@hdmi, after reading that, I honestly don't know what to say. We live in different worlds.
To clarify, the main point I was trying to make is that my own personal backup needs are pretty much identical to the average home user's (although most users don't know very many specific/technical details about what their own personal backup needs are, which is unfortunate).
It also means that making system backups (i.e., backups that contain the operating system, applications, and all the various settings/configurations that have been applied to it/them) frequently enough to warrant an automatic, or scheduled backup scheme specifically for this purpose is not on my list of requirements. In essence, it means that any reliable method to manually create an image of one or more partitions (i.e., the Windows partition plus the other partitions required to keep Windows fully functional such as the EFI System Partition, or ESP and the Recovery partition that contains the Windows Recovery Environment, or WinRE) could be already sufficient to suit my needs in that department.
Booting to WinRE to run the DISM command from there is only one example of how this can be possible to achieve.
Capture and apply Windows Full Flash Update (FFU) images
However, I don't tend to do a lot of that, as the bootable Rescue Media of Acronis True Image on a Ventoy-formatted USB flash drive offers several advantages over it (that I find important).
If I ever need to restore from image (which I never do, but I can't guarantee that I never will), then after the restore, at worst I will need to let Windows Update automatically download and install the Latest Cumulative Update, or LCU again, install a few other updates again like driver updates, update/install a few applications again, and go through some settings to re-apply them. None of all this can in any way justify the hoopla of setting up automated system backups in my view, and, for backing up personal files, image creation neither is necessary nor is feasible at all. That's just because my personal files are not partitions. Simple plain.
In short, I prefer proven reliability in conjunction with the kind convenience options that truly help to save more valuable time. That is, in lieu of a quick sales pitch about features that I already know I will never need or use. With the vast majority of image creation software products, the default method to create a system backup is a (VSS) snapshot-based backup that is created while Windows is still actively running on the system. What they don't explain to the average home user is that this method isn't ideal if reliability is what should take the highest priority.
I live in a world where people understand the fact that a very large part of these kinds of discussions demonstrate a persistent lack of awareness among most avergage home users. I am a trained Java Enterprise software developer who has a formal degree in IT. I have been programming computers over the past 39.5 years. I started out with the
MSX BASIC 1.0 programming language at age 11, and, within 3 years later, I had already become highly proficient at programming in assembly language on the MSX platform, including its various hardware.
