I think however that Vista has a problem with imaging(and maybe XP)because of the fact that MS seems to think that after you pay for something you still don't own it.
I use Acronis True Image to make full backup copies or complete clones of my C drive. I usually copy the C drive to a backup image on my D drive or to a dual layer DVD.
I keep ALL my data including emails on my D drive to protect against losing them if the C drive fails for some reason. My C drive only contains the operating system and my installed programs. I keep it as small as possible to allow me to do complete copies on a single DVD.
My main machine has 9 hard drives, 2 320 gig drives, 2 500 gig drives, and 5 1.5 TB drives. (I do a lot of Audio and Video recording and editing.
I am running WIN XP and I have no problems using Acronis with it.
I have also downloaded and tested the Release Candidate of WIN 7, but found it somewhat lacking for my own needs in that it doesn’t have Outlook Express.
The version of Acronis that I have doesn’t run under Windows 7 and I probably have to buy the latest version of Acronis if I migrate my computers to Win 7.
It is possible to make a clone of one’s C drive and restore it to a different computer using a motherboard and processor, but one must do a ‘repair’ install of windows to ensure that it runs correctly.
I have successfully done this in the past when upgrading my machine to a new computer. On the other hand, I couldn’t do this with my very latest build due to incompatibilities with some installed software.
My newest machine used an AMD 955 Black Edition X4 processor on a Gigabyte MA790FXT-UDP5 motherboard while my previous ‘main’ computer used an AMD Athlon X2 4600 processor.