Restore System Image - Works Great

Well I needed to do a bit of messing around with some old hardware and drivers today. So I did a system image using the Windows 7 option in Backup and restore. As it turned out I ended up having to do a restore of the system image, not that I was expecting anything else. Put it my repair disk booted up selected the image restore options and off it went. It did take a bit of time around 2 hours but all is back to what it was before I started.

The only thing I did not like is the fact taking so long it is a bit hard to actually know if the operation is still running or not. It does have the progress bar but you really need to watch that to see if progress is being made at all

DirtRider, welcome to the forum! My first real backup was with the same tool that you used, and although it is slow, it worked for me too. I've made two recoveries with the Windows 7 backup program, and they both were successful.

While it's not a perfect backup program, it's the best that Windows has ever produced. If you're looking for a good, fast backup program that's free, Macrium Reflect is an excellent choice, the best of the free ones. I still use it on my notebook, but I'm using Acronis True Image on my desktop. It's the best paid program of it's kind.

You can obtain Macrium Reflect Free Edition at:

http://www.macrium.com/ReflectFree.asp

Hope this link helps you. Be sure to burn the CD to recover with.

Best of Luck,
Cat

You can restore your system with Macrium Reflect Free in about 10 minutes or less, usually less.. about 6 minutes for me.

Backup takes about 5-6 minutes to an external hard drive.

I also use Acronis but always having to have the CD available is a bit of a pain so I tried this method this time. I will also look at Macrium Reflect I think

You can run the restore/backup feature from Acronis on the hard disk. But the CD is still handy if everythuing goes down.

I second Macrium Reflect. The restores are very fast. The only issue you have to be aware of is to make a restore disk specifically for the version of Macrium you are using. If you upgrade Macrium you have to burn a new restore disk.

Well I made a backup with it today as a second option to Win7 backup. So when the times comes I will try it first as a restore option