Features that are available in the paid Home edition also appear in the Free edition, but when you select them you get a notification saying the feature is not available in the Free edition. You can also split the backup files to a specific size if needed. Under advanced options, you can change the level of compression being used but this is probably best left to the default value. There are some advanced options when setting up a backup job, although they are a bit sparse due to this being a free version of the tool. The backup speeds are very competitive, although it does have the limitation that you can’t exclude personal files and folders you have backed up elsewhere.
As usual, the destination can be on the local disk (typically a poor choice), removable media or a network attached storage device. Similar to other tools, in order to make a backup you select the source partition(s) or disk you want to backup and then select a destination. Different tasks are accessed from the left hand side, and there are tabs in the main area on the right for setting up backups, managing different backup configurations and job scheduling. The main window is straightforward and simple to understand. Also, unlike many other free tools (and some paid ones), it has advanced backup plan management, allowing you to specify how frequently differential vs full backups are run, when to discard old backups and a disk space threshold to delete old backups.
One strong point of Macrium Reflect is that it automatically sets up the Windows PE environment during installation to make creating restore media as seamless as possible. There is also a paid version of Macrium Reflect with all the typical advanced disk imaging features, although it is a bit more expensive than other popular backup tools. However, it is missing several important features available in premium tools (presumably because it’s a free tool). The user interface is intuitive, and is quite snappy and responsive unlike some tools which can be a bit clunky in places. Macrium Reflect Free is one of the more polished free disk imaging tool currently on the market.
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