Thanks for that:
what disk imaging software do you propose to use? - no idea, hence my foray into the topic. What would you suggest?
the native software within Win7 won't handle the non-Windows partitions you earlier said you had. XP won't be able to directly address any images.
Most imaging software will have problems with the multiboot system. You'll have to use TrueImage or Ghost, and for recovery boot with their recovery boot media - in my ignorance I thought a disk image just recorded all the sectors 'verabatim' so I cannot see why actual disk content/non-Windows partitions would be a problem? By the way, the only 'non-Win' I have is a Linux partition and a MAC VM partition (not on the drive in question).
How do these progs run if I cannot boot into Windows (assuming loss of C/boot drive)? Will they run in DOS or Linux?