How exactly does a backup work?

[puretppc]

I'm very new to setting up system restores and backups so please bare with me. Recently, I was recommended to set a backup or restore point so I went to the backup manager and selected a "System Image". What exactly does that mean? Does that mean that wherever I save my backup, when I reboot this device, it will set my computer to whatever software and files were saved on that?

Because of the file size, I used up 3 Dvd discs. If I were to reboot my system, which dvd disc am I supposed to insert first? Am I supposed to insert the first one or last one? Will I have to like re-enter my product key for win 7?

Also, what if I download windows 10 right now (because the upgrade is free) and save that as a backup? Can I have a spare copy of windows 10 and use that as my backup later on? I am too used to windows 7 but Microsoft giving out free win 10 is almost expired so I want to upgrade and copy this to a new dvd disc(s) and then use it whenever I want to move to win 10. Does that work too?

 

[Colif]

if you create a system image it will save everything on PC as of the time you created it. Saving it doesn't mean that if you reboot it will use that image. PC will only use that image if you run backup again and decide to roll back to that image.

I think you would need to put the 3 dvd's into drive in order they were created - you would have been better off using a USB drive for backups as they can hold more than a DVD (or an external hdd works too). Backups don't need a product key as that is recorded in the file contents somewhere

what you could do is make an image of win 7 right now, then use the win 10 upgrade and then use the reset function in windows 10 to roll back to win 7 again. As far as I know your key would always be marked as a potential upgrade to win 10 from then on and you could reinstall it at any time. To be safe you could back up win 10 before rolling back to win 7.

 

[puretppc]

if you create a system image it will save everything on PC as of the time you created it. Saving it doesn't mean that if you reboot it will use that image. PC will only use that image if you run backup again and decide to roll back to that image.

I think you would need to put the 3 dvd's into drive in order they were created - you would have been better off using a USB drive for backups as they can hold more than a DVD (or an external hdd works too). Backups don't need a product key as that is recorded in the file contents somewhere

what you could do is make an image of win 7 right now, then use the win 10 upgrade and then use the reset function in windows 10 to roll back to win 7 again. As far as I know your key would always be marked as a potential upgrade to win 10 from then on and you could reinstall it at any time. To be safe you could back up win 10 before rolling back to win 7.

Oh so in order to run my backup, I have to use the windows backup manager to run it and then insert the disc to work? Like I can't use this system image on any windows 7 computer and run that as a backup right?

 

[Colif]

The backup is everything on PC now. If you used the discs on another PC it wouldn't end well as I expect it would have different hardware and all the drivers wouldn't work. That and windows would deactivate itself as hardware wouldn't match (unless its a retail copy).

 

[wpgwpg]

Get yourself an external hard drive to put backups on. You can get 1 TB ones for around $55. They'll save you more grief than you can imagine. I also recommend that you don't use the Windows backup software. Get the free version of Macrium Reflect or Easeus Todo Backup.

Good luck.