Macrium Reflect 2026: Clone & Backup PC Image

Decide First: Image for Protection, Clone for a Swap

Reflect offers both buttons, and picking the wrong one quietly leaves you unprotected. A clone copies every partition of your source disk onto a target disk, which is then fitted into the PC and booted — perfect for a planned upgrade, like moving from a hard disk to an SSD, because the machine comes back exactly as it was on the new hardware. But a clone holds only one moment: it has no yesterday, no last month, and it goes stale the day it is made.

An image packs the same partitions into one compressed file (Reflect image files end in .mrimg) stored on an external drive, a second internal drive or a NAS. Because it is a file, you can keep many of them — last night's, last week's, last month's — and restore any of them onto any suitable drive later. The trade: an image cannot boot by itself; Reflect restores it onto a drive first.

Install Macrium Reflect — and Know the Trial

Download Reflect from Macrium's official website (macrium.com) and install it on the PC you want to protect. Downloading a disk tool from anywhere else is asking for trouble — this program gets deep access to every drive in the machine.

Make the First Full Image of the Whole Disk

In Reflect, choose the system disk and select Image this disk. The point most people miss: tick every partition on that disk — the small EFI, MSR and Recovery partitions in front of C: are what make Windows bootable. An image of C: alone restores your files but not a bootable PC.

Leave compression on the default setting; it shrinks the image without slowing a modern PC. Let the first full image finish untouched, then look at its size — that number plans all your storage maths later. Very roughly, a disk with 200 GB used often produces an image in the 100–140 GB range, but media collections compress poorly, so measure your own.

Clone the Disk When You Are Swapping It Today

For a planned disk upgrade, connect the new disk, choose the source disk in Reflect and select Clone this disk. Pick the new disk as the target, copy all the partitions across, and — when the target is bigger — extend the C: partition into the free space during the clone layout, so the new disk's size is actually used instead of trailing behind as unallocated space. When the clone finishes, swap the disks and boot; Windows should come back exactly as it was, on the new hardware. If the old drive is still connected, disconnect it for the first boot so the PC cannot start from the wrong disk.

Build the Rescue Media Now, Not During the Disaster

When Windows will not start, the installed Reflect cannot help you — the rescue media is the bootable USB that runs Reflect outside Windows. Build it today, while everything works: use the rescue media builder in Reflect, accept the default Windows RE base, and write it to a USB stick. Keep that stick with the backup drive.

Put the Image on a Schedule and Let Retention Clean Up

A backup you must remember to run is a backup you will forget. Reflect's scheduler turns the first image into a habit: a weekly full image with small daily incrementals between them is the pattern that suits most home and small-office PCs. Set the schedule inside the backup definition, not as a separate task, and add a retention rule — keep a few weeks of history — so Reflect deletes old sets itself instead of filling the drive. Make sure the PC is awake at backup time; Reflect can wake it for the job if you allow that.

Verify the Image and Test a Restore

This is the step almost everyone skips, and it is the only step that proves anything. Reflect can verify an image — checking the file is complete and readable — and you should also test a real restore once: restore onto a spare drive if you have one, or at least mount the image inside Windows and pull a few files out of it. If the test restore boots, your safety net is real. If it does not, you found out on a calm afternoon instead of the morning the office PC died.

Restore the Image to a New or Bigger Drive

When the old drive is dead or too small: fit or connect the new drive, boot from the rescue USB, and open Reflect in the rescue environment. Browse to the image and choose the restore point — the latest good day, not blindly the latest file; if the PC died of a problem that began on Tuesday, Monday's image is the right one. Select the new drive as the target, copy all partitions (the small boot partitions are not optional extras), and extend C: into the free space on a bigger drive. Restoring to a smaller drive works only when the data itself fits — partitions can shrink toward their used size, not below it.

After the restore, disconnect the old drive for the first boot, let Windows settle (a first boot can be slow while drivers and indexes re-check themselves), and open your programs and files — the PC should be exactly the machine from the image's date. Windows activation normally survives a drive swap on the same motherboard; a different motherboard is the harder case, where Reflect's business editions offer a ReDeploy feature, and even then expect driver work.