Hi All,
I had to wind my OS back to windows 7 using recovery media because a system image I created with the backup and restore tool in windows 10 failed to restore.
The system image was on an external hdd but it could not be found when plugged into a USB port.
I'll probably stay with windows 7 and would appreciate recommendations for RELIABLE free or paid software to create a system image.
Backup & Restore's 'system image' can be temperamental (I know, I use it). It's critical to use the same recovery environment as the version of Windows that made the image. That would be the rescue CD that it offers to make at the end of making the image, or (for W10) a recovery drive USB made on the same system that made the image. A 32-bit environment can't restore a 64-bit image, nor can 7 restore 10 (and vice versa). Even with the right environment, it can fail to find the image if you have moved or renamed it.
Many here recommend Macrium Reflect (free).
TenForums tutorial - Backup and Restore with Macrium Reflect
SevenForums tutorial - Windows 7: Imaging with free Macrium
Last edited by Bree; 26 Oct 2017 at 22:18.
I would throw AOMEI into the ring as an alternative to Macrium. It has a very easy interface, is quick, is very lightweight in size, and also offers incremental backups.
Fwiw, I used Windows own disk imaging before recently clean installing the latest W10 version and always found it reliable. With talk of W10 dropping this feature at some point I looked for alternatives and really liked AOMEI over everything else I tried.
Macrium Reflect is for me, it has got me out of many a pickle since I began using it, the delta restore is a very quick way of returning a troublesome PC to a working one.
For those wanting other possibilities: Image for Windows, Acronis True Image -- just to name two more of the many.
Quote