If you want to find a Macrium Reflect alternative to make up for its shortcomings, AOMEI Backupper is the best free solution with more complete features.
Macrium Reflect is an image based backup and clone software for both commercial and non-commercial users. It enables you to backup Windows, disks, individual files/folders into a compressed archive file for disaster recovery, or clone disk for OS and data migration. But in practical use, it also has some limitations:
π Most editions of Macrium Reflect are designed for business clients or enterprises with huge data to protect, like Workstation, Server and Server Plus, and the prices are certainly not cheap. π The free version for personal users lacks some basic features, like incremental backup and files & folders-level backup. Also, it does not provide technical support. π It is not very intelligent in some operations, such as cloning larger disk to smaller disk.
What's more, Macrium Reflect is no longer free. If you are a personal user who wants to perform disk imaging, cloning and recovery with simple operation, there might be Macrium Refelct Alternative that suits you better.
Speaking of backup & clone software, AOMEI Backupper Standard is a considerable option with complete features and high compatibility. It works on Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7/XP/Vista and enables you to backup or clone disks just as Macrium Reflect free edition. Meanwhile, it supports file/folder backup, incremental and differential backup, etc.
You can download it to have a try:
After a simple downloading and installation process, you will the see the full view of AOMEI Backupper Standard. It has a graphical user-friendly interface with nothing confusing even for newbies.
It contains complete features like backup, restore, clone, sync, etc. I'll show you some of them as following.
If you want to replace the hard disk with another one, or copy it to external drive as a backup, you may need to use the disk clone feature. Comparing to Macrium Reflect, AOMEI Backupper offers you more flexibility. For example, the default intelligent mode will copy only the used sectors and skip the bad and unused ones, which supports you to clone a larger HDD to smaller SSD or something like that.
*The Standard edition supports cloning all the data disks. If you want to clone disk with Windows installed, please turn to AOMEI Backupper Professional.
Here I'll give an example to clone larger disk to smaller disk.
πΉ Steps to use the disk clone feature:
π’Notes:
Sector By Sector Clone - with this option, all the sectors on source disk will be cloned. So if want to clone a larger disk to a smaller one, don't tick it.
Edit Partitions - it enables you to adjust the size and drive letter of the partitions on the destination disk. Available in advanced editions.
As one of the biggest limitations of Macrium Reflect, file backup can only be performed in premium editions. But in AOMEI Backupper Standard, it’s a basic function totally for free. If you are an ordinary PC user who wants to backup some important files just in case, it could be the backup mode you use most.
πΉ Steps to perform file-level backup:
Notes:
As an alternative to Macrium Reflect, AOMEI Backupper also provides System Backup for all system files, Partition Backup for specific partition or volume, and Disk Backup for entire disk.
If you are concerned the PC may fail to boot due to system errors, you can also create a bootable media for emergency rescue.
Schedule applies to any task on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. You can also upgrade to paid editions to enjoy the auto backup options of Event triggers and USB plug in.
Scheme can create a backup scheme to auto delete your older backups and therefore save disk space. It’s available in Professional and higher editions.
An incremental backup means to back up only the changes and newly added files since the last incremental backup. It will obviously save your storage space as well as the backup time.
Luckily, incremental backup in AOMEI Backupper Standard is also a free feature, and you can do it either manually, or automatically on a regular basis.
πΉ To do incremental backup manually:
You can click the three-stripe button of the backup task on Home page, choose Backup > Incremental Backup in the drop-down menu.
πΉ To do incremental backup automatically:
Incremental backup is the default mode of scheduled backup, which means once you set a schedule for auto backup, it will be incremental backup by default. You can find options of scheduled backup mode in Schedule > Advanced.
π’Notes:
All the image files in an incremental backup series share a sequential relationship, if any incremental image file in the sequence is damaged or missing, then subsequent image files will be invalid.
In addition to incremental backup, you can also perform differential backup manually for free, or arrange scheduled differential backup in advanced editions.
As one of the best free Macrium alternatives, AOMEI Backupper Standard is capable to bring you better experience while managing backup and clone on your computer. And just like Macrium Reflect, there are multiple editions of AOMEI Backupper to meet your different levels of backup requirements.
If you are not satisfied with the speed or features of free version, AOMEI Backupper Professional shall be a better choice. And if you are running a small business, AOMEI Backupper Workstation or Sever edition may help you better.