Solved Macrium drive clone for backup: reliable?

DaveO · Wednesday at 2:52 PM

I recently migrated everything from a Win10 machine (Dell Precision M4800) to a new Win11 machine (Dell Inspiron 16). My backup solution has been to have a second drive in a USB enclosure, and do regular total clones of the three partitions using Macrium Reflect 7.3 (UEFI). That way, in case of disk crash, I have a relatively new total replacement ready immediately and can fill in gaps between clones from my automatic online data-file backup. On the old machine, I did test that after swapping the drives, the clone boots and has everything.

Windows 11 is just different enough that I am not certain that a Macrium disk clone will give me a bootable replacement. I will probably experiment by prying the laptop open and swapping the drive to see if it boots up (I hesitate since the Dell instructions about "Service Mode" are designed to instill fear and confusion). The clone has all 6 of the partitions on the original drive, but I learned the hard way that an apparent backup drive is useless if the MBR (under W10) is somehow wrong. Is there any reason to think that a total clone via Macrium won't yield a bootable drive? Is there anything in W11 that is so different that the Macrium clone will miss something?

Josey Wales · Wednesday at 3:03 PM

There are later versions of Macrium Reflect 8 that would work. I have not used 7.3 in years. There also is Hasleo that you can try

Hasleo provides Windows Backup & Clone, Data Recovery, Windows To Go Creator, and more.

Hasleo Software provides Windows Backup & Clone, Data Recovery, Windows To Go Creator, BitLocker solution and other software to help you enrich your digital life.

www.hasleo.com

glasskuter · Wednesday at 4:26 PM

I would not use any version of Macrium earlier than 8.0. I run 8.1. That said, I would never clone either. Too many reports here of "clone gone wrong". I always use imaging and restore those images in emergencies, when replacing a drive, or even to a new computer. I can restore my entire system drive in
4 minutes using 8.1's rapid delta restore.

Josey Wales · Wednesday at 4:55 PM

glasskuter said:
I would not use any version of Macrium earlier than 8.0. I run 8.1. That said, I would never clone either. Too many reports here of "clone gone wrong". I always use imaging and restore those images in emergencies, when replacing a drive, or even to a new computer. I can restore my entire system drive in
4 minutes using 8.1's rapid delta restore.

I have cloned many drives without any issue using 8.0, 8.1 MR and Hasleo. Like you said I would never use any version older than 8.0.

hsehestedt · Wednesday at 5:09 PM

Ironically, I just happened to do this last night. I had a Mini PC with a 512GB NVMe SSD but wanted to replace it with a 1TB. I cloned to an NVMe drive in an external enclosure using Reflect X, then replaced the original with that drive. Everything worked flawlessly.

NOTE: Some apps that require activation will need to be deactivated on the original drive then reinstalled on the new drive.

Wannagofast · Wednesday at 6:56 PM

I have been using the last 7.3 free edition to make and restore images (never tried clones) since it came out.
It has worked flawlessly on Windows 10 and 11 23H2/24H2 with no issues or failures ever. Rescue USB only.
I don't keep it installed in Windows. I have a copy of the latest V8 as well but just prefer the layout of V7.

peace
wanna

Bree · Wednesday at 7:15 PM

Wannagofast said:
I have been using the last 7.3 free edition to make and restore images... It has worked flawlessly on Windows 10 and 11 23H2/24H2 with no issues or failures ever.
Rescue USB only. I don't keep it installed in Windows. I have a copy of the latest V8 as well but just prefer the layout of V7.

I have an old netbook with a 1024x600 display, some of the menus in Reflect v8.0 onwards just don't fit on the screen, particularly when booting the rescue media, so I installed v7 Free on it. In fact, it's on a version of v7.2 (not the last v7.3). This is deliberate, there was just one build of v7.2 Free where they accidentally left some paid-for features like rapid delta restore enabled in the free version.

It has been totally reliable in W10 and W11 up to 23H2. Unfortunately this netbook's Intel Atom lacks the SSE4.2 instruction set required for 24H2.

Froggie · Wednesday at 8:10 PM

@Bree - what's the version # of that FREE v7 version with the accidentally left in options?

Bree · Wednesday at 8:34 PM

Froggie said:
@Bree - what's the version # of that FREE v7 version with the accidentally left in options?

Just in the rescue media, Free mistakenly created the 'Workstation edition' media.
More here: New Macrium Reflect Updates - Windows 10 Help Forums - posts #2012-#2020
and here: Macrium Forum | 7.2.4063 Free creates "inconsistent" Rescue Media

Helmuuth · Wednesday at 8:53 PM

allow me to interject.... i cant decide..use macrium for backup or just settle using restore points? because in the past i ran into user acct corruptions. so i need a program that is reliable

Bree · Wednesday at 9:16 PM

Helmuuth said:
allow me to interject.... i cant decide..use macrium for backup or just settle using restore points? because in the past i ran into user acct corruptions. so i need a program that is reliable

Restore points only cover the installed OS/software/drivers. They do NOT backup or restore user profiles or data.

DaveO · 2025-04-24T11:42:29-0400

Thank you all for your input. My primary concern was whether there is a definite error-in-waiting related to disk structure under W11 as opposed to W10, and nobody has indicated that that is a real issue. The suggestion of using Hasleo as opposed to the older version of Macrium is helpful (I would like to avoid the subscription rabbit hole if possible). I am curious though about Glasskuter's suggestion about images as opposed to clones. If a drive melts down, you need a replacement drive, then you need some way to transfer the image to the replacement drive (maybe a recovery thumbdrive big enough to also hold the image). With cloning, you just swap drives and you are back in business. But perhaps I'm missing an important feature of images.

Bree · 2025-04-24T12:22:21-0400

DaveO said:
I am curious though about Glasskuter's suggestion about images as opposed to clones. If a drive melts down, you need a replacement drive, then you need some way to transfer the image to the replacement drive (maybe a recovery thumbdrive big enough to also hold the image).

With Macrium (and most others) the usual practice is to make the recovery boot media on a USB flash drive, anything would do 1GB is large enough. The image is usually kept on another (larger) drive, typically an external HDD or SSD.

Bree · 2025-04-24T12:33:46-0400

DaveO said:
With cloning, you just swap drives and you are back in business. But perhaps I'm missing an important feature of images.

With cloning you'd need as many drives as you have PCs you want to back up.

With images you can keep images for multiple PCs, and/or multiple images for a single PC, all on one drive.
I have a lot of PCs to back up.....

SIW2 · 2025-04-24T12:57:52-0400

Bree said:
Just in the rescue media, Free mistakenly created the 'Workstation edition' media.
More here: New Macrium Reflect Updates - Windows 10 Help Forums - posts #2012-#2020
and here: Macrium Forum | 7.2.4063 Free creates "inconsistent" Rescue Media

View attachment 132087

You will get that if you dont include the license in the recovery media

My simple ADD-TO-WIM pebuilder thing includes it automatically, but I have deliberately removed it here to demonstrate

same thing but with the licene

DaveO · 2025-04-24T13:19:51-0400

Bree said:
With cloning you'd need as many drives as you have PCs you want to back up.

With images you can keep images for multiple PCs, and/or multiple images for a single PC, all on one drive.
I have a lot of PCs to back up.....

I see. Since I have only one computer and don't need multiple copies, then that's not a consideration for me. The main issue is that installed software is not backed up by my online backup plan, and "just reinstall" is in some cases impossible (plus, a nuisance; plus, inevitably there are settings that I struggled to figure out). Anyhow, I'll add that fact to my thinking.

SIW2 · 2025-04-24T13:27:42-0400

I dont know if Hasleo does delta clones/copy/migration or whatever they call it. Has anybody tried? I know it does delta restore, but I havent tested the clone/copy/migrate function

diskgenius (free version) is reliable but it doesnt do delta when selecting os migration

MachineLanguage · 2025-04-24T16:04:53-0400

DaveO said:
With cloning, you just swap drives and you are back in business.

Greetings @DaveO. Not suggesting which method is best for you, but If you do not have a "system image", then at some point you will wish you did.

DaveO · 2025-04-24T16:19:10-0400

MachineLanguage said:
Greetings @DaveO. Not suggesting which method is best for you, but If you do not have a "system image", then at some point you will wish you did.

Okay, given that I have a complete clone on a separate dedicated drive, what would be the advantage of also having a system image? [It would be harmless to make one, I have a surfeit of external drives]. I'm just trying to understand the functional difference between image vs. clone. I had a world-class backup failure 5 years ago where I think I had a system image on a separate USB drive, but I could not get the new drive to boot (admittedly that was 5 years ago and I could have forgotten some important detail).

MachineLanguage · 2025-04-24T16:43:18-0400

Again, better to have one and verify it is good than to wish you had one later.

Solved Macrium drive clone for backup: reliable?

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