Backup Qs and strategy

• how do we restore an entire disk image of OS? Supposed I copied the OS drive to an external HDD through DriveImage XML and later windows vista wont boot up or the drive died, now i dont have windows how can i run DriveImage XML?

• will DriveImage have correctly made an image of the OS partition even though the OS was in use? I mean the Os was in use obviously when the drive to drive image was made.

• To avoid having to download updates again and to avoid making image of stuff we dont want to backup can we do this:

(i)- make 3 partitions:- "C: for windows and office only, "D" for other programs, "E" for data. (we can always move the user file folders like my docs to another partition)

(ii)- make regular images of only the windows and office partition or perhaps separate images of each

(iii)- [this is the question] in case of disaster, restore only the Win/Office partition. Will the restoration restore ALL the updates too? AND will it be like having a factory fresh fast laptop plus updates? u know when we buy a computer it is fast, a year later it slows down a bit. when we restore it to factory default it is fast again but without updates. can restoring the OS/Office partition image (it will hav the updates too) make it factory fast again? or will the other D drive programs have made entries into registry and make it slower?