Macrium Reflect v6 is fully compatible with Windows 10 so you will have no problems keeping your data backed up. But before you take the plunge and upgrade to Windows 10 you need to image your hard drive so, should you wish to return to Windows 7/8/8.1 you can do this quickly and easily with Macrium Reflect Free! Macrium Reflect Free Edition. Macrium Reflect Free is a proven backup program, but it lacks many features found in the competition. Paragon Backup & Recovery 16 Free Edition review: Easy backup with a twist.
Macrium was one of the first to release a free version of its backup software. Ten years later, to the benefit of users everywhere, Reflect Free 6 remains a stable, reliable way to quickly image and restore your system. It doesn’t offer as much functionality as, but there’s something to be said for a backup program that hasn’t failed its fans in over a decade. Note: This review is part of our ongoing roundups of the and the. Go to those stories for information on competing products and buying advice.
Design and features Though Reflect is a bit old-school in appearance, the look somehow works better with the free version. Fewer options, less clutter, cleaner lines. Reflect Free is limited to imaging disks or individual partitions (no cloning, file backup, or other choices), but there’s an option to select only those partitions required to restore the Windows operating system. If you want file and folder backup, you’ll need one of the pay versions. Same deal with incremental backup, though the free version does support differential (all changes since the initial backup).
Note that even the pay versions back up only folders, not individual files. You can always drag files to a folder, but it’s still a slightly puzzling omission. IDG Reflect Free offers extensive schedule options and differential backup.
You may not be able to back up specific files or folders with Reflect Free, but there are extensive scheduling options and retention rules (how long to keep and what to delete when space is low), and jobs are saved as standard XML files. Password protection and email notifications are available only in the pay versions. IDG Several flavors of the Windows PE boot environment are supported by Reflect Free 6 Reflect Free supports both MBR and GPT disks (it was late to the GPT game), and it has a great boot media creator, which lets you change flavors of Windows PE to best suit the operating system being backed up. It also lets you choose the drivers you want to install. PE allows driver injection (adding them at restore time), so you’re likely okay there anyway. Performance Macrium claims increased performance for the latest version 7, of which a free version is promised soon. That might be nice, as Reflect Free 6 took just over nine minutes to perform our 115GB system backup.
That’s about two minutes slower than any of the competition, though CPU usage was minimal. Backup generally takes place during off hours or in the background, so we don’t lend performance a lot of weight in our evaluations.
On the bright side, the free version of Reflect spawns only a single background process, down from the three that the pay versions create. And much better than the six invoked. Great for the task If all you want to do is image your system or data, then Macrium Reflect Free 6 is a great way to do it.
We’ve been using it for seemingly forever, and it’s never let us down yet. If you want sync or plain file copying, then look at the equally free Aomei Backupper Standard. There’s no rule against having more than one backup program installed.
Min requirements: Windows XP/Vista/ 7/8+/10 File size: 3.6MB (installer only) Macrium reflect 7 review – We all know how important it is to back up our personal files, to keep them safe in case disaster strikes. There’s certainly no shortage of tools for the task, and some are easier to use than others. Macrium Reflect isn’t a backup tool as such, although it can be used as one.
What it does is create a copy of your hard drive that you can use to restore your system in the event of hardware malfunction or a major malware infection, such as a ransomware attack. If you’re upgrading to a new hard drive, you can use it to copy the contents over from your old one. The free software offers disk imaging and cloning; lets you reorder and resize partitions; and can create a bootable rescue disc. It comes with a collection of management tools that you can use to schedule, compress and browse your backups.
The new version of Macrium Reflect doesn’t introduce as many new features as version 6 did, but it is now licensed for commercial – as well as home – use. That means you can use it in an office environment, provided that you’re only backing up and restoring one PC. A useful feature called viBoot integration – which allows you to create, start and manage Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machines from Macrium Reflect image files – has been updated, and the Task Scheduler gains better compatibility with (Anniversary Update and later). When you run the program’s installer, you’ll be given the option of downloading the Windows PE component, which is used to create the rescue disk.
This is an additional 809MB and while it isn’t essential, it’s certainly very useful for emergencies. 1 Macrium Reflect 7 displays all the drives (and partitions) in – or connected to – your PC. Select one or more, 1 then choose to clone 2 or image your selection. 3 The former creates an exact copy on a different drive, while the latter saves the information required to completely restore a drive or individual partitions. 2 The ‘Image this disk’ option will copy the hard drive (or partition) exactly as it is, which means you’ll need to remember to update the image regularly.
Select the source to copy 1 and pick a destination. This can be a folder elsewhere on your PC 2 or you can write the image to CD or DVD. 3 Click the Advanced Options link 1 to set the compression level you require for the image, 2 specify a maximum file size, password-protect the image, verify it and more. 3 Click Next 4 to start the process. If you’re writing to CD or DVD, you’ll be prompted to insert a blank disc.