professional Edition: Lifetime Subscription​

Just tried Rescuezilla. Created a backup of the drive and restored one partition successfully. I only use Macrium to do the basic backup and restore so this would be a viable alternative for me if needed.

Fabler2 said:

Just tried Rescuezilla. Created a backup of the drive and restored one partition successfully. I only use Macrium to do the basic backup and restore so this would be a viable alternative for me if needed.

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The Rescuezilla program is still under development so I would stay clear of it if I were you. A better alternative that I've used for years is Clonezilla which has always been very reliable.

Badger said:

The Rescuezilla program is still under development so I would stay clear of it if I were you. A better alternative that I've used for years is Clonezilla which has always been very reliable.

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Good to know thanks. Seems to work ok though.

Here you are, this is the best list of backup /sync tools :

> Acronis True Image - PAID
> AOMEI Backupper Standard Edition - Free Backup Software for Windows - FREE
> Drive SnapShot - Disk Image Backup for Windows and PE. - TRIAL
> EaseUS ToDo Backup - FREE
> FreeFileSync: Open Source File Synchronization & Backup Software - FREE
> Hasleo Backup Suite - FREE [ Newly Released Software - NOT a lot known ]
> Karen's Replicator - Backup Utility - FREE
> NovaBackup - PAID
> O&O DiskImage 15 Professional Edition - PAID - See NOTE: Below
> Paragon Backup & Recovery - FREE
> Second Copy Automatic Backup Software - PAID
> SyncBackFree: Backup and Synchronization Software - FREE
> GoodSync- Backup & Sync- PAID
> GS RichCopy 360 - Backup & Sync- PAID
> SyncToy - MS Download Centre - FREE
> Resilio - Backup & Sync- PAID