I have finally got round to the point where i want to back my system up. Found a decent 5Tb external drive for this task.
Are we using windows 11 system image or file history or both or ???
Run backup manually or scheduled etc?
It’s up to you. Do whatever you want. There’s no one right answer. Personally, I just do a system image only, and then only after any big Windows updates. I also copy my FS2020 folder after every SU or WU onto a separate back up drive.
I use a NAS with about 15TB to backup all our PCs, every night, with Full + Incremental backups. Scheduled to run at night.
If anythung goes wrong, I get notifications, and so far it has been 100% reliable,
I user the 2018 version, as the newer version do not seem to work so well, and are filled with addition Bloatware, that I do not want.
This may be an overkill for many, but since I do a lot of development on multiple machines, I can sleep at nigh, and do not need to worrry about loosing data, or system hacks etc etc
Cool, i guess anything is way better than nothing 
My thoughts were to do system images before major updates of either windows or FS, there is no casual file storage on my PC as it was built solely for FS and a little GTA.
I don’t think regular scheduled file history backups would help my FPS/Stutters in FS so a manual image seems best yes?
I don’t do Windows file/folder history back ups. Instead I use Google Drive to back up and sync various files, such as Office documents and pictures.
Thanks all, its running a full system image now.
There are no documents etc on this system as it was built only for gaming.
Just for info, I was using Windows System Image for backup
until I had a hard drive failure.
The new Windows installed on the new hard drive could not find the System Image on the backup USB hard drive.
I now use Acronis which guarantees that the backup can be used for a new or different PC. I have not tried this yet.
I used to use Acronis but when I had to reinstall a saved image, it failed. Seems you have to have Acronis installed to install a saved image. This means you need to reinstall Windows, then Acronis, then the image. It seemed counterproductive to me.
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What we really need is Apple’s “Time Machine” backup for Windows - it has to be the absolute best system out there, i’ve used it many times for file recovery and about 8 times for full system recovery and it has not let me down once over many laptops and desktops.
I just tested my installation.
With the USB backup drive connected and no boot drive selected in the BIOS, the Acronis software will boot and restore the backup to the PC.
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Many thanks for that. Perhaps I just had a corrupted back up. 
I just use onedrive sync for my gaming machine. I created symlinks for other folders like community, etc and steam game save folders.
Not so. You can create a self-loading Acronis Recovery CD. It will do its thing outside of the Windows system.
Note that a CD is not required with the current version of Acronis.
With the USB backup drive connected and no boot drive selected in the BIOS, the Acronis software will boot and restore the backup to the PC.
OK. I still have True Image 18. Haven’t gotten the latest because it’s subscription. 
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I’ve got a full system image plus set it to do a full file history backup every day, the idea behind a daily backup was that as very little changes on this PC the backup should be very fast, leaving it to once a week means a longer period backing up.
I think it’ll do for now. I can run a new system image before major changes.
True Image 18 is far better than their current subscription bloat ware.
You just need to make a Restore Flash drive, that you can boot from, to load the True Image Utilities, including the restore from Image backup program, then run it, and restore from your backup media.
You are then 100% self sufficient, and do not need to use any Online services, that may or may not be available, now or in the future.
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