macrium reflect free vs easeus todo backup

Macrium reflect free vs easeus todo backup windows#

I’ve focused on image backups, but Reflect also allows you to configure file backups. Reflect then automatically sets things up so that the backup happens automatically, without your needing to do a thing. Scheduling a backup, then, becomes nothing more than telling Reflect “do the backup that’s described in this definition file on this schedule”. Because the XML definition file contains all of the information about what was backed up and where it was placed when it comes time to make an incremental backup, Reflect need only look at that, locate the previous backup, note what files have changed on your system since then, and backup only those files.Ĭome time to restore that image, you can select the most recent incremental image, which will then restore that and all of the backups up to and including the first. That file can then be used later in two important ways:Īn incremental backup is nothing more than backing up only those files that have changed since the previous backup. When you create your initial image backup, Reflect offers to save an XML definition file in addition to the backup itself this definition file contains all of the options specified for that backup, including what was backed up and where it was placed: Restoring a file that was originally backed up from your system drive would be as simple as copying that file from its location in the image mounted on F: to your hard disk C.

Macrium reflect free vs easeus todo backup windows#

What that means is that you could mount last week’s backup image of your machine as the F drive and then use Windows Explorer – or any other Windows application – to browse the backup and view the files as they were at the time of that backup. In Macrium Reflect, you can mount a backup image as a virtual drive on your machine. mrimg (for Macrium Reflect IMaGe) files. Because that contains everything, that’s all that you’ll need to restore an entire machine.īut, because it contains everything, it’s also possible to browse that image file looking for individual files contained in the backup. That copy can then restore the backup image to the hard disk. That disk contains enough of an operating system to boot and run a copy of Reflect also included on that disk. Restoring an image is similarly straightforward, with one exception.įor example, if you’ve replaced a damaged hard drive and you want to restore your most recent backup image to it, you’ll need something to boot from.īefore you need it, use Reflect itself to create a bootable rescue disc and save it somewhere. Naturally, there are options to increase the compression of the image, protect it with a password, encrypt the backup, and more.īut for a basic image backup, you can pretty much bypass all of that. All that you need to do is specify where the backup image should be stored. Click the “Create an image of the partition(s) required to backup and restore Windows” and Macrium configures a backup for you to do just that. System image backups in Reflect are almost a one-click operation. … if your data is in only one place, it’s not backed up.Īnd, of course, like any good software, it needs to be relatively straightforward to use and give you reasonable support options.Īdditional features beyond those basics are nice, but certainly not required. Browse and restore individual files from image backups.Restore that complete image to a machine that cannot itself boot because it contains an empty replacement hard disk.Make a complete image backup of a disk and most importantly, your system disk.In my opinion, a good backup program needs to be able to: Over the years, I’ve developed a set of criteria – a set of features and characteristics – that I want out of a backup program before I recommend it. As I’ve said repeatedly, if your data is in only one place, it’s not backed up. In my opinion, that’s why it’s critical that you backup your computer and data regularly. And someone with more than a little experience will also be able to share horror stories of how and when they learned this important lesson. I consider backing up to be one of the fundamental necessities for anyone who uses a computer.Īs anyone with even a little experience will tell you, you will lose something important someday without a backup it’s not a matter of if, but a matter of when.