I'm really tired of the license restrictions and bloat of commercial apps like Acronis and EaseUS.  All I need is to reliably create and restore system drive images.  Any opinions of the Windows 7 utility?

Bump

I use it religiously!
Installed, then removed Acronis, it made updating some IK stuff impossible.
Tom

I never used the win7 backup. What I didn't care for was it didn't allow any configuration as to which partition or files would or wouldn't be backed up. It copied everything. And it didn't seem to allow a restore of just a file or two.

Perhaps I didn't look into it enough and maybe it can do those things. I went with the free version from Paragon. Not as many features as some but it does what I need it to do.

Their new version moved towards the win8 tile look but once you click thur that it is still usable. I think I liked the earlier version a little better. If you find a good product let me know.

Matt

NE Koda
I never used the win7 backup. What I didn't care for was it didn't allow any configuration as to which partition or files would or wouldn't be backed up. It copied everything. And it didn't seem to allow a restore of just a file or two.

Perhaps I didn't look into it enough and maybe it can do those things. I went with the free version from Paragon. Not as many features as some but it does what I need it to do.

Their new version moved towards the win8 tile look but once you click thur that it is still usable. I think I liked the earlier version a little better. If you find a good product let me know.

Matt

 
Hmmmm ... Paragon Free looks quite interesting.

DeeringAmps
I use it religiously!
Installed, then removed Acronis, it made updating some IK stuff impossible.
Tom

Can you restore just a single partition on a drive?

I know there are various options that folks have mentioned.

For anyone considering Acronis I'll just put in a good word for it. Super easy to use.

It has saved my bacon too many times to count. Weird stuff happens to a complicated set up like ours at times you least expect it or least can handle being hosed. Restoring from a recent Acronis backup is painless and very easy to do.

Never had an issue with it working with IK Multimedia software or anything that's on the hard drive(s) being backed up or restored from a backup.

http://clonezilla.org/
 
Just make yourself a bootable disk to Linux and use Clonezilla.

This one is free...and worked fine for me even with Win 8....

http://www.disk-partition.com/download-home.html

I can vouch for Acronis True Image too. It has saved me quite a few times. It allows me to do what I want, back up what I want, and when and to where.

And here's the selling point for me, if Windows goes broke, I have a Acronis bootable disk that I can use to boot my computer up, and restore the most recent backup I have.

Priceless!!