Hello John, Macrium free works for me in every possible way, except scheduling doesn’t work for some reason. I evaluated the Aomei free and encountered a few bugs which to me were show stoppers. Perhaps they got the bugs out of the paid version.

Hi Paul,

You have two concepts going on here: What you are backing up and how you are backing up.

What you are backing up.
System, Disk, Partition, or File. You mentioned that you performed a system backup. A system backup only backs up the system partitions. If your data is not on the system partition (usually C) then a system backup will not back up your data. If your data is on another partition, you need to do a disk backup or a partition backup of your data partition in addition to a system backup.

How you are backing up.
There are 3 backup types, Full, Differential, and Incremental. Full backs up all the files & folders, partitions, or disks. However, it requires more backup space. Differential and Incremental backups require less space. A differential backup backs up the data that has changed or been added since the last full backup. An Incremental backup only backs up what changed since the last backup which may be a full backup or an incremental backup. So, which one is better? How to choose?

Suppose you create a daily INCREMENTAL backup starting Sunday it will create a full backup on Sunday. Monday’s backup will contain the changed data since Sunday (1 day’s data). Tuesday’s backup will only keep the changes since Monday (1 day’s data). In other words, after the first backup, each incremental will just back up 1 day’s data.

Suppose you create a daily DIFFERENTIAL backup starting Sunday it will create a full backup on Sunday. Monday’s backup will contain the changed data since Sunday (1 day’s data). Tuesday’s backup will backup the changes since Sunday (2 days data Mondays & Tuesdays). Wednesdays will have 3 days’ worth of data (Mon, Tues, and Wed), etc.

Incremental will use less space and should be faster in backup speed but will be slower in restore speed since it needs to read all the files. Differential will use more space but will be faster in restore speed since you only need the first and last files.

A full backup will use the most data (if you were making full backups daily) but will be the quickest in restore speed since you are only restoring 1 file.

Personally, I have my systems set up with a system partition (OS and apps) and a data partition (my data). I perform a full system backup for OS/Apps, and a full partition backup for my data and don’t bother with differential and incremental backups. If you can, I recommend keeping your data and OS/apps separate. Even though I make system backups, I am not as concerned with my OS and apps. I can always reinstall both and attain both from internet downloads. Therefore, I only make a system backup monthly. Without the OS and apps, my data doesn’t take up that much space. A full partition backup for my data partition only takes about a minute. I make them more frequently.

Hi Shobha,

I am glad you are enjoying the review. I cover test results and my opinion on this in Part 3 of the review. Part 2 has already been published https://davescomputertips.com/hasleo-backup-suite-review-part-2/
and Part 3 should be published soon.

Thanks, Reg, I’m glad you are enjoying the review. Just to be clear, Hasleo does have a “Check Image” feature (Pt 2 of review), but it is missing an option to automatically check an image after a backup.

Hi Graham,

As I stated in the first paragraph, I own 3 licenses to the pro version of Aomei. I have used it for years. This review is also a comparison of the “FREE” Hasleo to a “Full-Featured” imaging backup software, specifically, Aomei Backupper Pro as well as the free version of Aomei.