Macrium Reflect 8 Free review: Fantastic image backup and recovery at no-cost

Don’t believe me? Guess what I use for PCWorld’s Windows 11 test beds and my friend’s PCs? Yup, the free version of Macrium Reflect 8.

Read on to learn more, then see our roundup of the best Windows backup software for comparison.

What are Macrium Reflect 8 Free’s features?

Macrium Reflect is an imaging program, meaning it creates files (the images) containing all the data residing on a drive or partition. These files are proprietary so you do need Reflect to restore or browse them. However, you can always create VHDs and transfer the data if you’re worried that Reflect might disappear.

You’d think that the Free version of Macrium Reflect would be missing a ton of features. Surprisingly, it lacks only a few, such as incremental backups, password protection, and email notifications. Actually, they’re there but only to create nags for the full version — which is now subscription-only.

There is also no folder backup with the free version of Reflect, but there’s an easy way around that with Windows’ own File History. Once you figure out how to define folders as libraries at any rate.

You may not be able to back up specific files or folders with Reflect Free, but there are extensive scheduling options and retention rules (how long to keep and what to delete when space is low), and jobs are saved as standard XML files.