Folks speak highly of Veeam backup software. I've not used it but there have been quite a few endorsements for it on this sub.
this post was submitted on 19 Nov 2023
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I was waiting on the discount to pull the trigger... I guess I don't really need it then since Duplicacy + Veeam works well.
Veeam agent for Windows is simple and works but it is quite limited in terms of retention policies. So I use Duplicacy for my backups and Veeam is there in case Duplicacy fails or I need an image based solution because Windows crashed.
I wanted Macrium because of it's ability to boot from an image directly where I would have to do a reinstall if I used Veeam agent for Windows.
I think I could just use Veeam community edition for the more complicated retention policies and booting from an image but the time investment is inmense. You need a dedicated Windows server, an SQL server, I think paid hypervisors in order to boot from the image directly and then time and patience to dig through the bible length manual...
I already have veeam community on win server and it is great, but... great in every sense. It needs a lot of background processes, a full-blown MSSQL server, memory, etc.
However now I think about adding agents to the windows machines and do the backup remotely. I didn't want to do it before, because I liked the simplicity of local backup to a simple external drive.
What features do you use Macrium for?
Honestly if you are only dealing with windows, and only looking for imaging, it might be better to just run a dism.exe script like this one: https://github.com/KyodaiKen/DISMBackup on a schedule.
That's probably good for one-off backups but Macrium can do:
- incrementals so you don't save again hundreds of GBs for a partition that not much has changed
- split files at desired size (as opposed to having only the option for huge archives)
- can exclude directories from images which can be EXTREMELY useful
Unfortunately Veeam doesn't do the last two, otherwise it's a nice contender.
I use endless incremental method with 60 days history. So I always have 60 days to go back with having only one full backup that gets the expired incrementals merged automatically. This way the daily backup only takes a few minutes and it doesn't need too much overhead space to store multiple full images as with other methods. It is also encrypted and uses VSS so it can backup everything on a live system. Sends email if there was a problem, supports pre an posts scrips to mount my backup drive, etc.
I also do independent full backups occasionally of course, but the previous one is the main reason for Macrium. Sometimes I just use it to dump other disks or old SDcards to a compressed image file that I can mount and use easily if needed.
They know what they're doing, and that it's a worse value for users by moving to this subscription model. It's the same playbook that every product that moves to SAAS runs where they introduce at a cheap price and divert all efforts towards it. Then continue to make the standalone license cost more and more in relation to the sub, and eventually stop offering it altogether claiming nobody wanted it, or people prefer the sub (because they intentionally made this happen).
Excluding a single standalone license deal from the BF sale is not going to convince me to purchase at full price. And it won't make me sub either. I will continue to use the free version until it no longer works, and look at alternatives in the meantime. The exact same circumstances that brought me to Reflect to begin with! It's the circle of software life, I suppose.
I recommend you try Uranium Backup, it has a unique payment plan and is easy to use, plus it syncs with popular clouds...