Ask Leo! #542 – Facebook Fail, Copied Files, Sending Spam, Why Microsoft Didn’t Fix Your Bug, and more…

Based on your recommendation from a long time ago I use Macrium Reflect. While not cheap, I shudder at the cost if I didn't backup, or the backup I had proved to be faulty. You haven't mentioned it, but I always verify each full and incremental backup before I exit. Once, and only once, verify said I had a fault so I redid the backup. I figure if I can afford a computer, internet services and a cell phone I should be able to afford the relatively small and infrequent cost of getting reliable backups.

I would like to relate an experience which illustrates one difference between Acronis True Image 2014 and Macrium Reflect 5 (I haven't yet upgraded to 6 but I plan to).

Late last Spring, the hard drive on my 2nd laptop apparently began to fail, but gave me little indication; none of the buzzing or clicks you read about, just a general slowness. I made an image backup with Acronis on June 1st, which took much longer than it should have. About a week later I installed Macrium Reflect, and created the Rescue Disk, but my internal hard drive wasn't recognized, either with the Rescue Disk or while using MR from within Windows. Macrium customer support is absolutely excellent, and they requested info from me, which I provided; their final opinion was that there was a bad sector on the first track of my hard disk (later evidence backed this up). I continued to use the computer; Windows worked just fine and I could get on the internet, etc etc; I had no problems at all other than not being able to use MR, and if I hadn't installed MR I would have had NO REAL CLUE that my hard drive was failing. I had almost no personal files on this computer at this point, but this gave me plenty of time to make sure, and I have Macrium to thank for that.

For Acronis' part, Acronis allowed me to image the failing hard drive while Macrium wouldn't, and the Acronis image is mountable, so if I had had tons of personal data on there, Acronis would have saved it all for me.

In answer to your question, I do still back up with both Macrium and Acronis, although because of recent experiences not detailed here, I am leaning more heavily toward Macrium.

I was very happy with Macrium Reflect 5 and even happier with Reflect 6. Disk imaging is too critical for me to trust the task to free software. Without a financial incentive, developers won't give their best efforts to create and support an application. The developers of Reflect have created outstanding software and they stand behind it.

I have had several accounts compromised, including my Discover card (2x), Chase Mastercard and my PayPal account. Each time the credit card company recognized the activity and contacted me. I was not charged for anything I did not charge myself.

Now, I was always liable for charges I made and charges based on automated billing that I had arranged, which is fair.

One of the times, I believe my card info was captured by a hacked gas station pump credit reader - as I only use that card for gas purchases.

Another time, the company told me they thought it was compromised at a restaurant. A third time, by someone processing my purchase over the phone.

PayPal said that my password was hacked.

The good thing in my experience is that the companies that handle my payments have, so far, always covered the fraudulent charges.

The bad thing is that there are people out there trying to take advantage of others.