Having recently upgraded to a PC with Windows 7 (64 Bit), from Vista, I have discovered the built in backup/recovery facility. My Operating system is on a 120 GB SSD, and I have a second 120 GB SSD Q1 Is this backup/recovery facility compatible with SSD's, and can I safely back up to my second SDD; then recover? I have practised using this facility on a friends PC (Windows 7) with HDD's, and note that one of the options of recovering an image of the operating system, is to format the drive, first! Q2 Is Formatting good practice, for operating systems installed on a SSD? I have read that it is always better to create a backup image of the Operating System, using a recovery disc (CD); ie. not live with Windows! Q3 Is this feasible with the Windows 7 "Backup & Restore" recovery CD

The Windows Backup facility is really very good. I believe you can back up to and restore from any drive as long as there's space. Go down the path of trying to start one - the Backup and Restore facility will let you know you if it's willing to allow you to use your second drive. However... If you can afford a couple SSD drives, perhaps you can afford an external USB hard drive. And you're interested in performance. I might suggest getting an external USB MyBook drive for backups, then adding a RAID controller to your system and making both SSD drives into a single RAID 0 drive C:. This will effectively double your performance, and circumvent space issues you're likely to have as your system grows to fill that 120 GB space. The Backup and Restore facility offers you the ability to specify what you back up through the Change Settings link. I think I remember that the default does NOT include a System Image (I could be mistaken about this), but you SHOULD set up regular System Image backups. Go through the screens where you choose the drive, then for what you want to back up select ( ) Let me choose. You need not back up files in the upper section at all. This will create a full System Image backup that you can restore your entire drive C: from if you should have a catastrophic failure: -Noel Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options

Noel, Most grateful for your comments! Not too sure about RAID 0; have read somewhere that this gets rid of TRIM! Brian

I have to admit, I have little experience with SSD. I have, however, used RAID 0 for my C: drive on all my workstations and servers for quite some time now - with spinning drives. The advice I've given has worked well in that realm. -Noel Detailed how-to in my new eBook: Configure The Windows 7 "To Work" Options