What is the best method to backup my C/D partitioned drive

Sorry everyone, be prepared to be bored once again.
Backups, imaging, rescue disks, restoring. All very confusing. Have been reading through all of the posts trying to glean info.
At the moment l have a partitioned C/D drive (60gb/440gb) and an E drive (500gb).
The C partition contains the W7 OS (pretty damn obvious!) plus all of my programs which have all been free downloads. There are no personal files on there, and if l lost all of the programs, then so be it, l'll just download them all again. That'll be quite easy to do.
However, l've made numerous tweeks to W7 and also to both my IE and FF browsers so losing everything will need a lot of donkey work to get it all back.
The D partition, believe it or not, is empty, but my 'E' drive contains everything (ie Music, Films, data files etc).
I suppose what l could do is to COPY all of the important data from 'E' to 'D' so if 'E' fails, at least all of the data is safe on the 'D' drive.
It's the 'C' drive that concerns me, so went into the W7 backup and restore. Created a system repair disk which worked fine, and then tried to create a system image of the 'C' drive which cancelled as it couldn't fit it on to the dvd disk? I would have thought it should ask for a next disk to be inserted, but it didn't! Have also found out that l should save both 'C' and 'D' as it will restore both to how they should be.
Anyway, with me so far? Sorry to be a bore!
There's loads of posts on here but a couple in the sticky's are for Macrium. Don't know whether this will do the trick or not. Whatever the replies, the free version doesn't include files and folders backup. Didn't understand that as if it's an ISO image, surely everything will be restored?
Also don't understand that if l save the ISO image to my E drive, then how do l boot from it?
I would have thought that you change the bios to boot from 'E' but then if the ISO is with loads of other files, can this be selected (or does the rescue disk sort this out).
Blimey, l'm rambling on too much (sorry).
Bottom line is that if my 'C/D' drive fails, how do l get it all back. I've never had to do this before, so it's all pretty new to me.
Regards

Tut for creating a system image: Backup Complete Computer - Create an Image Backup

And one for a system image recovery: System Image Recovery

Do not save your backup on your internal drive because if that goes AWOL you lose everything.

You can use an external hard drive, DVD-Rs (not recommended), a network server or the cloud to save your images.

Willy:

See comments in bold

willythecat said:

At the moment l have a partitioned C/D drive (60gb/440gb) and an E drive (500gb).
The C partition contains the W7 OS

The D partition, believe it or not, is empty, but my 'E' drive contains everything (ie Music, Films, data files etc).

I suppose what l could do is to COPY all of the important data from 'E' to 'D' so if 'E' fails, at least all of the data is safe on the 'D' drive.

I assume C, D, and E are on the same drive? If so this is not much help. If the drive dies, you lose C, D, and E.

It's the 'C' drive that concerns me, so went into the W7 backup and restore.

W7 backup and restore would not be my first choice. It "works", but is fussy and not easy to understand. I would use Macrium.

Created a system repair disk which worked fine, and then tried to create a system image of the 'C' drive which cancelled as it couldn't fit it on to the dvd disk?

Bad form to make images onto DVDs. Much greater chance of problems. Use a hard drive, probably external.


Have also found out that l should save both 'C' and 'D' as it will restore both to how they should be.

Why image D since you say it is empty?


Macrium. Don't know whether this will do the trick or not. Whatever the replies, the free version doesn't include files and folders backup. Didn't understand that as if it's an ISO image, surely everything will be restored?

Macrium does not create ISO files. It creates MRIMG files.

The free version will make an image of whatever partitions you choose. That image WILL include ALL files on that partition. Therefore ALL of those files would be restored if you restore that partition.

But imaging doesn't always work. For that reason, you are best advised to make a separate "file by file" backup with some other program, not using an image.

Also, if you rely on images to restore data (as opposed to Windows), you may not restore your most recent data. Imagine this scenario: you make an image of a partition on April 1. On April 3, you acquire a lot more data. On April 6, your hard drive fails, so you restore the April 1 image to a new drive. In that scenario, the data acquired on April 3 is lost.




Also don't understand that if l save the ISO image to my E drive, then how do l boot from it?

You don't boot from the Macrium image. You boot from a Linux recovery disk you make within Macrium before disaster strikes. You then "restore" the image file to the desired drive from within that Linux environment.



Bottom line is that if my 'C/D' drive fails, how do l get it all back. I've never had to do this before, so it's all pretty new to me.

You get Windows back through one of 2 ways: reinstalling or restoring a previously made image file. Imaging can fail, so have a plan B if your image backup doesn't work out.

You could make images of data partitions (D, E, etc), but I don't do it due to image fallibility. I use "file by file" programs to back up data.

Thanks everyone for the replies, sorry for the delay in replying.
SEAVIXEN
Aha, that explains it more fully, thanks.
IGNATZATSONIC
No, l have two 500gb drives. The first drive is partitioned as C60gb) and D440gb). The second drive is labelled as E500gb). The link given by SeaVixen makes the windows backup clearer to understand, but l'll certainly give Macrium a look into as you suggest.
My C: drive contains nothing apart from the OS, my Browsers info, and "free" programs which have been tailored accordingly to meet my requirements. Any data created that l want to keep is moved immediately to the separate E: drive.
Couldn't care if l lose the C:/D: drive as l'll just reinstall Windows, and download all the "free" programs again. It'll take time, so an "image" restore would be a lot quicker.
I use the D: partition for lots of data files l work on which are either then saved to the E: drive immediately or deleted. At the moment the D: drive is empty. (I only thought that if l backed up my main drive as C: and D: partitions then it will restore it as C: and D: partitions).
Actually you've got me blimmin' well thinking now. My E: drive should also be backed up somewhere!
Cloud seems interesting as they are all data files.
Anyway, thanks for taking the time to reply, appreciated.
NIGHT HAWK
Funnily enough, got a "dodgy" copy of Acronis way way back now, can't even remember what version it was. Created a rescue disk and backup of my old XP system and when l had to use it, it just said the disks were invalid so l had to rebuild the system from scratch. Needless to say l got rid of Acronis, but will take another look at it to see what's new.
So thanks again everyone, lots to go away and look at.