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Signature Generator

A great online signature generator.

https://www.xink.io/wp-content/themes/Xink/signatures_created/signature_20180705101554.html

8 Tips To Stay Safe In An Online World

We live in a hyper connected age unlike any before it. Your online safety and privacy is under threat on a daily basis. Here are 8 tips to serve as a starting points to keep you safe(r):

BROWSER SAFETY

New online threats emerge everyday and the race is on to find ways to compromise your browser with malware, security holes and malicious exploits. Use a modern browser with paid AV software that inspects http traffic. This will add another layer of security to your browser (Windows 10 Defender for example does not scan browser traffic). Consider installing a ad blocker that blocks intrusive ads and unnecessary tracking scripts.

EMAIL SAFETY

For all the convenience that email provides it is also one of the most prolific points of entry for scams and malware. Always assume an email is a scam. Always reject unsolicited advances and messages in your inbox. Be suspicious of all attachments and don't open unless you were expecting it.

ANTI VIRUS

Stick with paid products that perform well in AV comparative tests. Free products nearly always come with a catch. You perform better when you're paid and so will your AV vendor. You can still get away with no AV on MacOS, not because it is necessarily more secure, but rather due to obscurity.

UPDATES

Mac and Windows updates often break legitimate things but the pros outweigh the cons. Software nowadays are exploited and compromised mercilessly. If there is a security hole (and there IS) it will be exploited by someone, somewhere. You can't always stay ahead but you can put up a good fight with patches and up to date software.

PASSWORD POLICIES

So many passwords to remember - just make sure you use different passwords for different services. So often victims are cross-compromised because they re-used a password for different services (think email password matching your PayPal password..). Strong passwords go hand in hand with security. Long passwords with uppercase, lowercase, special characters and non-dictionary words are best.

SMART PHONES & SMART CHOICES

Controversial and very debatable, which smart phone ecosystem is more secure and respects your privacy the most, IOS or Android? We are of the opinion that the walled garden approach of IOS tends to be more security oriented than Android's wild west approach. Whichever you choose, the same safety guidelines apply. Don't install apps thoughtlessly. Check what permissions they require and deny that which they don't. A minimum permission model is what is desired, a dictionary app certainly doesn't need access to your contacts. As a side note - apps can and will hoover up all your contacts and do with it as they please without much policing from either Apple or Google. This is set to change with IOS 12. More reasons to limit the app leash length.

PRIVACY SETTINGS

Your default privacy settings on all your favorite social media apps and websites often don't have your privacy as their number one concern; they tend to more concerned with sharing your data with 3rd parties for extra profit. Check each service individually and make sure you are aware of what you are sharing with the general public.

BACKUPS

When everything fails, as long as you have backups you will be OK. All hard drives and storage media can and will fail. Have a recent backup of your most precious data in more than one place. Backup your phone as well - we treat it like a casual accessory but in most cases it's more expensive than a laptop and carries information just as, or more important. Symmetric IT recommends Macrium Reflect.

Hopefully this gives some food for thought when you interact online and how to stay safe while doing it. Comment if you have ideas to add.

EDIT: The government provides great resources that are aligned with Symmetric IT's services:
Protecting Business Data
Keeping Yourself Safe and Secure Online


Symmetric IT is an IT support company in Auckland. Contact us if you need world class IT support.

Macrium Synthetic Backups and Image Consolidation

We will be looking at Macrium's Synthetic Backup and Consolidation functions to find out how the settings impact actual real world backups.

Synthetic backups refer to the creation of a full backup - instead of physically creating the backup of the source the software will artificially combine and consolidate incremental backups into a full backup. This will reduce the incremental chain length and give you a new baseline full image. Synthetic backups and consolidation have some advantages:

Read More here:

https://symmetric.co.nz/blog/post/macrium-synthetic-backups

Thoughts on Secure Remote Access

See our latest blog post on secure remote access :

Remote access to your servers and other PC's is essential for effective support. The problem implementing this in a secure manner that only gives you access and keeps everything else out. Ransomware has abused remote desktop as an attack vector, more so than traditional avenues such as phishing and malicious websites.

In 2017 Wannacry used publicly exposed SMB ports as its primary attack vector. Remote desktop is often compromised by user accounts with weak passwords, the attacker would guess a common username and brute force password options on the exposed RDP connection.

Read more here:

https://symmetric.co.nz/blog/post/secure-remote-access-in-an-age-of-ransomware


Symmetric IT provides IT Support in Auckland

Thoughts On Delta Incremental Backups

https://symmetric.co.nz/blog/post/delta-incremental-file-based-backups

Windows 10 Free Upgrade Still Available - April 2018

You can still upgrade to Windows 10 for free in case you have missed all the other opportunities. The last chance to upgrade was end of December when the free upgrade to users with assistive technologies ran out, or this was the theory.

You can still download the Windows 10 ISO, mount or extract it and install Windows from there. You can use your existing Windows 7 or 8 product key to install and activate Windows. You can do an in place upgrade and keep all your settings or a fresh install.

Download the ISO here:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10ISO
Microsoft has made one ISO for both Home and Professional so that makes it nice and simple.

Data Recovery Costs and Backup Best Practices

Investigating the costs involved when disaster strikes is an undoubted motivation for setting up an iron clad backup regime. Not only does it make you sleep easy at night it also saves you money and potentially your business. Consider that on a long enough timeline all digital storage devices fail, this includes traditional hard rives, solid state drives and portable flash memory.

How do they fail?

In our experience, different storage targets can fail in different ways. Traditional hard drives are possibly more gracious in their failures. Spindle hard drives quite often give you warning signs that it's nearing its end of life.  These signals can be monitored via S.M.A.R.T data that the hard drive provides. Factors such as spin up errors, bad sectors and reallocated sector counts can be strong indicators that a hard drive needs to be replaced. At Symmetric IT we monitor hard drive S.M.A.R.T data as part of our Managed IT service. If a failure signal is detected a hard drive will be replaced as a matter of policy. Prevention is better than cure.
Often if a hard drive fails it still possible to recover data from it using 3rd party software. As long as the hard drive is still detectable by Windows you have a good probability to get your data back. The worst case scenario is a non responsive hard drive. Quite often data can still be recovered but this is where it moves into the highly qualified expertise area. The hard drive can still be recovered in a clean room using specialized methods. The cost to recover also rises significantly.
A recent quote obtained from a data recovery specialist to recover data from a laptop hard drive that was non responsive:

..Our fees, should you decide to proceed, would be quoted between $249 and $749

So you are looking at a significant amount if the hard drive fails.
Flash memory based storage devices, in our experience, fail less graciously. Solid state hard drives have a finite lifespan, determined by the amount of read and writes to the memory. More often than not they will fail before reaching this theoretical read/write limit. All the SSD failures we have encountered (across different brands) have been fairly sudden with little to no warning. Windows would glitch and then data would be lost, suddenly Windows wont boot or Windows would blue screen unexpectedly with different stop codes. Attempting to read data from the drive would fail.
In these cases data recovery is harder than on a traditional hard drive. Backups, more specifically image based backups of solid state drives is imperative.
USB flash drives also fail, and most we have come across fail suddenly with no warning at all. One day it will be OK, the next time you plug it in it's completely unresponsive.
Consider the following price layout from another data recovery company:

USB flash drives	$125 - 295 + GST
Phone recoveries	$199 - 399 + GST
Hard disk	$350 - $595 + GST
Specialized recoveries	$500 - $1500 + GST

These prices reflect a successful recovery which means there are other aspects to consider as well:

• What about the data that they cant recover?
• How much time will you lose recovering this data?
• What impact will this expenditure and loss of time have on your business?
• What impact will a loss of data have? (Financial data, Business databases)

Data and information is the lifeblood of a business today.

How do I protect myself or my business?

A structured, monitored backup regime is needed. A simple backup every now and then is not enough. If the day comes a recent backup makes all the difference. Usually the more recent the better, every hour wasted redoing work is time and money lost.
Conversely a long history of backups is also important. All the difference can sometimes be made when recovering that one email or spreadsheet you had 5 years ago.
Symmetric IT prides itself on tried and tested backup regimes that can accommodate all disaster recovery scenarios and meet your time to recovery targets. Having a backup is not enough if it takes 2 days to get up and running again. Your backup needs 2 or more storage targets onsite, always separate, rotated and securely stored. These backups need to be secure(encrypted) and monitored. You also need secure offsite backups for critical data. Special care needs to be taken to cater for all line of business applications so that they backed up correctly in a way that allows for a successful restore.
Your backups also need to have full and granular restorability. For example, if need a specific file from a year ago it needs to be easily accessible. If your computer or server fails it needs to be recoverable in its entirety within set time limits; not just the latest version of the server either, quite possibly last week's or even last year.
Your backups also need to be tested, they are only as good as the last time they were tested. Symmetric IT has seen backups that run and verified successfully but when the time came to restore they failed.
In summary, your backups need the following considerations:

Multiple onsite storage targets

Offsite online encrypted backups

Line of business application considerations

Time to recovery target considerations

Encrypted and stored safely

Rotated to a set schedule

Actively monitored

Sector and image based considerations for backup types

Restorability considerations (full/granular)

Restorability testing

Documented procedures

These are all factors to consider when setting up a backup plan, Symmetric IT can tailor a backup plan for you keep your most valuable digital assets safe.

Macrium Free vs Veeam Agent Free Review

We'll be doing a comparison review and between Macrium Reflect 7 Free vs Veeam Agent Free. Macrium is at version 7.1.2917 (the latest one currently), same for Veeam (2.1.0.423). Testing will be done on Windows 10 1709 inside of a Virtualbox virtual machine. Let's get into it!

Download Sizes

The Macrium free download comes in at 62MB and Veeam is 273MB. A large difference but it should be noted that Macrium can be a larger download at first as well if you include the WinPE components with the initial download. The nice thing is macrium gives you the option to select just the base program. You can always download the WinPE components later on. This is handy when you quickly need to get it downloaded quickly. Another advantage is no need to register to download, Veeam requires an email registration process. It is not cumbersome but it does add a barrier to the download.
Another difference is in the download method. Macrium requires a intermediary downloader, Veeam is direct once you have registered. Here is the Macrium download application with the download options available:

Installation

Macrium Free's installation is a straight forward affair. It uses a more traditional installer where Veeam opts for a more custom installer that is on its own rails during most of the process:

Once completed Veeam jumps straight into a wizard that attempts to guide you through an initial backup setup. For the intent of the review we'll be skipping the wizard and go straight to the main application.

It's important to note that Veeam is a 'heavier' install than Macrium due to the fact that it installs Microsoft SQL 2012 Express and accompanying components. This is a consideration especially if you prefer your free backup software to be as 'light' as possible. See below screenshot:

Finally, Veeam allows for install onto a Windows Server OS whereas Macrium only does this at a paid tier.

Main Program

Comparing the main program screens of both:

Macrium

Veeam

Veeam has a simplified look and feel to it whereas Macrium appears like a more traditional program. Macrium also has the hard drive layouts listed which gives you an immediate insight into the computers disk configuration. Veeam has a more simple interface, only giving you the option to configure a backup or change some settings:

An interesting option to note is the 'Manage registered storage spaces' - This is handy for having multiple locations. I assume it should be disk letter independent which should make rotating backup hard drives easier (ie, no missing drives due to a differently assigned drive letter). Another feature is "email notifications", which is a useful feature to keep track of backup failures and successes. Macrium has this only in their paid tier.
We will look at Macrium's corresponding settings to compare.

Macrium has significantly more settings to adjust. This can both be an advantage and a disadvantage. The power users will love the adjustability but it may overwhelm the average home user. We will point out some of the settings to highlight the functionality.

• Compression - Macrium gives you the option to set the compression level. In our testing we found that disk images can often compress quite a bit so this saves a lot of space. Both Veeam and Macrium will only copy the in-use sectors (although Macrium has the option to do a 'forensic clone' and capture all sectors)
• Password - It's important to note the Macrium won't let you set a password or encrypt images in the free version.
• Auto Verify - A very important feature in our opinion. This is an extra safety feature, verifying your image directly after it was created will ensure the integrity of backup.
• SSD Trim -  A good feature when restoring to SSD's. It is not clear if Veeam implements this feature.

The rest of the settings are self explanatory. It's also worth looking at the Advanced Settings:

• Advanced Backup Options - "ignore bad sectors" - This is an important feature to have especially in the case where the hard drive that you want to backup has some bad sectors. Ignoring and skipping these unreadable sectors will give you the ability to image a bad drive and still get a working image from it. The data that resided on the bad sectors might not be readable but at least you can get an image which you could potentially restore to a new hard drive and have your computer up and running again. Other backup programs may just fail to create a workable image and leave you stuck reinstalling windows from scratch. 
• Destination Drive Discovery - Like Macrium explained and similar to Veeam's "registered storage devices" it assists with keeping your backup locations organized. This is especially useful when you have more than one backup location that you rotate. Sometimes Windows assigns a different drive letter to your backup drive, this in turns confuses your backup application because it cannot locate the original location specified for the backup. By using the volume label of the drive it negates the need for drive letters. The volume label will stay the same thus making it easy to rotate many drives.
• VSS options - Volume Shadow Copy is a sensitive system and Macrium gives you some options to change how it uses VSS. All backup applications are heavily dependent on VSS to copy in-use files so when VSS doesn't work properly your backups are likely to fail as well. A nice feature built into Macrium is the ability to re-register VSS services directly from the application:

Macrium also has the option to add a boot menu option so you can boot directly into the recovery environment and restore your computer from there. Veeam does not have this functionality:

Backup Jobs

Next we'll be looking at setting up a backup job in both Macrium and Veeam, then comparing the pro's and cons of each.
Both Macrium and Veeam have wizard driven backup creation processes. Looking at Veeam you get 3 different options for your backup:

For the review's purpose we'll mainly look at the "Volume Level Backup" option which most closely compares with Macrium's procedure. The "Entire Computer" option compares with Macrium's "Backup windows" on the backup menu. This simply auto selects the main windows partition or volume.
Veeam also has a 3rd option, "File Level Backup" which backs up a files into a Veeam image container. We will briefly look at this functionality later on. Unfortunately Macrium only offers this in their paid product.
Next Veeam gives you the option to select an object to backup (which we will assume means "disk").


Comparing to Macrium, you get a more complete visual representation of the disks and volumes on your computer:


Macrium also combines the source and destination selection into one screen which we think is more logical. Backup locations include local disks or network locations. Macrium also gives you the option choose your own backup name. This makes the backup set and chain more human readable.
Macrium has some "Advanced Options" available when within the wizard. This covers options such as Auto Verify , Compression and Comments. The latter being useful to add extra metadata to backups jobs.
Veeam's corresponding wizard has the following options:


Veeam offers local storage (ie, USB) network storage and a Veeam repository. This is similar to Macrium. It's interesting to note that there is a Microsoft Onderive  option but it is not actually available in the free edition. This tactic is similar to what Macrium does, ie, show functions but alert you that it is actually only available in the paid version, baiting the user to a certain extent:


Veeam and Macrium handles the backup type, schedule and regime differently. Macrium has a full featured backup regime setup area:

You get the option to use pre-defined templates of popular backup regimes as well as being able to customize your exact backup plan. You can add multiple schedules to run specific backup jobs at different times.
Retention rules are fine grained so you can decide exactly how many backups you want to keep, in effect determining and optimizing how long a backup chain you will have vs the amount of backup storage you have.
Its important to note that Macrium Free only does differential backups so any pre-defined template that includes an incremental backup will not work. (Differential backups always reference the first full backup and each one includes all changes since, incrementals will always reference the last incremental, building a chain of dependence. In short, differentials are safer but larger and slower, incrementals are less safe but smaller and faster. It's about finding that a compromise that works best in your situation.)
Macrium gives you the ability to tweak and fine tune a backup regime to the finest details. This is both advantageous and a potential barrier to entry for a home user. On the one hand you full control over each aspect of your backup but on the other it can be overwhelming unless you are familiar with backup terminology. In case of the free version it's not that big a problem because your backup regime will always be a combination Fulls and Differentials. This will result in a very safe backup chain, although it will grow in size quickly due to the differentials.
For a basic home user we'll compare the default differential backup template to Veeam's default settings.

Veeam auto suggests a backup folder location your chosen backup drive. The whole layout and option availability is a lot more simplified. Veeam gives you a default retention of 14 days, this should cover most eventualities. We feel that the description is not very clear though, the statement "when the computer was running" does not fully explain what the retention policy is. Veeam also doesn't specify what kind of backup it will be performing, ie, will it be incremental or differential?
Clicking "Advanced" gives your more control over the backup job:

Now you have the option to configure Veeam to do a periodical full backup to so you don't end up with an endless incremental chain. It's becoming clearer that Veeam only does Fulls and incrementals with the option of a periodic full. Hovering on the blue  i  gives more information and confirms this: "performing a new full backup will create a new independent backup set. The entire backup chain will be deleted once the the last incremental falls out of the retention scope ."
This is more simplified than Macrium although your average home user may still be confused by this. Macrium and Veeam differ quite a bit in this respect and will be a deciding factor in which to choose. Macrium does fulls and only differentials, Veeam does fulls and only incrementals.
Looking at the second "Storage" tab of the advanced settings presents the user with storage and encryption options. Here you can adjust compression levels and interestingly Veeam makes reference to deduplication. You get different levels of compression but one notch below "Optimal" gives you a "Dedupe friendly" option. This will be irrelevant to a home user but when you're storing backups in an area where deduplication is important this may make a difference. Oddly there are 5 different compression settings: None, Dedupe, Optimal, High, Extreme. In our experience a "Medium" compression setting works best as a compromise between speed and size. Going for a higher compression does not necessarily yield significant size gains from our testing.


A key difference is the "Encryption" option that Veeam provides. This is important for security (what if you backup drives get stolen, the thief will have access to your entire computer unless it's encrypted.) and it's important to note that Macrium does not support this in their Free version.
For comparison purposes we won't be enabling encryption to keep parity with Macrium.
Next we look at Veem's scheduling options:

Veeam has simplified scheduling options but provide a few more very important functions. Veeam pushes you towards a single daily backup whereas Macrium allows for multiple daily schedules. This shouldn't affect the average free user. Veeam does give you the option of trigger events below the scheduling options. "When the backup target is connected" is a convenient option when your backup location is a network drive for example. If the drive is not necessarily always connected then you may end up with failed backups due to a missing destination.  Selecting this option should force Veeam to do a destination check first before backing up (this should hold for a USB destination as well).
Lastly, "Eject removable storage once backup is completed" should give some basic ransomware protection, especially if you don't have two or more rotated backup locations. Macrium does not have this functionality. It does have a more advanced feature called Image Guardian which protects backup folders from unauthorized access (ie, protection from ransomware).
That covers setting up a backup in both Macrium and Veeam.

Backup Speeds

This is fairly academic as most backup software nowadays can image your computer in similar times. Speed is also not really a useful metric. Most backups happen in the background and reliability will always take precedence over speed. Also in out virtual machine we only have 16GB of data so a speed test is not immensely meaningful, either way we'll include it for completeness.
Once you have created backup jobs in Macrium you are presented with the option to save the backup job and run it as well.

Once the backup job is saved it is available under your "Backup definition files" tab in Macrium. Once there you can edit it for for future changes or run it directly from there. Macrium gives you the ability to create new schedules from the definition file and create shortcuts on your desktop to be able to quickly run a backup job by just double clicking a shortcut on your desktop.
Veeam once again simplifies things by just giving you a "Backup Now" Button.


Macrium completed the backup in 7:45 :

Veeam completed the backup in 8:45 :


So no real difference between them, more testing is required in real world circumstances to determine speed differences. We'll spend more time in the recovery environment as we believe this is more important than backup speeds.

Backup Location Contents

We will also look at the backup location contents. We take a look at how the backups are stored on disk, naming conventions, how many files per incremental or differential and the size of the disk vs the disk image.
Macrium stores the backup file inside a user selected directory:


Macrium compressed the image to 9.24GB (from 15.7GB used space on the hard drive). The 00-00 in the filename indicates it is the base or full image.
Veeam creates an additional folder inside your selected folder. It creates 2 files for the initial backup:

The extra file contains metadata, or according to windows explorer "backup chain metadata file". Macrium manages to simply things with only one file and presumably self contained meta data. Veeam's backup file is also slightly larger at 10.1GB (Macrium and Veeam both at default compression levels).
Next we'll run another backup (differential and incremental respectively) :
Macrium, creates only one additional file with 01-01 at the end. This makes the backup chain easy to understand.


Veeam's incremental looks as follows:

Interesting things to note, the metadata file doubled its size. Secondly, the base image file has a .vbk  extension. The incremental has a .vib extension. Both Macrium and Veeam has explorer extensions that describe the actual file in more detail - whether it is a differential or incremental file.
For interest's sake we ran another Veeam incremental to see what how the folder contents would change:
As expected, only an extra .vib is generated.
Both Macrium and Veeam has human readable destination directories, Macrium's somewhat easier.

A nice feature is Veeam's visual representation of the backup history:

Macrium has a similar feature but it is accessible via the "Restore" tab. It does combine all backups done to date so it can be a bit confusing. The option to filter by source drives is available to focus the report on a specific backup set. Another option is to delete an image from within the Macrium interface. This brings up the following window :

This is a very nice visual representation of the backup chain and will assist you with trimming the backup chain and highlight which files will be impacted by deleting a certain file. On our wish list is that this window is made resizable as currently it it somewhat claustrophobic.
To conclude, Macrium has much more simple and easy to understand storage mechanism. Veeam is more complected. This is only relevant if you tend to work within the backup folder itself. Both programs encourage you to manage all the backups from within the interface, nevertheless, it remains interesting to have an understanding of how each stores the data.

Recovery Environment Creation

Next up we'll dive into a very interesting part of backups - the recovery environments. We'll compare each creation process, functionality and extra features.
We'll start with Macrium's process:

A great feature is Macrium's ability to allow the user to select the WinPE version. Previous versions of WinPE may be more compatible with older or certain types of hardware:

For the intent of this review we'll use Windows PE 10 which is the default.
A quick check is done by Macrium if the WinPE image will support your hardware:

More options to include in your WinPE image:

First we have the option to choose between 32bit or 64bit. Both versions can restore any Macrium image, the difference comes into play when you need to load drivers within the WinPE environment. Then only do you need to match the WinPE architecture to your hardware.
Bitlocker is also an option to unlock your drive within the WinPE environment. Click next informs us that we need an 800MB download to complete the process. This is normal as it downloads the whole WinPE environment (a small standalone Windows to put it simply).

The final step gives you the option of creating a boot cd, boot USB drive or an ISO image. An important option is the UEFI support that can be enabled. When creating just an ISO this option is not available so it's best to create a boot USB or CD directly. UEFI support is necessary to be able to boot into the recovery environment on modern hardware.


Veeam has a separate standalone recovery creation tool, not integrated like Macrium's. The initial screen lets you include drives to ensure that the WinPE environment correctly identifies your computer's hardware. It also has the option to include additional 3rd party drivers. Macrium also does this but at runtime inside the WinPE environment.
Veeam also gives you the option to choose between an ISO image or a USB drive. The creation process is quicker with Veeam, the assumption is that the recovery environment is bundled with the initial download so no extra downloads as with Macrium. (Macrium does have the ability to include the recovery environment in the initial download. )

Veem's Recovery Environment

Booting up into Veeams recovery environment gets you the following:


The first option "Bare Metal Recovery" initializes the main Veeam module to restore a backup made with it earlier.
The second option "Windows Recovery Environment" gives you access to the native Windows backup restore wizard, for example if you made backups with the built in Windows tool. It's odd for Veeam to include this because if you were to use this you would probably be using a Windows boot disc. Either way this is handy even if it won't necessarily be used.
The third option " Tools" gives you various utilities:

Command Prompt is useful to manipulate the hard drive directly. This gives you access to tools such as diskpart and other command line options.
Memory Diagnostic to run checks on your RAM. My understanding is that Windows itself will do a quick RAM check before doing a new install as to avoid hard to troubleshoot issues in case there is a RAM issue. This is a good addition, especially if your computer has been giving random issues.
Reset Password is normally a feature included with other utility boot disks (ie, Active@ Bootdisk). Very handy if you need to reset a password while Windows is offline but not strictly necessary in a backup environment.
Startup Repair, We will compare this with Macrium's startup repair function. Quite often after you have restored an image the system just won't boot. Macrium has a detailed list of actions that you can perform to correct this. Unfortunately Veeam just invokes the normal Windows built in/native startup repair.
Load Driver Useful when the WinPE environment doesn't recognize hardware in your computer or server. Especially handy for arcane RAID hardware.
Moving on to the restore process, Veeam automatically grabs the correct folder when the external drive is plugged in:

Next is the specific backup selection needed for restore. Veeam correctly shows the backup chain, ie, 1 full and 2 incrementals.


We select the last incremental and move on to the next screen:

The options are fairly self explanatory. We mostly have to trust Veeam to correctly identify what to restore where with the first option. The last option "Manual Restore" gives you the option to intervene in the disk mapping restore process. We feel this is not as intuitive as Macrium's drag and drop system which we will investigate shortly.
A key feature is showcased on the next screen:

The highlighted text basically infers that Veeam does an adaptive restore, ie, it injects any additional drivers into Windows so that it can recognize the hardware. This is useful when you restore the image to different hardware and the storage controllers are different than in the original computer.
Below you can see the option to add drivers by type and also the option to disable driver injection. It's interesting that this is the default option and not an opt in choice. The assumption is that you're restoring the image to the same hardware and thus won't need to inject additional drivers so you would only enable driver injection when you're restoring to dissimilar hardware. Either way it is a powerful feature that Veeam doesn't really advertise.


We have not tested this functionality so at this stage we assume this is how it will work. This is comparable to Macrium's Redeploy  which is only available in their paid product.

Macrium's Recovery Environment

Next we look at Macrium's recovery environment, Macrium has chosen to replicate the Win32 program look and feel within the WinPE environment. We feel this is a good thing as it keeps the user familiar with the interface.

Browsing to your backup folder Macrium gives you a visual representation of the disk layout that's inside the backup as well as each individual back and its type (incremental or differential). This is useful since it gives you an overview of the backup chain:


Moving on with the restore process you are presented with a source and destination disk layout. From here you can drag and drop source partitions to destination areas on the destination disk. You can also adjust the destination partition's properties (size):

This is useful when restoring to a smaller destination disk. It wasn't immediately obvious if Veeam had this functionality. Macrium also allows you to adjust the disk alignment which comes into play when using solid state drives and older systems such as Windows XP.
Before restoring Macrium gives you a summary of the intended actions:

Macrium's recovery environment also includes some extra features that we'll go through. A major feature is the ability to take an offline or cold image of the source computer's drives. This is useful in various situations, especially when have to get a working image but imaging the live environment fails. It is also useful when replacing a hard drive, you don't necessarily have boot the computer into Windows to image the disk:

You also get a clone function. This is a key feature that comes in handy when you want to replace your computer's hard drive, for example swapping out for a performance increasing solid state drive. The clone function will do a direct clone of the in use sectors so it would be on par with doing an image of the drive. If you were to do this with Veeam you would have do an image to an intermediary drive and then restore that image to the new drive. A time saver indeed.
Next up is Macrium's "Fix Boot" feature. Invoking it from the menu gives you the option to select a Windows installation source and thereafter an active partition to boot from. You are presented with the following options:

Self explanatory options but useful to point out that this is more powerful that what is offered by Veeam which only provides the native Windows boot fixes (which we have never had much success with).
Lastly, same as with Veeam there is a command prompt environment:

Conclusion

These are the main comparable features of both programs, the ones we feel that you'll most likely use. Both Macrium  Free and Veeam Free are capable backup and recovery applications that take different approaches.  In summary, here are  the key differences in table form:

	MACRIUM	VEEAM
Small Download Option
Small Installed Footprint
Install On Server OS
Differential Images
Incremental Images
File Level Backups
Granular Backup Source Selection
Encryption For Backups
Cloning Functionality
Advanced Scheduling Options
Easily Resize Partitions To Be Restored
Win10 Based WinPE
Advanced Options For WinPE Creation
ISO/CD/USB Media Options
Adaptive Restore*
Extra Recovery Tools
Advanced Startup Repair**

*Adaptive Restore : We are classifying Veeam's 'driver injection' routine as an adaptive restore since it gives you the ability to inject the correct storage driver into an offline Windows Restore which in theory could give you the ability to restore your backup to different hardware and still have it boot correctly. Macrium defines this feature as "Redeploy"
*Advanced Startup Repair : We consider Macrium's startup repair superior to Veeam's due to the fact that they simply invoke the native Windows repair and Macrium offers a range of repair options

Closing Words

To conclude the review we will recommend Macrium as the preferred choice for a free backup solution. It is a more refined application that gives the user fine grained control over each aspect of the backup process (scheduling, backup jobs and the restore process.)

This review was published by Symmetric IT (IT Support in Auckland)