I have a license for Macrium Reflect version 8 and I'm subscribed to their Newletter.

Today, I was shocked & horrified when I saw that they had sent me an email me about their upcoming release of Macrium Reflect version "X," and they stated that they are removing the permanent license option from that (and no doubt also all future) version(s) of Macrium Reflect.

They are forcing customers instead to pay an annual subscription fee, and if they stop paying it at the end of the year, then they can no longer make new backups with their Macrium Reflect software that they rented.

Because of that, no way I am ever paying them one more dime at any point in life. Scams like this are appalling to me.

And they have the gall to gaslight their customers by saying that they made this change because customers asked for & wanted it!!!

I'm making this thread to ask you all what is the best alternative to Macrium Reflect?

By best, I mean a reliable backup solution that won't fail when you need it, and also, that doesn't have a scammy forced-subscription model attached to it, like newly-scammy Macrium now does.

Why can't you just continue using version 8?

Good question.

I can and will...for now.

However, in the future, the time will come when changes in OS, and changes in hardware, and changes in drivers, will eventually cause version 8 to stop working.

And so, I want to be prepared for when that time comes.

I already know that I'm never buying anything from Macrium ever again.

I want to put my mind at ease by knowing I've already solved this problem now, so that I won't have to remember to worry about it later.

How shocking! And horrifying!

What are we talking about?

Exactly what the OP says?

I was confused as well. Figured it was some snake oil to protect against demons, BUT duckduckgo said:

"Macrium Reflect is a backup utility for Microsoft Windows developed by Paramount Software UK Ltd in 2006. It creates disk images and file backup archives using Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service to ensure 'point in time' data accuracy."

Sounds pretty pointless tbh.

Still running Macrium Reflect 7 Free on my Windows 10 desktop PC. And I'm still shocked about the fact that there is no free version of the program anymore.


The best imaging and backup tool I have ever experienced in my life, and now the fuckers are trying to kill it with some subscription bullshit? Did they got acquired by Norton/Broadcom or something?!?

Take a look at AOMEI Backupper I used it before I moved to Macrium Reflect 8. Yeah I am also done with the Macrium company since they moved to subs. The only bad thing about AOMEI is their licensing is weird. You get a license good on 2 PCs IIRC, but you can't move the license to a new PC. Once activated it only works on that PC. So if your PC dies you can restore your system to a new machine and use the key to activate but then that's it. You'd have to buy a new license if that machine dies and you have to restore to a new one.

For full system backups clonezilla is also good, but not windows friendly (last I used it). You have to boot from a disc (or USBstick) to do the backup or restore. But it is free software that works. I have used it on a Windows Home Server box several years ago that most of my old backup software refused to backup/restore to because it's a server OS and they wanted a crap ton more money for a license that I wasn't willing to pay.

Rescuezilla, Clonezilla, Duplicati, Kopia, Redo Rescue...there's no shortage.

Addendum: Paying more than once, or even at all for software is a suckers game. I'm not saying piracy is cool, but I am saying, "Have you considered open source software, free as in liberty and not gratis?'

Clonezilla.

I'd suggest Drive Snapshot. It is commercial (downloadable trial has 30-day backup and unlimited restore capability) but that payment gets you indefinite use and access to updates for the next 5 years (I purchased mine in 2004).

Why choose it?
* Highly reliable - has a verification option (which can double time taken) that ensures your backups are good;
* Simple license key system - no activation needed (your license key is embedded in the snapshot executable file).
* Fast - can backup/verify an 896GB SSD to disk within 3 hours;
* Can do differential backups to cover changes since last full backup;
* Can run in the background with minimal effect on other tasks - any writes to the disk being backed up are deferred while DS backs up that data first to ensure a consistent image;
* Minimalist UI and comparatively tiny download - you can still (just) fit a copy on a floppy disk, if you have any dinosaur machines lacking CD-boot option (of course, you can also have it on USB and a self-booting image is available for them);
* Evaluation copy has unlimited restore capability - so even in the worst case of you losing every copy of DC, you can still download from their website and use that to restore backups. Plus it should work with all older versions (some other utilities don't handle this, tripping up long-time customers);
* Compresses backups with multi-core processing.

I'm also pretty certain this was the first utility that could back up a running Windows system partition within Windows itself (Norton Ghost at the time had to be run from DOS and didn't get the same capability until Symantec bought DriveImage from PowerQuest in 2003).

Acronis TrueImage is another option but their forum seems to be blocking all comers with a "403 Forbidden" message, hardly encouraging. Plus their old forum at Wilders Security had periodic reports of previously made backups
failing to restore.

Clone seems fine. Though it is so poorly written in english, as to put into question why the wording of instructions has not been corrected after so many years.

Plus its free.

Forewarning, it does NOT make what you are doing clear. It assumes you know everything from the start, without any knowledge at all. Even the web manual is really vague, until the user haphazardly attempts trial and error.

@OP - I'm not sure I understand this thread.

Were you expecting to get all future versions of Macrium Reflect for free?
And if so, how much did you pay that makes you think you are entitled to that?

Me, I have only ever used the free version.

Or is your issue, that going forward, with newer versions of MR, that they will timeout after a year, much like a subscription?

I'm certainly not a fan of subscriptions, so my approach has always been to check out what is available at the time I need it. So if my free version of MR won't work with my next OS upgrade, then I will check out what will, for free ... Paragon perhaps, etc.

Thanks for the recommandation.

Athough, differentials suck a lot. Incrementals are much better. With differentials, you have to waste tons of time re-copying the same data that was already copied in previous differential backups, and the time it takes also always gets longer each time.

Plus, that causes more needless wear & tear on the drive, which will lower its lifespan, as compared versus incrementals which don't re-copy data that was already copied previously.

No, I was not expecting to get all future versions of Macrium Reflect for free.

Rather, what I was expecting was that I would have the option to pay a one-time fee in order to buy a license which grants unlimited use of the version for which I have bought a license.

That is what they used to sell, and that was a fair deal.

But now they have changed all that, by suddenly transitioning into a scam model.

The free version of Macrium Reflect sucks, because it doesn't allow for incremental backups. That's why I bought a license for version 8 a long time ago, because the paid version does allow for incrementals.

And also, they discontinued the free version a while ago. I guess they did so as the first step on their transition into becoming scammy company, which they have now completed as of this new scammy version "X."

Incremental backups have a big problem when it comes to doing a restore. You have to restore the most recent full backup and then every incremental taken since. In correct order.

The hassle factor can be mitigated via good software but the reliability issue can't - any error in any of the incrementals taken will render your final backup useless.

With differential, you have two backup files to worry about - the latest full and most recent differential.

As for wear and tear, if you're concerned about the "extra" caused by differential versus incremental (both are going to be similar on the source drive - at the very least having to scan all data - with differential involving more writes to the destination drive) then you probably should be worrying more about taking backups in the first place (or the remaining lifespan on your drives - are you running any HD monitoring software?).

I don't use either - instead taking full backups every interval and using file versioning software to automatically back up those files that I consider important to track changes (mostly savegames) to another disk. Both types have a role to play, but incremental should only be considered if space/time is limited enough for in-between snapshots to make data reliability a secondary concern.