Macrium Reflect

Macrium Reflect Free Edition is the best free disk-image-application for 32+64 bit Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7, but it cannot clean up old backup-images automatically, as the Standard-, PRO- and Server-Editions of Macrium Reflect or the commercial products Acronis True Image or Norton Ghost do.
For the automatical cleaning up of old backup files with Macrium Reflect Free Edition to prevent the hard disk from being overfilled, I use this method:

Keep only a maximum of X full backups with Macrium Relect Free Eddition and a bat-file

My personal solution for this cleanup-task is a batch-file Del.Older.than.P2-Files.bat for the cleanup.
With this method you give the new backup in the folder "Drive:....\Backup-Folder"

To cleanup you must call the files e.g. with System Scheduler:

Del.Older.than.P2-Files.bat Q:\Backup.C 6

Text inside the bat-file:

REM @echo off
REM deletes the the oldest files in %1, except the youngest %2 files

if %1!==! goto end
if %2!==! goto end

setlocal
set folder=%1
REM pause
set KeepFiles=%2
REM pause
for /f "skip=%KeepFiles% delims=" %%i in ('dir /b /a-d /o-d %folder%') do del %folder%%%i /F
REM pause
dir %folder% /OD
pause
:end

[Edited by em4020, May 09]

It is possible to run (also the free version) reflect.exe from the command line or a VB script. So it is easy to schedule new backups and to clean up old backup-images e.g. with Microsoft Windows Task Scheduler. A number of command line arguments allow the user flexibility to perform a number of actions. There are three main usage areas as follows:

For running a backup use the syntax as follows:

reflect.exe [-v | -e [-w] [-full | -inc | -diff] [xml filename] ]

Example to run a full backup using an XML file:
reflect.exe -e "c:\backup.xml"

Not reliable backing up to my home cloud drive. Works sometimes, and not others. No notifications on failure (you'll find out the hard way), and the logs are useless; just saying "cannot write" - which I assume means it just gives up without even re-trying. I have no peace of mind with this thing, so uninstalled.

It couldn't clone to the same physical disk.

Macrium Reflect is my first choice when making a clone of a drive. I first used Macrium to migrate my HDD to SSD and now use it for more. I have never had an issue with the software. Highly recommended and very happy free user.

Giving 5 stars for the free version for the use of disk cloning and imaging. The UI feels really user friendly and not really complex. It works quite well and feels really easy to clone and create an image out of a partition/drive.

Main reason I went for it is again the friendly and sleek UI, so I can't really compare it with other alternatives. Been using it for these two features for over a year now quite a lot of times and had absolutely no problems with it yet.

It seems that from Version 8 Macrium Reflect is not free anymore. The only option is to install the free Version 7.
I only hope that after so many Windows updates I will not face a disaster.
Maybe it is time to find another solution.