DiskGenius vs Macrium Reflect: Which One to Choose?

Disk Genius and Macrium Reflect are both very popular disk cloning software programs. Both come with free trials with enough features for backup, recovery, cloning, imaging, partition management, etc. Both have pro versions with extended features, but we’ll cover only the free variants. Feature-wise, DiskGenius is better because of its disk repair, bad block repair, TRIM optimization, partition, secure erase, and other recovery options. Macrium Reflect (currently Macrium Reflect X) is focused more towards disk imaging/cloning, backup, restore, and Rescue.

Both have their applications and pros and cons. For data recovery, DiskGenius is the best. In fact, Macrium Reflect doesn’t have any recovery options for lost data. However, for disk cloning, Macrium Reflect is much faster and easier with support for incremental cloning.

The backup options are pretty basic in DiskGenius, while Macrium Reflect has options for incremental and differential scheduled backup. They have an interesting Grandfather-Father-Son (GFS) Backup Schem,e which we will cover later in this article. For now, let’s start with the basic features comparison of both programs.

We will divide this comparison based on different parameters like cloning, imaging, backup, restoration, etc, and see which one has the best to offer. Let’s start with cloning first.

Which one is good for Cloning and Imaging: Macrium Reflect or DiskGenius?

I found Macrium Reflect to be a better option for both cloning and imaging. It supports Live system cloning while the computer is running. The most impressive thing for me about the Reflect is its ability to perform incremental and differential cloning, which is generally possible in disk imaging. The partition alignment is much better in Macrium Reflect.

DiskGenius can be helpful if you want to perform partition-level cloning rather than full disk cloning. Alongside cloning or imaging, you get options for data recovery and partition repair with it. For non-standard file systems like EXT4, DiskGenius is a good option rather than Macrium Reflect X. In terms of cloning and imaging speed, I have found Macrium Reflect to be much faster.

Which one is good for Backups?

Again, I find Macrium Reflect better in terms of backup options, speed, and efficiency. You can choose between full, incremental, or differential backup options as per your requirements.

Grandfather-Father-Son (GFS) Backup in Macrium Reflect X

Grandfather (Monthly Full Backup): A full system image is created once a month. This one is the most comprehensive type of backup you can choose.

Father (Weekly Differential Backup): A differential backup is created weekly. It records changes made since the last full backup and is faster but larger in size.

Son (Daily Incremental Backup): Incremental backups are quick and run daily. They only store changes made since the last incremental or differential backup, saving a lot of space and resources.

The restoration process is much more robust with an option for restoring only the changed data. You can also create bootable rescue media in case of serious system failures. You can enable password-based encryption for security and compression to save space.

DiskGenius works much more manually with no option for automatic scheduling. It has got the incremental backup feature. For sector-by-sector copies of disks instead of a complete compressed image file, you can choose DiskGenius. For partition backups and data recovery, Disk Genius is better than Macrium Reflect X.

All in all, I would always pick Macrium Reflect (Free) over DiskGenius (Free) for backups. However, you can do external backups without using any third-party software in Windows. Read more about external backup.

Partition Management

In terms of partition management, DiskGenius is the clear winner. It allows for creating, resizing, splitting, merging, formatting, and deleting the partitions pretty easily. There are options to change the partition types from MBR to GPT and primary to logical and vice-versa. There is a quick partition option that allows you to easily create partitions using either MBR or GPT table style, etc.

DiskGenius supports all the popular file systems, NTFS, FAT32, exFAT, Ext2/Ext3/Ext4 (Linux), etc. Advanced features like clone partition, OS migration, partition table rebuild, et,c are really helpful in DiskGenius.

On the other hand, Macrium Reflect offers basic partition settings when you choose the destination drive for cloning. You can copy, erase, or delete the partition if you want.

However, you can keep the partitions as they are in the source drive by choosing the copy option.

You can’t create a new partition of your choice when cloning a drive. Also, the primary file systems supported by Macrium Reflect are NTFS and FAT32.

Which one is easy to use?

Macrium Reflect is much easier to use because of its clean and modern interface. The UI is easy to navigate with clear options for cloning, imaging, backup, and recovery. The wizards take you through each step one by one. The one-click cloning feature automatically detects the sources and destination drives. For backups, the options for scheduled backups are pretty easy to understand and use. You can recover the system using the bootable media, which again is really easy to use.

DiskGenius has many more features besides cloning, backup, and imaging, and this makes the tool complex to use. The UI is traditional to us,e but once you use it for a good time, it will become easier for you. The cloning and backup options are manual and can be harder to use. For IT professionals or computer enthusiasts, DiskGenius might be a more suitable option.

Data Recovery Capabilities

These software can be compared on different levels, and data recovery is another big option to pick DiskGenius. However, we can’t compare these two based on data recovery because Macrium Reflect isn’t made for that. But you can use features like restoring deleted partitions, fixing bad sectors, and rebuilding partition tables.

Conclusion

Both DiskGenius and Macrium Reflect do the job of disk cloning or imaging with their capabilities. Macrium Reflect looks much more modern and clean, while DiskGenius is packed with more features. Both come with the paid versions as well, but the free variants do the job of basic jobs without any price. You now know the pros and cons of both. So, choose wisely. However, they both are free and you should try both of them before finalizing on any one.

I hope this helps!