Are "built-in" Backup and Restore utilities adequate for Windows 7 and 10 backups?
Just a follow up "opinion" question. Once I received the expert advice I needed, I was able to restore a "bare metal" backup of my server that I had taken early in the morning on the day I got the virus attack. Now that everything is working and "back to normal", I'm rethinking my backup strategy and have gotten opinions from a number of people about a number of different products. My question is this. Since I had such success restoring my server using the "built-in" Windows Server Backup feature, I'm wondering whether or not to use the "built-in" Backup and Restore features in the Control Panel for my Windows 7 and Windows 10 workstations. Does anyone have any experience with these utilities (which claim to create a complete system image) and any opinions as to why I shouldn't just use these "built-in" backup utilities rather than spending more money on another company's backup solution?
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you can also use free image softwares - there are enough around
https://www.lifewire.com/free-backup-software-tools-2617964
but check if they allow company use
https://www.lifewire.com/free-backup-software-tools-2617964
but check if they allow company use
ASKER
While the case could be made that I'm closing out this question based on my own "predisposed" opinion, I honestly can not see any real reason to not use the free "built-in" backup solutions provided by Microsoft in their own products. The setup for the backups, in my opinion, could not be any easier and can easily be scheduled to run automatically. The interference that they're difficult to use is rather baffling to me! While the restore process may not be quite as straightforward, I think most would agree that the number of times that you actually USE the restore process pales in comparison to how often backups are run, so, personally, I have no issue with expending a little more effort to restore when necessary. Further, since Microsoft is the creator of their own software (i.e. their Windows OS packages), I would be more inclined to trust that they can create a reliable backup/restore system and would not consider it "voodoo". Bottom line, I've had proven success with their "bare metal" server backup and restore and have no reason to believe that their other OS backup/restore capabilities are any less reliable. I got 4 opinions from 4 different contributors, 2 positive and 2 negative, and, that said, the positive opinions were not totally positive and the negative opinions were not totally negative. So, in the end, I just don't see any reason NOT to use the built-in utilities provided by Microsoft, which frees me up to program rather than learning yet another software package that may or may not be marginally better than Microsoft's solution.
Personally I find the Windows backup utilities difficult to use as opposed to Macrium Reflect, which for me (a) is easy to use (b) it always works (c) it's not Microsoft voodoo.