[Answered] What Is The Best Macrium Reflect Alternative For Backup?

Macrium Reflect is a program launched by Microsoft from 2006 for backing up. It safeguards your computer data by disk cloning or creating disk image, and allows easy Windows data recovery in case of system crashes or unexpected data loss.

But lately, there has been an increased interest in searching Macrium Reflect alternative according to the Online Search Trend. What factors prompted this search? And what is the best alternative tool for Macrium Reflect? About these questions, let’s see some collected issues that people concern most in the following part.

Is Macrium Reflect safe and free?

Is Macrium Reflect safe? The answer can be positive. Macrium Reflect is a safe backup solution, but it can trigger antivirus alerts due to its actions during imaging. Large files it generates might be mistaken for harmful software. When cloning HDDs, it may require installing Microsoft WinPE and encountering errors.

Besides, there is still the possibility of encountering errors when using Macrium Reflect. As of now, some users have reported common errors such as “Macrium Reflect error 0/8/9,” “read failed 13 (broken pipe),” “difficulty in creating volume snapshot,” “read failed 22,” “write failed 22,” or “verification of file system failed,” based on the feedback they've provided. These may lead to potential data loss and further troubles, especially during cloning.

Is Macrium Reflect free? Nowadays, it has Free version, but it has limited options for backing up. Furthermore, according to the official announcement "Macrium Reflect Free Edition is being retired. Security patches will be provided until January 1st, 2024, but there are no planned feature changes or non-security related updates after this date.", it means the free version will be replaced by Home and Business versions in the future.

How about these 2 charging versions? The official website shows the costs for the Home and Business versions as follows:

Home users have the option to buy a license for each computer with either a yearly subscription or a lifetime purchase:

For Business users, a license for each computer is as the picture shows. And, it's important to be aware that an Annual Renewal payment will be needed in the future.

We can find that individuals who want to use it for daily backup can indeed be overpriced. Is there any cost-effective alternative to Macrium Reflect? Of course, there is!

The best Macrium Reflect alternative

Considering many factors, AOMEI Partition Assistant Professional can be the most ideal alternative tool for Macrium Reflect. It’s “Disk Clone” can effectively strike a balance between cost and practicality.

Firstly, it provides smart backup options for both large and small disks to back up. Secondly, it can clone various data, including OS, applications, files, and folders, or even the whole disk. Most importantly, it is far more than simple backup software, it is an all-in-one computer manager. This empowers you to conveniently address various computer concerns right from your home.

Other powerful features of AOMEI Partition Assistant:
✍ Allocate Free Space: Users can add free space to insufficient space drive from another drive.
✍ App Mover: When one drive gets full, you can use it to move some apps to another drive that has sufficient space, avoiding uninstalling them.
✍ PC Cleaner: This feature can help users thoroughly clean trash files and remove potential viruses and malware, keeping your computer running smoothly and healthy.
✍ Convert system disk between MBR/GPT: You can convert your system disk from MBR to GPT for Windows 11 upgrading.

Experience all these powerful features for just $49.95/year or $59.95 for a lifetime subscription (both options support 2 PCs/license). You can click the button to try the free demo.

Step 1.Install and launch AOMEI Partition Assistant, click the "Clone" main tab and select "Clone Disk". (You can also right-click the Disk you want to clone and select the "Clone Disk" tool to run disk clone.)

Step 2. Choose the hard disk that you need to clone as the source disk and click "Next".

Step 3. Select the destination disk to put the data of the source disk on, and then click "Next".

Step 4. Then, you will enter the Confirm interface where you can check the source and destination disk. After all is set, you can click the "Confirm" button to continue.

In lower left corner of the window, you can click the "Settings" button to adjust the partition size on the destination disk. There are three options for you:

• Clone without resizing partitions: all partitions will be cloned to the target disk as the original partition size. It is available when the target disk is larger than the source disk. If it is smaller, this option will be grayed out.
• Fit partitions to entire disk: all partitions will be cloned to the target disk and take up its full capacity according to the original partition size proportion.
• Edit partitions on this disk: you can change every partition size on the target disk as you need.

After finishing the adjustment, please click "Save".

Notes:

• You can tick "4k alignment" to improve the reading and writing speed of SSD if the selected destination disk is an SSD storage.
• All data on this selected destination disk will be wiped out after you save the operation to physical disk. If there is important data on the destination drive, please make a backup in advance.
• If you clone to a smaller SSD, the first option is grayed out. If you select Sector-by-Sector Clone, it is unable to adjust the size on the destination disk.

Step 5. You can preview the disk cloning operating by viewing the "Pending Operations". To commit the "Pending Operations", please click "Apply" and "Proceed".

Step 6. The cloning process will start and you can check the cloning process.

In case of "cloned SSD won’t boot", kindly please follow the steps if you are cloning the system hard drive to another.

Step 1. Restart your computer, long press the "F2" key (perhaps other keys like DEL), and access the BIOS environment.

Step 2. Change the boot order and set the cloned hard drive as the first boot drive in BIOS.

Step 3. Press "Enter". Now you should boot the computer from the cloned hard disk successfully.

Note: if you want to clone only the C drive or boot-related partitions to another hard drive, its “Migrate OS to SSD" feature can be helpful, which only transfers the OS partition to another hard drive and allows you to boot from it smoothly.

Further reading: How to use AOMEI Partition Assistant for data safe?

For data safe, this powerful tool also equipped with functions like “Recover Data” and “Partition Recovery” to help you easily retrieve lost data back. If you've backed up files to a disk but encounter loss due to different reasons, you can even restore lost backup files from an external hard drive in simple terms with “Recover Data”.

It offers compatibility with diverse brands and models. Whether you have a SATA, NVMe, M.2 SSD, or another HDD brand, this software has you covered and can recover more than 200 data types including documents, emails, videos, and so on.

Or if the partition is accidentally deleted or gets lost, you can use “Partition Recovery” to restore the missing partition effortlessly.

Conclusion

If you are looking for Macrium Reflect alternative, AOMEI Partition Assistant can be an ideal tool. You can use it to back up important files, do daily computer management and solve many computer issues by yourself. If you are a Windows Server 2003, 2008 (R2), 2012 (R2), 2016, 2019, 2022, and SBS 2003, 2008, 2011, here is also the Server Edition can be selected for your easy computer life.