Best software for laptop images

Hi all,

The Windows 10 Anniversary update is nearly upon us and I intend to do a system restore before I install it. However, I'm also not liking certain bits I'm hearing about the Windows 10 update so may revert back to Windows 7.

To that end, what's the best Windows image backup? My thought is, reinstall windows and drivers etc. Create the image and keep it for safe keeping. If I don't like the update, I'll roll back to Windows 7 and do the same. Either way I have a back up for each OS and a backup should a computer part fail.

Thanks in advance.

 

Macrium Reflect Free is a good one.

 

According to the website howtogeek.com Acronis True Image 2016 best utility to do this.

 

I would take that tongue and cheek. I tried 2015 and had issues with laptops so I went back to 2013 and had no problem reading older laptop to make image. So newer isn't the best for older hardware.

 

Thanks to everyone for all of the suggestions, unsurprisingly there doesn't appear to be a clear winner so I'll look to try them all and see what works best.

 

Did try a few in the past, have settled for Macrium Reflect. Am not caring much for speed, looks or interface. Reliability and confidence are the important factors. Reflect has been great for years of regular use. Got both paid and free, allways doing a perfect job.

 

No winner but having Acronis running from a CD/DVD/BD ext drive or internal for Desktop doesn't leave any of it's programming that needs to run and it runs completely from the media itself. That is why, Acronis is a winner here you don't have to install on each computer to use it - it is self running.

This only works for each computer install - I like nothing left on the computer of the imaging software itself - already enough program to manage. And running off the media it can be use on different computer without worry.

 

I've been using Acronis for many years and i have to admit that it works perfectly for my needs, the benefits that i personally see in it:
-Full backup and incremental backups for your disks or drives;
-The option to add Acronis as a UEFI boot option so if anything goes wrong (e.g. you can't access windows anymore), so you can boot directly in the backup/restore software and restore your best previous install;
-You can convert your Acronis backups into Windows backups;
-The best for me: You can directly mount your backups (like a virtual Hard drive) and access your files on the fly to restore them or whatever.