John,

And - in much the same way you don't trust backing up a running system -
I like to have my image/restore software on a CD.

Fair enough (and I will probably keep one handy too - just in case). Though
in the case of an USB stick not wanting to run anymore its rather easy to
re-image it. And ofcourse I would/will keep the backup-programs
installation files handy somewhere (most likely a copy on each computer I
have).

And in my case I would really like to be able to put everything (OS,
backup/restore program, OS partition backup and data files) all on a single
external drive. I would not really like it to be able to find one part, but
not the other.

but basically it's just a copy. (I cycle round two or three such.)

Exactly that. I do not want to jump to special hoops to be able to restore
a single, specific file. Just drag-and-drop the file/files/folders from the
backup drive to my data partition(s). Easy as pie, and not easy to forget.

The "twist" is that I made use of the "hard linking" NTFS offers, which
allows me to recreate, for each "smapshot", the whole foldertree with all
(except some fitered) files in it*, while only needing to copy the changes -
the non-changed files are hard-linked to an already existing copy
(effectivily de-duping the files).

*it allows me restore or delete any snapshot I made with a minimum of fuss
(no need to think about file management).

The only drawback is that I have to remember not to *change* any of the
files on the backup. There is, for XP, no copy-on-change available for
hard-linked files. :-(

Hmm. Not sure if it can be configured to do that, though maybe it can.

That would mean you would need to change (a file on) the ISO ... Never seen
that done.

.... And I ofcourse ment (whoops!) the *newest* shown first and preselected.
:-)

You shouldn't be panicking when you're about to start restoring an image

Panicking would be a too-strong a word. Its more of a (self-induced) stress
to get it working again (and figure out what the heck went wrong). And
thats just when I only have to think about myself. :-)

- not that it matters if you get it wrong as you can always start again,

True. With the OS and all the data backupped that should not be a real
problem. But not fun.

Macrium doesn't ask you about sectors, just partitions.

My apologies, I was still thinking about how NtBackup would be able to
restore the OS partition when the main OS would not want to run. In such
a case a minimal OS (DOS perhaps ?) on a rescue disk/usb stick/CD could have
done the trick.

Regards,
Rudy Wieser