JonD
ProjectM
The ease of use of disc images in Win7 was excellent! ...
In Win8 this wasn't as easy without digging around and constantly telling Windows to screw it self and do as I say. The system restore functions were really not that good. It's actually one of the reasons why I sold my DAW.
...
Why does it have to be built-in to the OS? There are tons of free imaging programs that are better and just as easy to use (a few vendors off the top of my head: Paragon, EaseUS, Aomei and Macrium).
The key is to make a bootable disc (or flash drive) and backup/restore off that. Bulletproof, as long your hardware isn't failing.
I would never rely on System Restore, which IMO is, quite frankly, crap.
That's a good question, and my answer is that my experience is quite opposite to yours. I found that all 3rd party disk image software sucked. I tried 5 or 6 different, paid and free, then I discovered the function in Win 7 and it worked the way I like it to do; simple and easy from right under my finger tips. And I never had an issue. The built in system restore in Win8 was horrible. I'm refuse to use functions like that - unless it's my very last resort.