Macrium v5 Users Opinions on Macrium v6

Brds7t7 said:

kado897 said:

Brds7t7 said:

I actually switched from Macrium Reflect Pro v5 to Macrium Free v6.
I know it may seem strange switching from a Pro product to free but I've found the free version 6 offers me exactly the same as Pro v5 and more.
I've always used differential images and they're a whole lot easier to setup in v6.
For me there wasn't anything added in v6 Pro that I needed, so wasn't worth me paying for an upgrade this time around. I don't use any of the deploy features, if I'm moving to a new PC, I prefer to do a clean install anyway.
The only thing I don't have now in Free v6 is incremental backups, which I didn't use anyway. No loss there.
I've been really impressed with v6.

The main improvement in the V6 pro for me is fast delta restores. If you are restoring a recent image over an existing install it will only restore the differences resulting in vastly improved restore times. A restore of an 80GB installation to a spinner used to take 30 minutes it now takes 5. This is almost as fast as a system restore so I have now turned system restore off.

Hi Kado, I did notice the rapid delta restore feature. Definitely seems like a very good feature. I don't restore images all that often though so wasn't a feature I felt I needed. I can definitely see the benefit of it though.
I don't use system restore these days either. If something isn't working right, I just restore from the image instead. Luckily, I haven't had to do it that often.

I do weekly full and daily differentials so if I muck something up I can restore in 5 minutes with very little loss of data. I've done three of these so far with no problems. The last one was an unattended Photoshop update overnight which went wrong. The CC updater had become corrupted in it's update a few days before. Reinstalling didn't help and the Adobe forums were useless so rather than troubleshoot further I just restored to before the update and the updates went through with no problems.

Brds7t7 said:

kado897 said:

Brds7t7 said:

Hi Kado, I did notice the rapid delta restore feature. Definitely seems like a very good feature. I don't restore images all that often though so wasn't a feature I felt I needed. I can definitely see the benefit of it though.
I don't use system restore these days either. If something isn't working right, I just restore from the image instead. Luckily, I haven't had to do it that often.

I do weekly full and daily differentials so if I muck something up I can restore in 5 minutes with very little loss of data. I've done three of these so far with no problems. The last one was an unattended Photoshop update overnight which went wrong. The CC updater had become corrupted in it's update a few days before. Reinstalling didn't help and the Adobe forums were useless so rather than troubleshoot further I just restored to before the update and the updates went through with no problems.

That's a big benefit, especially with the Adobe installers being so large. Something messes up with that and it's not a simple fix if you don't have a backup. I had a similar problem a few years ago when updating Adobe Audition. I was only using Windows system imaging then but it did get me out of the mess.
I use both Windows imaging and Macrium now and my data is kept on separate drives with a different backup strategy. I use FreeFileSync with versioning on those.
Actually, that was down to your advice as I hadn't used FFS before that.

Yes I have used FFS with versioning for 4 years now for data backups. I've only ever had one problem which the author fixed for me in the next release. It's still being developed with a new release every month, And the best thing is it is free. Just be careful of Open Candy in the installer.

Yep you always want unopened candy that is Halloween 101

I haven't used system restore since XP; I never could get it to work in Win 7. Macrium Reflect si so much more reliable.

I use auto-verify in V5. It doubles the time it takes to make an image but that doesn't bother me since, once started, I can just ignore it, and even use the computer, until it is done. I've rarely had an image fail to verify (the rare times it did, I just made another image) and I've never had a verified image fail to restore.

I also use FFS with versioning (and the hack for verifying) to backup my data. The only thing I image is my OS drive— all my data is on other drives—which dramatically reduces the time required to make an image and the space required to store it. I no longer bother with incremental or differential images.

Lady Fitzgerald said:

I haven't used system restore since XP; I never could get it to work in Win 7. Macrium Reflect si so much more reliable.

I use auto-verify in V5. It doubles the time it takes to make an image but that doesn't bother me since, once started, I can just ignore it, and even use the computer, until it is done. I've rarely had an image fail to verify (the rare times it did, I just made another image) and I've never had a verified image fail to restore.

I also use FFS with versioning (and the hack for verifying) to backup my data. The only thing I image is my OS drive— all my data is on other drives—which dramatically reduces the time required to make an image and the space required to store it. I no longer bother with incremental or differential images.

The hack for verifying FFS?

kado897 said:

Lady Fitzgerald said:

I haven't used system restore since XP; I never could get it to work in Win 7. Macrium Reflect si so much more reliable.

I use auto-verify in V5. It doubles the time it takes to make an image but that doesn't bother me since, once started, I can just ignore it, and even use the computer, until it is done. I've rarely had an image fail to verify (the rare times it did, I just made another image) and I've never had a verified image fail to restore.

I also use FFS with versioning (and the hack for verifying) to backup my data. The only thing I image is my OS drive— all my data is on other drives—which dramatically reduces the time required to make an image and the space required to store it. I no longer bother with incremental or differential images.

The hack for verifying FFS?

Verification Hack forFreeFileSync

1. Go to AppData inthe User folder.

2. Open the Roaming folder.

3. Open the FreeFileSync folder.

4. Click on GlobalSettings.xml

5. Look for the line VerifyCopiedFiles Enabled and change false to true.

6. Save when closing.

It may be necessary to repeat the above steps several timesto get the setting to “stick”.

Be aware this hack will double the amount of time needed torun FFS.

Lady Fitzgerald said:

kado897 said:

Lady Fitzgerald said:

I haven't used system restore since XP; I never could get it to work in Win 7. Macrium Reflect si so much more reliable.

I use auto-verify in V5. It doubles the time it takes to make an image but that doesn't bother me since, once started, I can just ignore it, and even use the computer, until it is done. I've rarely had an image fail to verify (the rare times it did, I just made another image) and I've never had a verified image fail to restore.

I also use FFS with versioning (and the hack for verifying) to backup my data. The only thing I image is my OS drive— all my data is on other drives—which dramatically reduces the time required to make an image and the space required to store it. I no longer bother with incremental or differential images.

The hack for verifying FFS?

Verification Hack forFreeFileSync

1. Go to AppData inthe User folder.

2. Open the Roaming folder.

3. Open the FreeFileSync folder.

4. Click on GlobalSettings.xml

5. Look for the line VerifyCopiedFiles Enabled and change false to true.

6. Save when closing.

It may be necessary to repeat the above steps several timesto get the setting to “stick”.

Be aware this hack will double the amount of time needed torun FFS.

Thanks