A restore/recovery/backup program for newbies???

I'm interested in finding a program that's user friendly for newbies such as myself, any ideas, can someone help?
I dont mean the Windows XP system restore, I'm past that, but a good program thats not too complicated.
I saw there was a poll started on recovery programs but thats not much help since I don't know which can be used for beginners/newbies/ and which is more suited towards the advanced people.

 

I use and would recommend Acronis True Image 9. With it, you can create a backup image of your entire hard disk (windows operating system, all programs, and data), and store the image on removable media (cd's, dvd's, ....neither of which I recommend using, or an external hard drive which is what I use and recommend). My 40GB hard drive with 7GB of data on it backs up in about 3 minutes, and I can restore the image of my disk in about 6 minutes. There is a free trial, so give it a try!

 

For me there is just one program, making no problems: Norton Ghost 10!
I'm no fan of Symantec Software but this works great.
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edited to remove bashing as per our TOS - Detox

 

Imgaging software is the way to gnly ever used NG 2003 here as backup so can't really compare.

People are raving about "Rollback RX" but I won't try it as it conflicts with other backup systems.

 

Another good alternative is :
BootIt Next Generation
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/

Read the features well, because it does more than image backup only and is pretty cheap compared with others.

 

Money is definitely not the problem when it comes to buying software, its just that I want it to be user friendly and at the same time be a quality program but something that a person with little experience in backing up software can use without running into major complications.

I will take a look at the ones already posted, are there any more to consider which may be something that I am looking for?

 

Look at this one
http://www.larshederer.homepage.t-online.de/erunt/
It's free.
I have been using TrueImage 9 and now i'm using next to TI9 this little gem.

Try it i'm sure you like it.

 

Also consider using Drive Snapshot. Not freeware, but very efficient, especially with the differential mode.