A full system snapshot is not 100% always the correct solution, data protection is complicated.
An example hypothetical, you have deeply embedded malware and you're unsure when it infected the system, it could have been sitting latent for months. In this situation you have to restore back and lose months of application data or restore a recent snapshot and then try to remove the malware in a clean room. It is much safer and easier to start from a clean OS and then restoring only the data on the system which is much simpler to scan for infection and sanitize.
Comments
This is 100% false and nobody should ever follow this advice.
I use snapshots all the time because Windows uses them automatically to get complete and consistent backups.
Snapshots are always better then no snapshots.
Full backups are always safer than partial backups.
It takes just ONE forgotten path or file to make a backup completely impossible to restore.
Don’t be a smart ass with backups. Just don’t.
A full system snapshot is not 100% always the correct solution, data protection is complicated.
An example hypothetical, you have deeply embedded malware and you're unsure when it infected the system, it could have been sitting latent for months. In this situation you have to restore back and lose months of application data or restore a recent snapshot and then try to remove the malware in a clean room. It is much safer and easier to start from a clean OS and then restoring only the data on the system which is much simpler to scan for infection and sanitize.