Today we will talk about Macrium Reflect™ Free Edition which offers a Free Backup and restore solution for your system with a clean and simple interface. This utility provides you a full Free Backup and restore solution for your system instead of Individual system component backup like many other backup solutions like Backup4all etc.
Developers Description:
Using Macrium Reflectâ„¢ Free Edition you can create an exact image of partitions on your hard disk for easy hard disk upgrade or complete/partial system recovery.
- Create a disk image whilst running Windows using Microsoft Volume Shadow copy Service (VSS).
- Image to Network, USB, FireWire drives and DVD.
- Built in scheduler.
- 32 bit and native 64 bit versions.
- Industry leading compression levels and speed.
- Linux based Rescue CD with Network access and full GUI. Only 6.5MB in size!
- Built in CD/DVD packet writing engine. Supports packet writing to DVD DL media with Windows Vista.
- HTML log files.
Disk Imaging
You can create an accurate and reliable Image of your hard disk or partitions on your disk. Using this image you can restore the entire disk, partition or individual files and folders in the event of a partial or complete system loss.
Images can be stored on local or network drives, CD or DVD media, and removable drives connected using USB or Firewire (IEEE1394).
Recovery – Linux or BartPE
In the event of a total loss of the Windows operating system your PC can be started using the Reflectâ„¢ recovery CD.
This CD starts either a compact version of the Linux operating system with a familiar mouse and graphical interface OR a *BartPE CD using *PE-Builder. You can then recover partitions, entire disk images or individual files with just a few clicks of your mouse.
If you are a guy similar to me who wants a no frills Free Backup and restore solution, then this is the right choice. Instead of backing individual components like your files, folders, browsers, mails etc., it backups your entire Hard disk using Disk Imaging and can be used to restore your system using the Reflect™ recovery CD in case of problems.
The interface or GUI is quite simple and easy to understand. It will show you your Hard Disk details and various buttons on the menu which can be used easily. The left sidebar shows more information about various features which can be used to backup or restore your system.
If you want to tweak settings , it provides you various options for backup like you can set level of Compression etc along with various other options like scheduling your backup etc.
One of the features I would like to mention here is , it lets you set the default Master boot Record restore option. Whether you do not want to replace Master Boot Record (MBR) from the backup or use a standard Windows XP Master Boot Record. Its a great feature when your system refuses to boot and in that case a good MBR in your backed up Disk Image can make your system boot and work again.
It also provides you option to create a rescue CD based on either Linux or BartPE which you can use to restore your system or operating system when it refuses to boot.
BartPE option will not work with Windows 7, so using a Linux Rescue CD option is better if you are on windows vista or Windows 7.
November 18, 2010 @ 10:20 PM
Macrium is great. I have been using it for a few months 🙂