Macrium Reflect gets performance boost, fixes BitLocker bug, BSOD, but it's free no more

Earlier this month, Macrium Reflect Free edition received an update, though interestingly, there were no official release notes or changelog for it. So when we published the news, we did wonder what new features or improvements and fixes lay under the hood. Turns out the release notes are still not up. It may as well be the final Macrium Reflect Free edition update as Paramount Software, which publishes the tool, has already announced that version 8.0 was the last of its kind. So when someone opts for the "Reflect 8 Free" for Home PCs from the official website, it is version 8.0.7279 that gets downloaded. Hence for now, it remains to be seen if the developers release any future Free edition 8.0 builds after this as the firm has now moved on to version 8.1 and that's not free.

The latest version 8.1 update build 7336 fixes several bugs and issues. A memory allocation issue related to BitLocker has been fixed. It also resolves a Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) issue and more. The full changelog is given below:

Bug fixes and Improvements v8.1.7280 - 10th January 2023 / v8.1.7336 - 30th January 2023

Note: Release v8.1.7280 was available for a short period of time. These release notes cover both v8.1.7280 and v8.1.7336.

• Macrium Reflect v8.1 is here
  We're pleased to announce the public release of Macrium Reflect v8.1.
• Changed Block Tracker
  This release fixes a problem with the previous release, v8.1.7280, that caused a BSoD for some users.
• Imaging
  When reading some Bitlocker volumes, Reflect could attempt to allocate an erroneously large block of memory. This has been resolved.
• System Restore
  Staging a system restore from Windows would sometimes fail to automatically reboot after the restore completed within the rescue environment. This has been resolved.
• Macrium Image Guardian
  During data de-duplication operations on Windows Server, the File Server Data Management Host (FSDMHOST.EXE) process would be blocked from opening Reflect image files. This has been resolved.
• General
  Lower than actual write speed values were shown in Disk Write Performance tool. This has been resolved.
• Rescue Media
  We've updated the Windows PE 10 download to version 2004.
• viBoot
  • We've added VirtualBox 7.0 support to viBoot.
  • VirtualBox VMs sometimes would not show in viBoot GUI. This has been resolved.

You can download Macrium Reflect v8.1.7336 from the official website using the "Reflect 8 Trial" option which offers a 30-day free trial. After that, it will cost a single user $69.95 while opting for a four-user pack will set you back $139.95.

On a separate page, Paramount Software has highlighted the improvements made in version 8.1. This includes performance boost due to much better CPU thread utilization, backups on the background, and more. You can read about it in detail here.

Macrium Reflect gets performance boost, fixes BitLocker bug, BSOD, but it's free no more