windowscentral[.]com/software-apps/windows-11/bad-week-with-windows-11-makes-me-appreciate-chromebook

There are plenty of examples showing why having a current image backup not only makes sense, but can be a life saver. The linked article is one of them. TL;DR: the author installed "Doom: The Dark Ages", and after about a week's worth of work he was finally able to run a freshly installed copy of Win11. The time it takes to restore an image backup depends on how big it is [how much data you're restoring], and how fast the drive with the backup and the drive that you're restoring are, but entirely realistically, he might have restored his PC to the same exact state it was before disaster struck in 15 minutes to 1/2 an hour.

blog.oo-software[.]com/en/new-oo-diskimage-21-premium-edition-the-same-familiar-power-just-made-easier/

oo-software[.]com/en/diskimage-backup-your-data

5 months after releasing DiskImage 20, O&O has come out with version 21. The big difference is there's a new version alongside the regular DiskImage Pro, called DiskImage Premium, designed to be easier to use and more foolproof for less tech-minded folks. O&O is a German company located in Berlin. In terms of features, their disk/partition image backup software, DiskImage, IMHO sits between AOMEI's Backupper and Macrium Reflect 8. *To me* however, the standout feature of DiskImage is the price via promo emails of $25 for 5 PCs [once on their mailing lists the offers show up periodically]. All 3 do the same basic job, cloning a hard disk partition(s) to a VHD [Virtual Hard Disk], equally well, but their added features set them apart. I've found all three to be very usable, though Macrium Reflect can seem more complicated / confusing. In testing I've found EaseUS ToDo backup very similar to AOMEI Backupper, but more expensive, and EaseUS no longer has offers on GOTD. There are free image backup apps, e.g., from Hasleo, but personally I've found their limited features too limiting to be useful.

Regarding alternatives... Macrium Reflect has more features, but with their new CEO I can't recommend it. They stopped offering a free version quite some time ago, and their new version, which creates backups in a different format, so it's not compatible with the old free version 8, is subscription only. And in a troubling sign, the last update for the paid v. 8 seems to have purposely broke the bootable USB stick [it has the same problem AOMEI's known for, using the wrong bootmgfw.efi / bootx64.efi file]. It's also unknown whether or when/if a future Win11 update will break Reflect 8. AOMEI's Backupper itself is fine, assuming you fix the USB stick, but the GOTD license isn't 100% guaranteed IMHO -- they have in the past revoked them. IMHO Acronis is terrible, and while Win7's backup app is still here in Win11, you have to go through shenanigans to restore a backup after a Windows or disk failure, since there is no bootable USB stick. There's also a great chance that Microsoft will add Win7's backup to the list of features and/or apps they're removing.

Personally [FWIW] I create partition image backups after adding the Patch Tuesday updates. If you don't have much software you could probably get by using Microsoft's strategy of resetting or reinstalling Windows as needed -- Windows doesn't take nearly as long to install as it did when we were using Win7 -- but once you start figuring in the time to download, install, and re-register your apps 15-20 minutes to restore a backup is obviously more efficient. That can be especially true if you have to hassle with proving to whatever software company that you're not trying to scam them out of another license. Windows itself doesn't really change in between those updates, so unless I've added some important software I won't do more than that one backup a month. If there are any software updates after the monthly backup, the time it takes to reinstall those updates is less than the time it takes to create another image backup. Data of course, the stuff I create &/or work on, is backed up separately as often as needed -- for that an image backup is overkill.