What is Macrium Reflect? Is Macrium Reflect safe? Is it necessary for you to install Macrium Reflect on your computer? This post from MiniTool will show you the answers. As well, you will find a Macrium Reflect alternative to back up the PC or clone your hard drive.
What Is Macrium Reflect?
Macrium Reflect is a piece of backup, disk imaging, and cloning software for commercial and personal use. It is able to safeguard your PC and allows you to back up files to local, network, and USB drives. Once the system is crashed or your files are lost, you can use the image file to restore the entire disk, one or more partitions, or even restore the individual files and folders.
In addition, Macrium Reflect allows you to upgrade your hard drive to a larger one and mount an image as a virtual drive in Windows Explorer to easily recover files and folders using Copy and Paste.
Is Macrium Reflect free? Is Macrium Reflect safe? To figure them out, continue reading.
Main Features of Macrium Reflect
Macrium Reflect is a backup and disk clone solution. Apart from these, it also has other features. So, here we will show the main features of Macrium Reflect.
After launching it, you can see your disk layout including the file system, hard drive capacity, and partition size. On the left panel, there are three backup tasks and you can click them directly to start the task. On the right panel, there are two buttons: Clone this disk and Image this disk.
On the Tools bar, you can find there are Backup, Restore, and Other Tasks. Macrium Reflect allows you to create a scheduled backup and provides incremental backup support.
Now, let’s get some information about the main features of Macrium Reflect.
- Super-fast imaging
- Files and folders backup
- Rapid delta cloning
- Back up file consolidation with synthetic full backup support
- SSD trim support
- Pre-defined backup plan templates
- Mount images
- Rapid delta restore
- Restore images to dissimilar hardware
- Protect your backups from ransomware with Macrium Image Guardian
- Back up files or folders to a single compressed archive file
Macrium Reflect comes with different versions, such as Trial, Home Business, etc. And the trial edition allows you to use it for free within 30 days. Just free download it from its official website.
Is Macrium Reflect Safe?
Is Macrium Reflect safe or is Macrium Reflect free safe? This would be a hot topic. Macrium Reflect was developed in 2006 and has millions of users around the world.
The answer is positive. It is not a virus and a 100% safe backup utility. It is used to back up your files, folders, disks, or partitions and it allows you to clone a hard disk. Although Macrium Reflect is able to keep your valuable data safe and accessible, it also has some negative voices.
1. When imaging your disk, Macrium Reflect performs a number of actions so that the anti-virus program would think of it as malicious software. Sometimes when Macrium Reflect writes very large files, antivirus software also regards it as malicious software.
2. Some users reported that it asks for Microsoft WinPE installation when they are using Macrium Reflect to clone HDD. So, is Macrium Reflect safe for HDD cloning? Here is a real example on reddit.com:
I’ve never heard about WinPE before and I tried to download Macrium to clone my win10 on a new HDD and it asks me to download WinPE. Shall I do this or not? It says that the download of WinPE is like 800MB. Can someone help me please fast cause my disk is at its final moments here?www.reddit.com
3. When using Macrium Reflect to clone a hard drive, you may encounter some errors, such as the Macrium Reflect error 9 or Macrium Reflect clone error 0.
4. On the Norton forum, you can find that some users complained about Macrium Reflect. They downloaded Macrium Reflect from its official site and Norton removed it because it contained an unknown threat.
To sum up, you have a clear understanding of the question “is Macrium Reflect safe”. It is a safe program. However, when using it, you may come across some errors or the antivirus software will regard it as a malicious program.
Thus, is it necessary for you to install Macrium Reflect on your computer? As for backup software, Microsoft provides a built-in tool – Backup and Restore (Windows 7). This Windows tool enables you to create a system image. Or you can choose to use a safe Macrium Reflect alternative, such as MiniTool ShadowMaker which enables you to back up files, folders, disks, partitions, and the operating system. It also enables you to clone a hard drive.
If Macrium Reflect is not necessary for you, you can choose to uninstall it.
How to Uninstall Macrium Reflect Completely?
Now, follow the tutorial to continue.
1. Open Control Panel.
2. Then choose Uninstall a program under the Programs section to continue.
3. Select Macrium Reflect and right-click it.
4. Then choose Uninstall to remove it from your computer.
The above actions only remove the main executable program file, but not all program files and components. Some invalid files are left in the Registry and folders. So, in order to remove it completely, you need to get rid of these remnants.
Step 1: Press the Windows key and R key together to open the Run dialog.
Step 2: Type regedit in the box and click OK to continue.
Step 3: In the Registry Editor window, navigate to the paths: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Macrium\Reflect, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Macrium\Reflect and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run. Then, delete them.
Step 4: Find and delete all files of the program in system folders C:\Program Files\Macrium\, C:\Document and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Macrium\ and C:\Documents and Settings\%USER%\Application Data\Macrium.
After all steps are finished, you have completely removed Macrium Reflect from your computer.
Best Macrium Reflect Alternative: MiniTool ShadowMaker
Clone Hard Drive
As we have mentioned in the above part, Macrium Reflect is designed to back up files, folders, disks, and partitions, and clone a hard disk. However, when using Macrium Reflect to clone a hard drive, you may fail and come across an error.
Here comes a question: is there a free Macrium Reflect alternative for disk cloning? Certainly, MiniTool ShadowMaker, the best backup software for Windows 11/10, serves as an alternative to Macrium Reflect. As stated above, it works wonders in cloning HDD to SSD, data backup, system backup, file sync, and more.
After cloning, you can directly boot your PC from that cloned hard drive. This way, upgrading a hard drive becomes very easy and you won’t reinstall the Windows operating system from scratch and apps. Are you ready? Download and install from the following button, then get started.
MiniTool ShadowMaker TrialClick to Download100%Clean & Safe
See the guide on how to use the Macrium Reflect alternative to clone a hard drive.
Step 1: Connect your target disk to a PC and launch MiniTool ShadowMaker, then hit Keep Trial.
Step 2: After entering its main interface, go to the Tools page and click Clone Disk to continue.
Step 3: On the next page, choose the source disk and target disk as per your situation. The alternative to Macrium Reflect requires you to register it using a license key when cloning a system disk. Just do it and then click Start to begin cloning.
The time it costs depends on the number of files on the source hard drive. Please do not interrupt the disk clone process. Otherwise, your target disk would be unbootable.
After all steps are finished, you have upgraded your hard drive with the Macrium Reflect alternative – MiniTool ShadowMaker.
Back up Your PC
Besides the hard disk clone feature, MiniTool ShadowMaker is professional backup software. It is designed to back up files, folders, disks, partitions, and the operating system. In addition, it allows you to restore the files or restore your computer to an earlier state with the backup image.
Now, we will show you how to use the Macrium Reflect alternative to back up your computer.
1. Download MiniTool ShadowMaker, install it and launch it.
MiniTool ShadowMaker TrialClick to Download100%Clean & Safe
2. Click Keep Trial.
3. After entering its main interface, go to the Backup page.
4. MiniTool ShadowMaker is designed to back up the operating system. So, it chooses the operating system as the backup source by default. To choose another backup source, go to SOURCE and choose what to backup depending on your needs.
5. Then click the DESTINATION module to choose a target disk to save the backup images. It is recommended to choose an external hard drive. Then click OK to continue.
6. Then click Back Up Now to start your backup process.
After all steps are finished, you have successfully backed up your computer. If the machine encounters some errors, such as system crashes or others, you can choose to restore your computer to a previous state with the backup image.
From the above content, you can find that the Macrium Reflect alternative is also effective and it is easy to operate. MiniTool ShadowMaker is a 100% safe program. It provides free, trial, pro, and business editions. And the trial edition also allows you to use it for free within 30 days.
So, is Macrium Reflect safe? If you have any doubt about the Macrium Reflect, it is possible to choose the Macrium Reflect alternative – MiniTool ShadowMaker. It is 100% safe. In addition, with MiniTool ShadowMaker, you will not come across cloning errors or other problems.
Bottom Line
Is Macrium Reflect safe? Is Macrium Reflect free? After reading this post, we believe that you already have the answers. Get it from the official website or a trusted source to make you use a legitimate version. Besides, keep it up-to-date with the latest patches to mitigate potential security flaws.
If you think Macrium Reflect is not necessary for you, you can choose to uninstall it. Or you can choose an alternative to Macrium Reflect – MiniTool ShadowMaker.
MiniTool ShadowMaker TrialClick to Download100%Clean & Safe
When you have any problem with MiniTool ShadowMaker, you can feel free to contact us via [email protected] and we will reply to you as soon as possible.
Is Macrium Reflect Safe FAQ
About The Author
Position: Columnist
Vera is an editor of the MiniTool Team since 2016 who has more than 7 years’ writing experiences in the field of technical articles. Her articles mainly focus on disk & partition management, PC data recovery, video conversion, as well as PC backup & restore, helping users to solve some errors and issues when using their computers. In her spare times, she likes shopping, playing games and reading some articles.