Macrium Reflect Free is a clever and well laid out GUI front-end to the built-in Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service. Thankfully someone recalled using Macrium Reflect, the Free Edition, with some success, so naturally we took a look. It’s an easy enough setup, but the task of finding the right cloning software was more difficult than we first anticipated.

We had a similar situation recently, where an SSD from a previous machine was upgraded and the old unit earmarked to become the main system drive of another PC. Likewise, a new SSD to replace the aging and slow hard drive can be easily cloned across, once you’ve manually sorted the size difference. In these cases an image of the PC before we handed it over to them was a wise move and cut down on wasted build time. A simple, but powerful, solution to cloning and imagingĭisk imaging and cloning is a practice that has saved many an IT support technician and home enthusiast.There are countless times we’ve build a PC for a friend or relation only to have to come back to it several months later to find that ‘fiddling’ has rendered it unbootable and useless.

Macrium reflect home edition