Windows 7: how often should i make a backup image of my windows 7 drive?

Should i make a backup every month or every week? I think if i backup to much i will backup the virus or malware that caused the problem. if i have a problem.

for what you want to backup it?? if you have problem with win 7, you can Repair Install

i suggest to backup your data, because some of the hard disk can be broken, you know that's the common electronic nowadays and prone to failure and getting old every single/month/year.

If my hard drive fails i will need a backup. I dont want to reinstall all my programs and start over again.

i had 1 drive fail this year taking 800 gigs of .Tivo files with it

I make a Image of the entire OS drive every other day.

I make full backups of the other DATA, (music,pics,video,games etc which on other drives) weekly, with daily incrementals.

Its entirely up to you however how often you think you want to back up.

everytime when you want to modify something on your computer. same as creating restore point but just to be more secure

The frequency of your backups should be based on your data loss tolerance...the more heartburn you experience with data loss the more often you should back up your data.

Business critical data should be backed up daily if not more often, music, pictures, video's, etc whenever you have made changes that will cause you heartburn to rebuild....personally it doesn't bother me to have to re-copy a CD of music but would to re-build my music library.

I find most people are ok with re-building 1 days data but don't want to have to re-build 2 or more days work. In this case daily backups would be called for.

Edit: Personally I find Windows Home Server ($99 and an old pc(although I built mine new)) makes this discussion a moot point and I NEVER loose sleep worrying about the recover-ability of my PC's and/or their data.

I generally make backups once a week. It's not hard and doesn't take long. But you can also do it when you've made changes...OR... before you make significant changes! Best to have a fresh new backup when you are about to try something unusual. I usually make a system restore point too, that way I can try system restore before I have to resort to a backup. Haven't needed to restore from a backup on Windows 7 yet (knock head). A Guy