Window 7 will can not Backup or let me do a system image backup.

why did the posts stop did someone figure this out?  anyway after reading all this and more elsewhere i have 2 new good laptops i need to do a system image backup on to my toshiba 2tb usb external hd and would like to know which 3rd party software would be the best one to use?  i would want one that has the least amount of trouble naturally but have no idea which one that would be.  has someone here got experience with all the 3rd party softwares that could give me an idea which one hardly ever malfundtions if there is such a thing as that?  i'm certainly not going to even try microsofts backup and restore that i can guarantee you.  who wants to risk a microsoft backup and restore that will probably never restore even if it does backup?  i know i sure won't even attempt it now.  i can imagine all these pc's that are going to fail with no backups to use this is a nitemare!

I use a Hewlett Packard simplesave external hard drive. It has its own backup software (which windows detects).When you plug in the drive the software will automatically start the backup and then give you options on what you want to backup. I just backup my documents, pictures, & music. That covers about 100Gb of info. My HP hard drive is 1TB. The only thing is everytime you do a backup you have to look into the drive and delete some of the old data. It doesn't overwrite the old data. My system image is on the HP drive and windows can detect it. In fact if the external drive is not plugged in and you try to run a backup Windows tells you it can't locate the backup destination drive. I'm not sure why Windows backup don't work (on either drive). But, the HP software does work. It saved me when I had to due a clean install. All my licenses and drivers are backed up on the external hard drive. As well as most of the installation files for some of my programs.

Honestly, I thought it was a bug until I removed my copy of Nero 8 and it worked fine.  There seem to be too many factors involved here.  My problem was that I assumed the Nero was a necessary tool but everything it does, Windows 7 does and without its interference this part works for me.

Alan

I am not sure how upgrades are fundamentally different from clean installations but I suspect that you need a bigger external drive to backup to so Windows 7 can create a VSS or Shadow Copy.  You may be able to borrow a friend's external drive for a night or else spend $100 or so and get at least 320GB HDD.

I find it helps to do a minimal installation then make a backup then try to reinstall Windows 7 from the backup.  Good luck as it takes three to six hours usually including checking various Accessory programs to see that all work. 

The problem I encountered is that Windows 7 Backup was working fine for about three months then appears to hae stopped working on all eight of the ten computers my family use for work, study and entertainment.  I already own a copy of Acronis and that is said to work although the one and only time I tried a restore with Acronis it did not retain security codes and login IDs.

Your other choice is to go some version of Linux (one form of which is Apple)- Windows is such a dog that I often think it may be worth the change if you intend to use any machines for mission-critical or other production work.

Cheers

I M Gadget