Windows 7: windows backup and restore

Is windows backup and restore any good? using windows 7. If I use backup and restore to back up my stuff to an external drive, can I restore all programs as well as files?

Hoping to hear from people who have used it.

Hi 7up (lol used to get called that at school due to the tall spiky hair)

Ive used windows backup and restore since I first upgraded to windows 7 for all my personal files and have never had an issue with backing up or restoring.I prefer to use a system image to back up my programs and windows drive though.

Danny

thanks, but do you know if the windows 7 one works

Am I missing something.Thats what I was talking about.The windows backup and restore works fine for me.

Danny

Hmm, this is a discussion that we had quite often. There are many people that are quite happy with the Windows facility. But there are many others, and I am one of them, that have been screwed once too often and do not touch Windows backup or Windows imaging any more.

There is a long history since XP where backup and recovery did not work correctly and where you could not recover anything e.g. backed with XP once you moved to Windows 7. Or just think how often a system restore did not work although you had plenty of restore points.

For those reasons I now use Free Macrium and Free Paragon for imaging. The are 100% foolproof and work each time. And for backing up some data files you can just copy them to an external folder - although I image those too because I have all user data in a seperate Data Partition.

sorry, I thought you said you used other programs for saving installed programs

Sorry 7up I think we've got our paths crossed here there are 2 native back-up features in windows 7. Back-up and restore and system imaging. Have a read of these see if they help.
Backup Complete Computer - Create an Image Backup
Backup User and System Files

Danny

I think Microsoft unintentionally confuse many people by wrapping up two very separate backup capabilities under the heading of "Backup and Restore".
- File/folder backup for your personal files and folder
- System Imaging - Snapshots of your whole partition (everything).

I use Windows imaging as my most frequent imaging application plus Macrium Reflect. Good insurance = 2 imaging apps + 2 or more image storage HDDs.

I have had a Windows System Image fail on restore before so I haven't trusted the windows backup and restore method, but in fact use Acronis True Image Home and use the Secure Zone to house my images and it hasn't failed me once..done restore about a dozen times from them.