Macrium Reflect moving to lease model.

@hdmi :

I don't doubt your sincerity, but I see so much negativity about Acronis on the Web that I decided a while back to abandon them, even though I hadn't had any bad experiences with them.

A member of the Macrium forum posted this fairly scathing revue of Acronis today, during the discussion there about the absence of the 4-pack licenses:
Family 4-Pack Availability? - (Page 5)

glasskuter said:

I believe 3 pages of responses here mostly agree Paramount is shooting themselves in the foot.

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Unless they lower their prices or offer specials the real damage will be when version 9 is released and a very large number of licensed user say N0 and just keep using version 8. There is no way I will pay the price they have listed on their web page.

hsehestedt said:

This change in pricing just pushes me even closer to ditching full disk image backups altogether. I have 8 licenses of Reflect 8, but with the new pricing, it's simply going to be too expensive to upgrade to 9 unless they have some really aggressive upgrade prices.

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I only do full weekly backs so I didn't need to upgrade from the free version to the paid version. I upgraded so that I could support their hard work and effort to keep Macrium the best it can be. The only feature I do use is the Image Guard. If version 9 turns out to be too expensive I'll stay with version 8 for as long as I can. IMHO, if they are in financial trouble increasing the cost is only going to have a negative effect and could cause them to go under. They need to encourage more customers instead of discouraging them. Macrium, I and many others supported you by buying licenses we didn't need and this is going to be the way you thank us?

V8 will definitely be my last Macrium purchase if they proceed with the lease arrangement.
My back up plan (pun) is to use R-Drive Image which is rock solid and also the excellent freeware program Cobian Reflector for individual files and folders.
Currently i can purchase R-Drive licenses for $34 US which are lifetime (no updates though they are rare).

hdmi said:

ⓘ Note: Changes made to the mounted file system are temporary and are discarded when the image is unmounted. So, not THAT particularly useful to most users most of the time if you ask me.

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oof that is a shame, disktovhd will work successfully on an edited mounted image, when vhdx and shadow copy are unchecked, still has minor surgical uses.. ive done it to create a VM before I didnt realize the changes werent saved, probably because they ended up baked into my vhd and i didnt use the backup again after that.

that was embarrassing enough to reply to good catch.

I question the timing of Macrium's decison to go lease and what may be in store. See if my points are all valid (please correct any point I have wrong)and if my reasoning how this could go holds water.

I'm thinking we might all be fooling ourselves if we assume version 8.0 (free or paid) will continue to work after January. For all we know 8.1 may be affected as well. Oh, I don't doubt we can still make backups, but will we be able to restore them?
Consider this scenario.

MS has said the revocations from the May update will be automatically applied in Jan. 2024. Coincidentally, Macrium 9 goes lease in Jan., 2024.

For those that already manually applied these revocations, despite being asked in the Macrium forum, Macrium has still not instructed its users how to make recovery media that will work to recover systems that have the revocations in place, neither in the paid version of 8.1 or the free version of 8.0 that so many people use. I've wondered why Paramount has been silent about this issue. What very little response they'e given has been vague as he**.

We all rock along waiting to be told and before you know it, January is here and we wake up one morning with the revocations automatically applied. Our images are now useless because our recovery media is useless.

What if Paramount got the bright idea of letting only version 9 make recovery media that will restore our images on these systems where revocations are in place? That would generate a lot of sales from people who had decided the lease price was too high and had no plan to upgrade but use whatever version they had as long as it would work..Well, surprise! At this point it, doesn't work. Is this a stretch??

Haydon said:

How do you do that?
What is the need for doing that?

Edit: I think I was a bit brief. Where I am coming from: it sounded like a manual (cumbersome) procedure and could have been automated with some kind of file versioning backups. I may be completely off-base, hence the questions, thanks!

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I use a program called "FreeFileSync". It syncs source to destination (or both directions among other options). You can set it to auto archive any files rather than simply overwrite them. Or, if a file is flat out deleted on the source, before deleting it on the destination it will archive it. It's purely automatic so no work involved at all.

As the name implies, it's totally free. I've been using it a couple years and it's really fantastic.

glasskuter said:

I question the timing of Macrium's decison to go lease and what may be in store.

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I do believe that Macrium is having trouble financially. If they continue on the path they are going, They are going to put themselves out of business. They need to realize that we are also going through financial difficulties. If I was selling a product and the money wasn't coming in, I would try to attract new customers by lowering the price. They need to increase the number of sales and not reduce it. It's all in their hands so they can do what they want. I do hope I don't see a great product come to an end because management made bad decisions.

hsehestedt said:

I use a program called "FreeFileSync". It syncs source to destination (or both directions among other options). You can set it to auto archive any files rather than simply overwrite them. Or, if a file is flat out deleted on the source, before deleting it on the destination it will archive it. It's purely automatic so no work involved at all.

As the name implies, it's totally free. I've been using it a couple years and it's really fantastic.

FreeFileSync

Download FreeFileSync 14.0. FreeFileSync is a free open source data backup software that helps you synchronize files and folders on Windows, Linux and macOS.

freefilesync.org

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Thanks @hsehestedt but I have second thoughts on inserting the topic in this thread (OT) I'll start another thread.

BrianInEngland said:

Paid version can do protected backups that are ransomware-safe. Their Image guardian is a Windows driver that prevents any attempt to move/delete/write/copy a Macrium image other than by Macrium itself. If any other process tries to wrote to the image Macrium throws an error and blocks it.

I bought the full version for that and incremental backups.

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Thanks for proving my whole point, which was that those who claim that the free version of Macrium Reflect is "full-featured" are basically just living in a fantasy world.

BobOmb said:

What do you guys think of a set price for home users and the lease stuff for business users?

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What I think is that the set price of the ISO file that I linked to up thread is zero smackeroonies. What I ALSO think is that, for most home users, the features that it has should be precisely in line with what most home users need most.

Wisewiz said:

@hdmi :

I don't doubt your sincerity, but I see so much negativity about Acronis on the Web that I decided a while back to abandon them, even though I hadn't had any bad experiences with them.

A member of the Macrium forum posted this fairly scathing revue of Acronis today, during the discussion there about the absence of the 4-pack licenses:
Family 4-Pack Availability? - (Page 5)

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I'm not talking about Acronis True Image or Cyber Protect Home. I'm only talking about the free, Linux based, bootable Rescue Media ISO file of True Image 2021, which is just a 689MB file (direct download link I posted up thread).

hdmi said:

Thanks for proving my whole point, which was that those who claim that the free version of Macrium Reflect is "full-featured" are basically just living in a fantasy world.

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But for most users who just want the safety net of a system image, the free version is enough. More tech-savvy people like users of this forum know it's not enough for their use cases so buy the premium features.

hsehestedt said:

I use a program called "FreeFileSync". It syncs source to destination (or both directions among other options). You can set it to auto archive any files rather than simply overwrite them. Or, if a file is flat out deleted on the source, before deleting it on the destination it will archive it. It's purely automatic so no work involved at all.

As the name implies, it's totally free. I've been using it a couple years and it's really fantastic.

FreeFileSync

Download FreeFileSync 14.0. FreeFileSync is a free open source data backup software that helps you synchronize files and folders on Windows, Linux and macOS.

freefilesync.org

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I like it a lot, although I don't use it myself personally. One of the great things about it IMO is that its RealTimeSync feature lets you specify a command so it also is possible to choose a different tool to perform the actual copying task, like FastCopy.

BrianInEngland said:

But for most users who just want the safety net of a system image, the free version is enough. More tech-savvy people like users of this forum know it's not enough for their use cases so buy the premium features.

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For most users, probably yes. But this changes nothing of the fact that a lot of users don't have that much available free storage space and their storage transfer rates might be slow when they don't have the patience. So, a list of features like being able to specify file/folder exclusions─conveniently in the GUI and with the option to use wildcards─and incremental image capability in concert with being able to pick a destination folder that is located on one of the partitions that happens to be included in the source selection is still very often highly feasible, if not compulsory to get the job done. So much so, a lot of people still refuse to make an image, and they accept the consequence or they come on here asking for help AFTER their Windows partition got messed up. In a lot of cases the reason why this keeps happening is simply because they've been told a million times over that the free version of Macrium Reflect is equivalent to the Holy Grail For Most (HGFM). There now, I've said it...

James said:

Yes, I would never buy a phone on contract. I want to own the thing! If you don’t have the money to buy it outright then just get a cheaper phone.

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My preference when I get a phone is always to just pay for the full amount for the phone on day 1 and be done with it. However, Verizon always has always had a solid buy buy back option on my previous phone and this requires me to pay for the phone for 2 years with monthly payments. It's always the exact same price for the new phone, just total cost/24.

I traded in my Note 8, which was almost 4 years old on a Galaxy S21+ and they gave me $400 on the Note 8. 400/24 = $16.67 per month. No way was I giving up $400 for the convenience of paying off my new $1000 phone on day 1. Over the course of 2 years, I paid $600 for the phone with the old trade in. I still own my new phone and it's now paid off. Hoping to keep it at least 1 more year before I buy a new phone.

hdmi said:

I'm not talking about Acronis True Image or Cyber Protect Home. I'm only talking about the free, Linux based, bootable Rescue Media ISO file of True Image 2021, which is just a 689MB file (direct download link I posted up thread).

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Sorry to have missed your point earlier. I’m going to honour your contribution by giving that ISO a fair try.

The thing about that iso @hdmi is it will work no differently than the Macrium recovery media most of us are using now. It won't work for anyone who has applied the revocations of the May update (or after MS automatically applies the revocations beginning in early 2024) unless the user turns off secure boot which most people will not know to do before booting from the media.

In fact, for anyone who has secure boot turned OFF as I do, I have not seen a definitive statement from MS that guarantees MS won't automatically force secure boot ON to automatically apply these revocations next year, leaving us with no way to turn secure boot off to use the media we now have, whether it be Macrium, Acronis, or any other. This is the biggest question for me. I mean, MS firmly states that even the OEM recovery partitions become useless so that leads me to think secure boot may be forced whether I want it or not.

If you haven't already, read this in its entirety and you'll see what I mean. I've read it 5 times and come away with the same questions each time.

I come away from it with the understanding that once MS updates WINPE, the backup software manufacturers will have to update their product to include the new WINPE in their recovery media. However, neither Macrium nor Acronisn nor any XXX image application is releasing answers to how or IF this is going to be addressed on their end regarding recovery media for older versions of their product. @hsehestedt probably knows more about this than anyone here as he's played around with manually altering recovery media to include the May update (IMO he'll have to do it all over again because the second deployment stage of the CVE will be released in the July update next week)

Users need firm answers on all this unholy mess, both from MS, Macrium, Acronis, et al so we know where we stand and can make our decisions what is right for us going forward. If we on this forum don't have a clear understanding, how can Joe Blow out in the world be expected to. There is absolutely nothing that will keep us from using any app we now have to make an image going forward, but that image is worthless if we can't restore it.

@hsehestedt Do I have all that right?

pparks1 said:

My preference when I get a phone is always to just pay for the full amount for the phone on day 1 and be done with it. However, Verizon always has always had a solid buy buy back option on my previous phone and this requires me to pay for the phone for 2 years with monthly payments. It's always the exact same price for the new phone, just total cost/24.

I traded in my Note 8, which was almost 4 years old on a Galaxy S21+ and they gave me $400 on the Note 8. 400/24 = $16.67 per month. No way was I giving up $400 for the convenience of paying off my new $1000 phone on day 1. Over the course of 2 years, I paid $600 for the phone with the old trade in. I still own my new phone and it's now paid off. Hoping to keep it at least 1 more year before I buy a new phone.

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400 is very good.

Upgraded from my Galaxy S20 FE to Galaxy S22 for what i feel was a great deal on T-Mobile service, Up to 1000 Off for 2 Years, Bill for Plan is only for Plan and Phone Insurance, $88.00 a month, Device Lease Fee covered til end of Plan, Then will decide if keeping it another year or not

As for Office 365 i don't mind paying the annual renewal fee for that software as i do like it, and also like the One Drive space etc

But for Macrium Reflect subscription model would cost me for minimum 3 devices $147.97 a year, a bit cost prohitibitive there, unless somehow in the future i am able to swing it, but as of right now plan is to stay on Reflect Home 8 til i decide in future what exactly to do

bikemanI7 said:

Upgraded from my Galaxy S20 FE to Galaxy S22 for what i feel was a great deal on T-Mobile service, Up to 1000 Off for 2 Years, Bill for Plan is only for Plan and Phone Insurance, $88.00 a month, Device Lease Fee covered til end of Plan, Then will decide if keeping it another year or not

As for Office 365 i don't mind paying the annual renewal fee for that software as i do like it, and also like the One Drive space etc

But for Macrium Reflect subscription model would cost me for minimum 3 devices $147.97 a year, a bit cost prohitibitive there, unless somehow in the future i am able to swing it, but as of right now plan is to stay on Reflect Home 8 til i decide in future what exactly to do

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Hi-
You might want to check out AOMEI | Windows & iPhone Backup Software, Partition Manager and Cloud Backup Service and Hasleo provides Windows Backup & Clone, Data Recovery, Windows To Go Creator, and more. as both provide good back capabilities at much lower price than Reflect. Cheers.

GCG