As I've said before I use Powerquest's Drive Image to save a perfect copy of my C: partition to a file on another drive. This makes me immune to any possible disaster from a messed up install to a virus or a hard drive failure.
Drive Image is no longer supported and is now not compatible it seems with Windows 7.
There are lots of other imaging applications out there, but they all share a common flaw. Unless you know one that doesn't?
The way Drive Image backs up the Operating system partition is by asking you what you want to do and then booting into DOS to do it. That way Windows is not running and a perfect copy can be made.
All the others do the copy while Windows IS running and therein lies the problem. They pick a point in time and by cleverly intercepting file changes they copy all files from that instant.
That is clever, but carries a fatal flaw.
Terabyte for example spell it out in their help files (though not on their site when you go to buy it).
If at that instant windows had changed a file or something in a database and was about to change a ptr to that file/data then it would be saved that way. When you restored from that copy it would contain a ptr to the wrong place.
Since Windows is always juggling files and data this inevitably means that a proportion of saved backups will be damaged. Some in an obvious way and some in a way that won't show up until much later.
I had considered using Acronis which has a good reputation (and which I think supplied the backup system for Windows 7). Since they do the backup while windows is running they too must be making damaged copies.
I've seen comments from people who think Acronis is a fantasic program who admit that 'some of the copies crash on restore' as though that were a small consideration compared to the really cool icons it uses.
So where does that leave me. I would prefer software that took instructions in windows and then rebooted to do it, but one that ran solely from a CD would be ok. (Drive image does both). I think both Acronis and Terabyte supply a CD version, but I'm uneasy at trusting people who would sell a product so flawed in the first place. So I guess I am looking for a CD based disk imager from some place that refuses to sell the other type on the grounds that it would be irresponsible.
I've reluctantly settled on Terabyte, but using it only from a bootable CD so it doesn't mess up Windows. This is much less convenient so I'm stilll looking for one that lets you give it instructions in Windows and then reboots to do it safely in DOS.
Generally with Drive Image I walked away to make coffee at that point. With Terabyte I must sit there waiting and inserting/removing the CD at the right point etc.