Macrium Reflect

Overview

Backup software is judged entirely by whether the restore works, and Reflect has a long reputation for being the one that does. It takes a sector aware image of a whole disk or selected partitions, including the boot configuration and the hidden system partitions that people forget about, and it puts that image back onto the same machine, onto different hardware, or onto a smaller drive without complaint.

This build carries the Workstation, Server and Server Plus editions in one installer. Workstation covers a desktop or laptop. Server adds the same for a server operating system. Server Plus adds the application aware backups for database and mail workloads, which take a consistent snapshot with the application quiesced rather than a crash consistent copy that may or may not restore. All three are unlocked with no trial window.

Imaging and the backup chain

A full image captures everything. Differentials capture what changed since the last full, incrementals capture what changed since the last of anything. The scheduler builds these into a retention plan, and the synthetic full option merges an old full with its incrementals to produce a new full without rereading the source disk, which keeps a long chain fast and short.

Changed block tracking means an incremental only reads the blocks the driver knows have changed, so a daily incremental on a large drive takes a couple of minutes rather than an hour. Compression and encryption are per job, images can be split for a size limited destination, and every image is verified against its checksums either at creation or on a schedule.

Restoring, including to different hardware

A file level restore mounts the image as a drive letter and you copy what you need out of it. That covers ninety percent of real restores, since most incidents are one deleted folder rather than a dead machine. Mounted images are read only by default and can be browsed by any program.

A full restore is done from the rescue environment, a bootable WinPE build that the program makes for you on a USB stick with the storage and network drivers for your machine already injected. This is the step people skip and then regret, because a rescue stick built after the drive dies is not a rescue stick.

ReDeploy handles restoring an image onto different hardware, injecting the drivers the new machine needs so that the restored system actually boots instead of stopping at a blue screen. It is the fastest way to move a working installation onto a new machine without reinstalling everything.

Rapid Delta and the ransomware side

Rapid Delta Restore writes only the differences between the current disk state and the image, which turns a restore of a large system drive from an hour into a few minutes when the disk has not changed much. It is the feature that makes rolling back a bad update a casual decision rather than an evening's work.

Image Guardian protects the backup files themselves from being modified by anything other than Reflect, which addresses the obvious problem that ransomware looks for backups first. It is a filter driver rather than a heuristic scanner, so it does not care whether the process attacking the files is known malware or not.

Scheduling, destinations and monitoring

Jobs run on a schedule, at logon, on an event, or when a specific external drive is connected, which is the pattern most home setups want. Destinations include local drives, network shares with credentials, and attached storage, with a retention rule per destination.

Every job writes a log and can send a mail on failure, and the console shows the state of every defined job at a glance. Server Plus adds the application aware options and the ability to restore individual mailboxes or databases from an image rather than the whole volume.

What you get

• Full, differential and incremental disk imaging
• Synthetic full merging without rereading the source
• Changed block tracking for fast incrementals
• Rapid Delta Restore writing only the differences
• Mount any image as a browsable read only drive
• Bootable rescue media builder with driver injection
• ReDeploy for restoring onto different hardware
• Image Guardian filter driver protecting backup files
• Per job compression, encryption and splitting
• Scheduling by time, logon, event or drive connection
• Network share destinations with stored credentials
• Application aware backup and item level restore in Server Plus

Inside the archive

• Macrium Reflect installer with Workstation, Server and Server Plus unlocked
• Rescue media builder with the WinPE component
• Image Guardian driver
• ReDeploy module
• Readme with the build the rescue stick first instruction

System requirements

Installing it

1. Unpack the archive and disable real time protection.
2. Run setup as administrator and let it install the required components.
3. Restart if it asks, since the driver components need it.
4. Build the rescue USB stick immediately. Do this before you need it, not after.
5. Create one full image and then mount it to confirm it is readable before you trust the schedule.

Mirrors

Release history

Questions about this release

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