Hi JDH,
Good idea to see what others think first, ultimately you will need to try and see which suits you.
I have used Macrium , Paragon and several others.
They all have pros and cons.
They all work well on virtually all systems.
Similarly, they will be the odd system any one of them will not function properly on.
Right now I am using Easeus, it seems to be the most complete free offering- and is working perfectly for me.
https://www.sevenforums.com/software/...g-program.html
A couple of points:
1. Macrium v5 can make winpe media for you ( you need to download WAIK for their method - you can install the trial v5 to make it for you).
It works well in my tests. Imaging, restoring, and mounting without issues.
2. Easeus can also make winpe media for you . Same thing - you need to d/l WAIK for their method.
It works perfectly in my tests - image and restore is fast - even restoring to a smaller partition - which is unusual.
It also includes Restore to dissimilar hardware.
As far as I know , it is the only free app. to offer that function.
Oddly, the mount function has been disabled in their standard pe build.
It is extremely unlikely you would want to mount in pe, nevertheless, I am in discussion with them about it.
3. Paragon does not include an inbuilt method for making winpe media. ( I expect they will as the others have started doing it- paragon are normally the first with the new ideas )
However, it is very easy to make it portable and throw it into just about any pe environment.
It is the only free app to align to nt6 rules during partition creation or resizing ( from the left that is - it won't realign the whole thing if you are just extending to the right ).
Just depends which you prefer.