Hi Don,
I'm not picking on you ,haha, but I'm afraid that you may be confusing disk imaging with cloning
as in what the OP, Bob Lendrin, asked for.
I too have used Macrium Reflect and was happy with it for its purpose, but it's not a cloning program.
The image it creates is not bootable unless restored ,which is quite different from a bootable clone.
Booting from the saved image requires a 2-step process. 1.Creating the image and 2. Restoring the image.
A bootable clone is created on a bootable drive and is a 1-step process - just the cloning.
Putting this drive into service would require swapping drives or just connecting the drive,
much shorter than restoring an image of several hundreds of GBs.
I omitted programs like Macrium Reflect and GFI Backup http://www.gfi.com/pages/backup-freeware.asp
and many other backup programs ,because they don't fit within the realm of cloning programs.
( I have used both mentioned and was happy with them for what I wanted of them - which was backup)
Also in the MR free edition you won't have features that are in the paid version and has several restrictions
as to size of drive used to restore to.
Using it for Win 7 requires special settings - see link below- that are not available in the free one.
(paid version) http://support.macrium.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=2390
The problem with VSS - as mentioned in my previous post - is clearly existing, considering the number of posts regarding this
in the MR forums.
Given the choice ,I would always opt for an off-line imaging or cloning solution, rather than doing it on an active partition or disc.
If the partition is active ,all kinds of things could be running in the background , such as indexing, internet activity - whether you have a browser open or not, AV- or other anti-malware scanning or monitoring, plus many background maintenance services.
BTW, Macrium Reflect free is still free http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx
Peter E.
--------------------------------------------------
From: "Don Penlington"
Sent: Wednesday, 14 September, 2011 2:16 AM
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: [PCSOFT] Free Clone Program
Robert writes:
<<I would like to set up his computer so he can clone the C: drive to
another drive.>>
I used to use Acronis, but now use Macrium Reflect. It's more
user-friendly, and seems to do the same job, with a backup bootable disk if
you want it, always a useful safeguard.
Macrium generally seems to get good reviews, and appears to be the most
popular of the free ones.
I've used its restoration a couple of times, and it seems to work very
well. To be quite honest, I find Acronis 10 a bit of a pain to work with
when trying to do the occasional backup. Maybe they've improved its user
interface in later versions.
www.macrium.com.
I have version 4.2 which is free for personal use. It may not be free for
commercial use. And it appears that the latest version is no longer free,
so you may have to hunt around for the earlier version, which works fine
with XP and W7 32-bit.
Don Penlington
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