decent disk imaging/backup and restore software

[Deleted member 178]

i will say Microsoft start to understand what is a complete OS ^^ at least the backup made by Windows Backup will always be recognized by Windows. i had an issue long time ago, when i was roaming my OS crashed and has been unbootable; i didn't have my 3rd party backup soft CD or USB , but i had an old Wiondows backup so it saved me ^^

 

[jelson]

I had the same thought process. Could we say we're becoming dependent (and lazy) on Windows, OR is Windows actually improving in terms of providing useful recovery features?

Windows is improving it's recovery and imaging features. But it's still not there yet. However, it's better than nothing, just not something I'd use.

For instance, I want incremental and differential imaging. I also need to be able to only backup and restore particular partitions on the system drive.

And this is a prejudice, I've found MS built-in utilities over the years to simply mediocre and generally third-rate. Doesn't inspire confidence when it comes to recovery. 1st service I turn off when doing a clean Windows install is System Restore.

 

[Deleted member 178]

if you are on Win8 you may think differently for some tools; many of them can easily replace third party ones (those giving just more options and sometimes afford nothing new)

 

[jelson]

Another you might consider is Drive Snapshot.

Pros:

• very fast: 7 mins to hot-image my 60 GB Win7 partition (SSD to internal mechanical HDD)
• portable (only 32-bit and/or 64-bit executable + license file needed)
• does differentials
• mount and view image files
• extremely reliable (as reported by long-time users on Wilder's)

Con: it's not pretty (dead simple GUI) without bells or whistles

I've started using it as my secondary (fail-safe) imaging program (added it to root dir of a WinPE ISO I boot from a flash drive)