"Acronis True Image Home 2010"("Acronis") is not free with the exception that you can get free versions of older versions of "..True Image Home.." with various vendor-specific limitations from the Web sites of Seagate, Maxtor, and Western Digital.

"Macrium Reflect Free Edition"("Macrium") is totally free for private, home use.

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"Acronis" can be used to back up a Windows computer as either a Windows application (running from within Windows) or as a Linux application (running from the "Rescue Media" CD"). When running within Windows as a Windows application it uses Windows' "Volume Shadow Copy" service to "unlock" locked files.

"Macrium" can be used to back up a Windows computer only when it is running as a Windows application (running from within Windows). When running from its "Rescue CD" as a Linux application, "Macrium" only can restore hard drives and hard drive partitions; it cannot back up hard drives or hard drive partitions when it is running as a Linux application. When running within Windows as a Windows application it uses Windows' "Volume Shadow Copy" service to "unlock" locked files.

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"Acronis" allows you to make a bootable "Rescue Media" CD that is based on Linux that can be used to both back up and restore the hard drives and hard drive partitions of Windows and Linux computers.

"Macrium" allows you to make a bootable "Rescue CD" that is based on Linux that can be used to restore the hard drives and hard drive partitions of Windows computers. The Macrium "Rescue" CD can only be used to restore Windows hard drives or hard drive partitions. This "Rescue CD" cannot be used to back up the hard drives or hard drive partitions of Windows or Linux computers. In other words, all backing up of hard drives or hard drive partitions with "Macrium" has to be done with "Macrium" running inside Windows as a Windows application.

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"Acronis" backs up computers at a faster rate (per gigabyte of hard drive data) relative to "Macrium". Liz and I found that a computer that takes 1 hour to back up with "Acronis" will take about 1 hour and 20 minutes with "Macrium".

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The "Rescue CD" for "Macrium" can be configured as either a bootable "BartPE" CD or a bootable Linux LiveCD. The "Rescue Media" CD for "Acronis" can only be configured as a

bootable Linux LiveCD

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From within Windows, both "Macrium" and "Acronis" have a "Windows service" that allows you to browse and copy individual files and folders from within sets of "image backup files". In other words, for both "Macrium" and "Acronis", the end-user can use "Windows Explorer" to browse and copy individual files and folders from sets of "image backup files".

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"Acronis" uses the file extension of .tib ("True Image Backup") for the image backup files that are created during the backup of a hard drive or hard drive partition."Macrium" uses the file extension of .mrimg ("Macrium Reflect Image") for the image backup files that are created during the backup of a hard drive or hard drive partition.

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