I'm look to up my game on backups, data security, speed up an reinstallation processes, and so on. One of the things I've never really grasped is the proper (or best) way to back up a Windows computer.

I've seen some tools like Acronis talking about creating a disk image, but I've no idea how that then gets restored or if it has any limitations?!

I've used basic level stuff in the past like doing a System Restore, but have had experienced where it hasn't always worked, or at least fully worked where it's restored everything perfectly to as it was.

Just wondering if there is a proper, recommended, or best practice way to back up Windows computers at all so that you can reinstall if need be?

 

it's surprisingly simple,
backup OS separately, and backup data separately,
OS backups are best done on bit level, having exact clone of full partition map of disk, sector by sector, which by nature needs to be done without OS running,
restore is then done as exact 1:1 copy, in case of bigger disk, by default leftover empty space is left unused, but many backup tools can proportionally scale or resize smaller paritition maps to bigger drive targets,
data backups on the other hand are most effectively done incrementally on file delta level, having files (and folders) with changes to them continuously (at some schedule) backed up, usually called snapshots,
restore is then done on "calendar" level style of individual files,
you can guess it's also way more effective to physically separate OS storage and data storage (which btw is how literally all enterprise server stuff works),

for the question I assume you ask, I'd suggest having a "multiboot" Ventoy USB stick, throw Hiren onto it (aside from some legit Windows ISOs) and you can experiment with various backup-restore tools,

...oh and if you really wanna go into more tinkering, you'll end up with Proxmox server where you can test run all kinds of stuff in "safe" virtual environment, maybe even run Windows Server with domain controller, active directory, windows deployment tools, update servicing tools and such... but that's way beyond scope of this audio forum I'm afraid, and I'm not that of expert in that regard either