I use macrium free on my XP computers and Windows own imaging solution on the one Windows 7 computer I have.
I have used most solutions. I tried macrium a number of years ago because it had a BartPE plugin. My method of restoration uses PE (currently win7rescue PE). I like the simplistic approach the free version uses. I only use imaging for the OS, not data, so my images are small. Typically takes 3 minutes to restore and 3-5 minutes to create on max compression. A complete boot into PE, restore image, boot back to restored desktop is about 7 minutes for me. Thats fast enough lol. I wanted to like Acronis and some others, but didn't. Until I need some features that others offer, I will stick with macrium. Sul.
macrium has been reliable for me 5/1 times. the 1 time failure was because I manually specificed how big the image should be. besides that, i found macrium the be reliable and simple without extra bloat. most of all it's 64 bit native.
I also use Windows Imaging. I didn't vote as there was no option to specify that I don't use Reflect becuase of using another program. I have had issues in the past with Acronis and Paragon backup software where they wouldn't restore an image from an exteranal hard drive with no errors. So am a bit nervous about relying on imaging software.
