Looking for opinions on a simple and super-reliable system image program.

Best to partition the drive before Windows 7 as already mentioned. Windows 7 setup will not create a system reserved partition as it's all allocated.

If you have not partitioned still and you have already loaded Windows 7 setup, then it is still not too late to partition just before Win 7 partition wizard.

Details below. I suggest you print out until you are familar.

1. Once Windows 7 Setup is loaded, press Shirt + F10 keys at the first setup screen (which allows selection of language, keyboard and locale). A Command Prompt window will be opened.

2. Run Diskpart, the built-in disk partitioning tool of Windows 7 with the following command:diskpart

3. Type in the following command one by one, followed by enter key to create a partition.

list disk (to show the ID number of the hard disk to partition, normally Disk 0)
select disk 0 (change 0 to another number if applicable)
clean
create partition primary size=80000 (create a partition with 80 GB space; to use entire disk as one partition, omit the “size=value” parameter switch)
select partition 1
active
format fs=ntfs quick
exit

4. Type exit at command prompt to close Command Prompt window.
5. Continue Windows 7 installation as usual. Remember to just highlight and select the partition just created when in the partition screen.


If it already there at Windows 7 setup and you want to remove it...

1. On the “Where do you want to install Windows?” partition screen of Windows 7 Setup, click on Drive options (advanced) to delete existing partitions and create a new partition.
2. Click OK when Install Windows wizard prompts with the following message:
   To ensure that all Windows features work correctly, Windows might create additional partitions for system files
   ​
3. Two partitions should be created, a System Reserved System type partition (Disk 0 Partition 1) with 100.00 MB in size, and originally intended primary type partition (Disk 0 Partition 2) with allocated size now less 100MB.
4. Delete the Primary Partition created.
5. Click OK when prompted that “The partition might contain recovery files, system files, or important software from your computer manufacturer. If you delete this partition, any data stored on it will be lost.”
6. All disk space inside the partition deleted will now become unallocated space. Now, highlight System Reserved Partition, and click Extend. Assign the available disk space to the partition, and click Apply.
7. Click OK when promoted with “Extending a partition is not a reversible action. If you proceed, you will not be able to undo this action later.
8. Highlight on the extended System Reserved Partition, and click Format.
9. Click OK when prompted with “The partition might contain recovery files, system files, or important software from your computer manufacturer. If you format this partition, any data stored on it will be lost.”
10. After finished formatting, the originally System Reserved Partition will now become normal system partition, ready to install Windows 7. Proceed to install Windows 7 as usual.

 

After a month of learning about the bios (which I should have done a year ago), I've finally got my system stable with the right voltages. Being new to Windows, I didn't know that some of the things that were going on in my computer wasn't normal. So forget anything bad I had to say about Acronis, the problems I had probably weren't the fault of that program. Though Macrium seems like a pretty lean program and is what I'm using now.