Bernard -

All Microsoft OS versions have included instructions for making system backups. The latest versions have called the backups "Recovery Disks."

Beginning when my first machine had nothing but DOS 3.5 on it, I've made one of their backups for every computer I've had. The first one filled 12 or 13 1.4 MB floppy disks, including a few data files I'd made before I got around to the backup.

Progressing through Windows 3.1, 3.11, 3.11WG, Win95, Win98, Win98SE, Win2K, WinXP, and now Vista, I've made their backups, carefully following instructions, on floppies (including IOMEGAs), tape, CDs, DVDs, and separate dedicated hard drives. (In most cases I made separate backups to at least two different kinds of media.)

I have NEVER successfully restored anything from any of those backups.

For one of the Win95/98 versions, about 3 years after the version was released, Microsoft published a warning that "backups made using Windows Backup almost never restore. About three years after WinXP came out, a "tech note" reported that "many backups fail to restore." I never found any further explanation in either of those two cases.

I recently made a full system backup for Vista on a dedicated HD, reformated (NTFS) to "virgin" before doing the backup, with nothing else on the drive, and a couple of months later my system HD failed. When I hooked up the Backup HD all I could get was "no backup found on designated drive."

While I never needed to restore anything for a couple of the "backups" so I can't testify in criminal court that none of them ever worked, odds are very good that Microsoft has never produced a reliable System Backup in any user OS since Hard Drives were first in common use.

In the Vista case, a new copy of Norton Ghost didn't do much better. Although it indicated compatibility with Vista, Vista didn't really like it, and "instructions" weren't fully compatible with Vista's "new features."

It's possible that one of the Microsoft Server OS versions did something better. RAID striping or other "redundancies" haven't produced many comments about failures, and are used where recoveries are frequent enough to show up failures; but those are a little out of sight for most of us.

For the majority of users, the best we can do is:

Keep the original installation disks to restore the OS and programs. (Problematic for the OS and pre-installed programs, since few OEM builders provide disks now.)

COPY data files to a redundant drive. (XCOPY still works in Vista, although I'm not sure yet about Win7/8.)

John