Macrium Reflect X Home?

[Califdan]

While not really LrC related, a recent post from @AlanF got me thinking about my Full System recovery plan. Right now I'm relying on Windows 'Restore Points" (which I actually had to use last week due to a power failure in the middle of some SW installation which made my computer unbootable). Fortunatly I had a Restore Point from the evening before which was fortunatly created without my knoledge. With the help of Google Gemini I was able to recover my OS . This included a foray into "BitLocker", finding encryption recovery keys in my Microsoft accout, and several command level operations that I'd never heard of, but in the end I was able to get back on the air without having to go through a miserable Windows Re-Install and as my C: drive was not damaged still had all my personal data. But, if my C: drive had actually failed I'd be SOL and would have to start all over with a new Windows Install and configuration which would take a week or more to get back to where I am now.

So I went looking for ideas about something that would produce a disk image on an external drive that could be used to completely recover from a Crive Failure - including the OS and all personal data. This led me to something called

Macrium Reflect X Home​

Has anyone here had experience with this tool that you'd care to share?

Thanks -- Dan

 

[Gnits]

I use Macrium all the time and have been using it for years and years and years. Plus always got top class support.. mostly queries from me.. not product issues.

My approach.

Keep my C drive with smallest possible footprint (ie only o/s, apps and their various Param files. All my data ( eg emails, office docs, images are kept on my Data drive or image library drive.

I have Macrium configured to back up my C drive as a System drive backup. Full backup on 1st of each month and incremental backups daily at 4am. Macrium scheduling has been very reliable.. and I wake up each morning to confirmation emails that my backups are complete. Full audit logs, etc available. I used to do full backups daily… but changed a few months ago… but an infinite range of options avail.

I also use Macrium to backup my data drive and images. All backups to an internal spinning disk.

I once test recovered to a different computer, but have not done it recently, as have not had the hardware to do so. But I now have a spare M2 internal drive and may do a recovery test to it late Jan or Feb.

I posted a comment recently on this… will dig it up and post the link here.

Let me know if you have any questions.

 

[candid.dad.photography]

I use Macrium and/or another similar tool to make clones of my c: drive before doing major work so I have an ssd I can drop in as a failsafe. I have two other backups running, one is to an external 8TB spinning disk (C: & D and the other is to the cloud (all drives and my macbookpro) via idrive which I can access from any place with internet connectivity. Idrive also gives me a shareable folder across all platforms in the cloud for pdf’s and photos.

Checkpoints in windows is a great tool to have, but always good to have other plans at hand in case they are ever needed.

 

[Gnits]

A post of mine from another discussion.

I had a c drive configured to hold just apps and o/s and did not back it up… because I could always reinstall the apps and o/s. Office docs and images and cad files stored on a dedicated (backed up data drive).

Then my C Drive failed. Yes.. I was able to reinstall the o/s… and yes I was able to reinstall all the apps… but it was a massively time consuming effort, in many cases having to install original versions and their successive upgrades and finding the licence keys for all these upgrades, A truely miserable experience…. but worse …

I never placed a value on all the configuration of apps I evolved over time. Just take Microsoft Word for example… all the office settings, all the custom menus, all the actions I created and all the templates I used most days.

The truth is that 6 months later I was still trying to tweak my app settings to get back to where I was before the C drive crashed.

Now. My C drive gets an automated full backup once a month and a daily incremental backup at approx 4 am every morning… with multiple generations configured… so I can always get my C drive back exactly to the morning of a possible crash.

My c drive is now an m2 Nvme drive… and todate have not had a solids state drive crash… but I have the comfort that my C drive is now fully recoverable as a working system drive with all apps configured to my current needs.

A key reason for me to use Macrium is that it is possible to backup your system drive and use this backup to restore your system drive to a new working system drive (ie.. Windows and Apps are working as at the time of the backup).

 

[Replytoken]

I would have suggested Macrium in 2024, but they have gone to a subscription model, and I am not really sure this type of software needs updates with a level of frequency to require a subscription. Macrium Free may still be floating around if you can find it, and it may suffice depending on your needs (an occasional disc image copy). I have used the free home version of AOMEI ( https://www.aomeitech.com/ab/ ) for this purpose and it worked for me in the past, but I am still on Win 10. You may also want to see what other options are available, like EaseUS, before subscribing to Macrium unless it meets your needs - https://www.easeus.com/backup-software/ .

Good luck,

--Ken

 

[Gnits]

I regard the sub as insignificant for the value it provides relative to its importance and ease of use.

 

[Replytoken]

I regard the sub as insignificant for the value it provides relative to its importance and ease of use.

Understandable. I feel that way about my Photography Plan subscription and my M 365 subscription, as well as a host of other software subscriptions I have. But I am just not sure what Macrium is bringing to the table for their new subscription model that was not already there in this product. Perhaps I missed it, but it was not clear to me when I had looked at it early in 2025. In either event, they have a good reputation as do other companies that make clone/image software, so we are fortunate to have good choices.

--Ken

 

[AlanF]

If your main concern is having a bootable copy of your system drive then I suggest this approach :

1. Use a fairly small SATA system drive in a removable-drive bay, or at least easily disconnectable, and have at least one spare drive of the same capacity and type on which to clone it. Two or more is better in case something bad happens during the cloning.
2. Have a stand-alone external cloning drive dock that can duplicate one of your system drives onto another without involving the computer, the software or the operating system at all.
3. Every so often, remove the current system drive and clone it over your (presumably) oldest external system-drive clone. This can be done based on the time interval since the previous cloning, or maybe the extent of software and OS changes you've been making on your computer.
4. Put the newly created clone into your computer for ongoing use until it too gets cloned and replaced. This inherently tests that the newly created clone is a viable copy.

If a clone is ever needed to be used then swapping over will take about 1 minute plus a reboot. There is no faster way to recover from a system drive failure though, admittedly, it will not include very recent system changes.

The external cloning docks are pretty cheap (cheaper than the drives) and fully independent of Windows and software, so no software glitches. But hey, I've had one die on me coz that's just how things are between me and computers.

The external cloning docks clone the whole source drive; not just a specific volume nor specific files. So, if your system drive has a very large capacity then it will take proportionally longer to clone it, and the clone drives will no doubt cost more to buy.

Normally, I choose to use SATA SSDs for the system drives. 500GB are ok but unnecessarily big. A 250GB would be roughly twice as fast to clone (about 10 min vs about 20min, I think) but I couldn't quite bring myself to buy 250GB drives that cost almost the same as 500GB drives, just in case I want to use them for something else later on

For a while, I enjoyed the speed boost of using an NMVe M.2 system drive but it was harder to clone. I also used MR to clone my NVMe system drive to external SATA drives but it got "messier" when two would-be C: drives were seen to connected at the same time and/or one was assigned an inappropriate alternative drive letter. No such issues occur when cloning is done away from the computer.

Caution: Do not mix slightly different drive sizes unnecessarily because while a 480GB drive can be cloned onto a 500GB drive, the opposite is not true - even if the C: volume is less than 200GB, for example. The cloning process clones "drive sectors", not "computer files". On the plus side, because of this, cloning is not slowed down by copying fragmented files and the target drive is automatically formatted during cloning. However, cloning does not defragment files, so such housekeeping has to be done by you separately from cloning.

In the time it took read and understand this post you probably could have cloned your system drive.

 

[Gnits]

I like the idea and it has merit. However..

I was building a PC for max performance and wanted the fastest system drive that I could reasonably acquire… so high spec M2 Nvme.

It is unlikely I will get to try your approach as I plan to avoid Windows for the foreseeable future, arising from:
1. My recent experience upgrading to Win 11
2. My recent experience setting up a high spec Microsoft Surface Pro for my brother.
3. Current Microsoft Ai strategy.
4. Repeated performance issues related to Office and Windows. The latest is abysmal performance within Windows Explorer.
5. Windows PC architecture has served the world well, but now it has reached legacy status and imho… obsolete.

 

[clee01l]

5. Windows PC architecture has served the world well, but now it has reached legacy status and imho… obsolete.

I don't think there will be a Windows 12 for CISC Computer. I'm looking at NVIDIA's recent $5 Billion investment in Intel and their announced plans for cooperative Chip development as a sign that the future of Microsoft follows that of Apple with SoC RISC computers.

 

[Gnits]

I don't think there will be a Windows 12 for CISC Computer

I expect there needs to be major changes to Windows PC hardware and o/s and am not surprised there may be big deals in train, especially to deal with sharing CPU and GPU memory efficiently.

The problem for me is that I do not know how long it will take for me to regain trust again on a Microsoft o/s and a revised architectural hardware/software model.

 

[Maurizio]

Macrium Reflect X Home​

Has anyone here had experience with this tool that you'd care to share?

I’ve been using Macrium Reflect 8 Home (perpetual license) until yesterday, and earlier today I switched to Macrium Reflect X Home (subscription).

I jumped on the last-day upgrade deal for Reflect 8 owners: 50% off the subscription forever. I also considered alternatives with perpetual licenses, such as O&O DiskImage or Uranium Backup, but ultimately decided to stick with Macrium because it’s a very reliable tool that I’ve been using for a long time.

In general, I’m not particularly happy with subscription-based models, but €20.99 per year feels very reasonable, especially considering that backup software is vital in digital photography workflows. Additionally, I can reuse my previous perpetual license on an older PC that doesn’t contain particularly critical data.

 

[Replytoken]

I’ve been using Macrium Reflect 8 Home (perpetual license) until yesterday, and earlier today I switched to Macrium Reflect X Home (subscription).

I jumped on the last-day upgrade deal for Reflect 8 owners: 50% off the subscription forever. I also considered alternatives with perpetual licenses, such as O&O DiskImage or Uranium Backup, but ultimately decided to stick with Macrium because it’s a very reliable tool that I’ve been using for a long time.

In general, I’m not particularly happy with subscription-based models, but €20.99 per year feels very reasonable, especially considering that backup software is vital in digital photography workflows. Additionally, I can reuse my previous perpetual license on an older PC that doesn’t contain particularly critical data.

You got a better deal than what they are currently offering in the US, which is a one-year discount.

--Ken

 

[Replytoken]

I expect there needs to be major changes to Windows PC hardware and o/s and am not surprised there may be big deals in train, especially to deal with sharing CPU and GPU memory efficiently.

The problem for me is that I do not know how long it will take for me to regain trust again on a Microsoft o/s and a revised architectural hardware/software model.

I am also waiting, like you, to see where this is all heading, but am still looking at a new machine in the very near future, if only because of the dramatic cost increases of anything with RAM in it these past few months. But I do have to say that the launch of Win11 and all that is attached to it, in some cases literally, I am not happy with the direction MS is heading. But I do not want to go further OT, so I'll leave it at that.

--Ken

 

[Gnits]

It looks like I may have to consider using my Macrium Reflect to recover to a previous version of my C (System Drive).

I returned from travel last night and could not launch Outlook or Word this morning. I had previously opted to NOT use New Outlook.. and had disabled as many Ai features as was possible.

I raised a support ticket with Microsoft… and just got the first response… which includes the following instruction.

• Go to Settings > Apps > Installed Apps and look for Outlook (Classic).
• If missing, you may need to reinstall it from Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise or your Office installer.

From my prelim checking I cannot find Outlook (Classic). I need to check further, but it looks like Microsoft has uninstalled it. If so, it means I may also have lost my Outlook templates, Tool bar configs and who knows what else. And the same for all my other Office apps as Word is also failing.

How has Microsoft the right to uninstall software from my PC. ??????

One option I may have is to recover a previous version of my system drive… (using Macrium) but if I do.. what will stop it happening again. I am horrified. And I have wasted a half day so far dealing with this.

Re Ram Shortages. My personal opinion is that these shortages are engineered to fuel excessive price increases and price gouging. I feel the same about the previous GPU shortages, etc..

 

[tarma]

I have used both Macrium Home and TeraByte's Image for Windows in the past when I was thinking about switching to Macrium. Macrium seemed to be more fancy, but I decided to stick with TeraByte, especially after the change to subscription. FWIIW I have restored both individual files and my entire windows partition from my I4W image backups without problems. It has saved me on more than one occasion!

 

[Replytoken]

I have used both Macrium Home and TeraByte's Image for Windows in the past when I was thinking about switching to Macrium. Macrium seemed to be more fancy, but I decided to stick with TeraByte, especially after the change to subscription. FWIIW I have restored both individual files and my entire windows partition from my I4W image backups without problems. It has saved me on more than one occasion!

Not familiar with TeraByte. I'll need to check out their website and software.

Thanks,

--Ken

 

[clee01l]

How has Microsoft the right to uninstall software from my PC. ??????

Maybe because they own the software licensed to you?

They don't own your settings though. Perhaps those are intact.

 

[jimlevitt]

Somewhat like Gnits, I've had two "fun" experiences with Windows since I finally "upgraded" from Windows 10 to 11 in late November. I did this to buy some more time while deciding on my next computer. The push to do so came from TurboTax for this coming tax season no longer working on Windows 10. The upgrade went smoothly enough. And it seemed that Lightroom, after the 15.1 update, ran faster, too. So I figured I could ride things out with my 5-year old PC for a while longer. Things got interesting when Microsoft pushed through an update in early December. All of a sudden, I couldn't access Outlook properly. All I got when clicking on "send/receive new mail" was the spinning ball. I opened Outlook in safe mode. All the email for the day downloaded, which was a relief. Then I did a bit of sleuthing. Came to discover the December update had renamed the path to my Outlook files, which I had on the F:\\ drive as a subfolder of a folder called "Documents." Microsoft, in its infinite wisdom, had changed the path to a folder on the F:\\ drive called "My Documents." I had never created any such folder, and there wasn't any such folder on the drive! Outlook wouldn't let me correct the path. All I could do was rename the F:\\ Documents folder to My Documents. I noticed a few other folders on that drive had "My" in front of my original title, too. Bizarre. There needs to be a special place in hell for software engineers who monkey with the files and folders on a user's computer without permission.

Since then, I've discovered a glitch in the copy/paste operation within File Explorer. I do my culling, captioning, and star rating in BreezeBrowser Pro (with functionality similar to that of PhotoMechanic) before importing the files into Lightroom. BBPro has a light footprint, it's fast, and I can do all this without worrying about confusion in the Lightroom catalog when doing some of this prep work on a laptop away from home. All the IPTC/XMP data, including star ratings, transfers into Lightroom, no problem. But a few days ago, I used Windows File Explorer to copy 2200 photos onto an SSD drive that I would use with the laptop. I'd culled/starred about half that project on my desktop, intending to do the rest in the waiting area while my partner was at a medical appointment. But when I opened the folder on the laptop, the star ratings were missing! Back home that night, working on the desktop, I confirmed that the copy/paste operation, when done using File Explorer, left out the star ratings. If I did the copy/paste operation withing BBPro, the star ratings copied over as they should. I've copy/pasted folders using File Explorer for decades, never had things disappear in this fashion. This will be a problem if/when I need to transfer 30Tb of photo files to drives on another computer or to externals: there are two decades' worth of photos with ratings that need to stay attached. I've written to the outfit that now owns BBPro to see if they have a clue why File Explorer loses star ratings, haven't yet heard back. I need to hit up Microsoft about this, too.

 

[Gnits]

Three hours on remote support yesterday, next session scheduled for 10 am.
Folders missing. Root cause was Microsoft update replacing Outlook Classic with Outlook New, uninvited or requested by me. All Office folders deleted and now neither Outlook New or Classic will run. Other collateral damage also, as Acrobat will not run, even though it appears to reinstall correctly. Thankfully, LrC appears to be still working. At least 10 hours of my time consumed by this so far. Three attempts to reinstall Office by Microsoft senior engineer have failed so far. Not sure what next steps might be. Let’s see what happens tomorrow.

 

[Gnits]

I've discovered a glitch in the copy/paste operation within File Explorer.

There are serious known issues with File Explorer…. which I was able to demo to the senior Microsoft engineer earlier today. Arising from multiple attempts to reinstall Office, there were multiple versions of the Office install package in a download folder. Guided by the engineer, I was asked to delete these downloads, before attempting a fresh download and install. So I deleted these downloads and the items were removed from the screen… but could not download these again as Windows reported the install packages were there already. Several minutes later File Explorer / Windows caught up and a new Download could be attempted. This happened a few times. I have noted abysmal File Explorer performance lags for the last few months and wondered previously if these lags were a factor with my previous (serious) Lightroom crashes. I will never know.

I have the option to recover my system drive… but worried after doing that Microsoft update will bring me back to square one. Microsoft have promised to set a registry key such that no future attempts will be made to install / replace Outlook Classic with Outlook new.

 

[Gnits]

After another 2 hours senior Microsoft Tech support... my Outlook and Office (and Acrobat)apps are working and appear to have my previous settings.

Problem resolved by removing old versions of software ... eg SQL Server (which I never used), old Windows Runtime app versions, old versions of Visual Studio etc. ..... I also removed a few apps I installed and do not use anymore.

The cause of my problem, it seems, is some of these old apps were active and causing conflicts ... [but I do not understand why the /Office16 folder would not appear using Windows Explorer... ] ..

So... I thought I might have to use Macrium to recover, and was comfortable that I could go back to a date of my choosing ... Fingers crossed I do not have to do that now... But this is a real world example where it was good to know I had that option.


This all appeared to start when launching Outlook ... Outlook New launched instead... and I definitely had the setting off to ensure Outlook New would not be installed...

I plan to do a few tidy ups to remove some more older apps and will also double check that the registry setting to block install of Outlook New is activated...

 

[AlanF]

Well Gnits, that's a story worthy of one of my PCs, so you have my sincere sympathy.

Sometimes a clean start with a fresh install is better than more updates, but MS keeps on trashing stuff that I want to keep on using. And fresh installs are far from speedy or simple, because all of my tweaks have to be thought up again and applied again.

It seems that getting rid of "My Documents" is problematic. So instead of doing that, keep it there but use something else - preferably on a different volume. Anything in My Documents is destined for MS cloud servers too.

With regard to Macrium Reflect, I have always used a system of ongoing "incremental forever" backups to keep each of those backups as fast as possible. However, if I ever need to recover by using those backups then it will be a very slow process to gradually install each one in sequence onto the recovered initial backup. I'm playing the odds by speeding up the certain incremental backups but slowing down a possible full recovery operation. My alternate plan, running in parallel with MR incremental forever backups, is to occasionally do a snapshot backup of my system drive using an external cloning dock. That has saved me a few times over the years and recovery is very much faster than MR or anything else. The downside is that it is mostly not up-to-the-minute current. On the plus side, however, is that it has already recovered nearly everything in just a few minutes of work with a screwdriver.

I rarely use MS File Explorer. For a long time I have used a commercial package called Total Commander, which looks a lot like the ancient Norton Commander program before Norton lost their techy way to become an antivirus vendor.

 

[Gnits]

Macrium.
I do a full backup of the System drive at 4 am on the first of each month. This is painless, other than it saves an approx 200GB backup package. That is the reason I keep the footprint of my system disk as small as possible.

The incremental backups take place at 4 am approx. for all the remaining dates in the month. These are fast and (relatively) tiny.

Here is the email I received after it ran today.

You can set the number of generations of data to be retained. I am not sure what the max might be but should be easily to determine.

I would be too scared to run on incremental for more than a month.

File Explorer and Similar.
I use Directory Opus ... its brilliant .. because it is utterly configurable. It is multi tab and you can preset what tabs are loaded automatically. I have most tabs configured so that the latest files appear at the top and the subfolders sorted at the bottom. 99% of the time the file I am looking for is at the top of the list. I have no idea how to configure Explorer to do this and have given up trying.
I will check out Total Commander.


My Docs and Similar.
I got really badly burned by OneDrive activity related to MyDocs, MyPics, etc. So ... my current practice is the official Windows library folders of MyDocs, MyPics, etc are left intact on my system ... but I never put anything in them... I have shortcuts to my versions of these files (outside of One Drive and my system drive), so the shortcuts appear in most file/folder dialogues. I check that they are empty regularly as sometimes rogue apps / poor development dump stuff in these folders who are too lazy to code this stuff properly.

Fresh Install Of Windows.
That is my nuclear option ... hopefully never to be used.

Explorer.
I was able to show the senior engineer the lag between deleting a file in Explorer and it actually happening on the drive... perhaps 30 seconds or later... error messages in the meantime when trying to download the file again .. as it was finding the file already exists... scary for an o/s on modern hardware and fast drives.

I am glad Macrium exists and it purrs gently in the background....

 

[AlanF]

If you're happy with Directory Opus then it would probably not be worth the effort to evaluate Total Commander. Nor any other alternative. That's because (a) the program you are using is already pretty good, and (b) the familiarity you have gained is almost as precious as the program is. It lets you get stuff done quickly. You want to be using such software rather than learning it; even more so when things have already gone bad on your computer.