Windows 7: Creating system image if background apps are running ?

When you create a system image either manually or autonmatic/scheduled...are there any issues if normal background applications start/stop during the image creation ?

In other words...say I am running a "Create System Image" from Backup/Restore in Control Panel...and at the same time or after 'create image' starts...my AV hourly update runs...or any of other numerous scheduled/tasks 'updates' run for the HP printer...Adobe...Outlook send/receive mail...etc run while the 'image' is being created ?

Any issues with this...partuicularly restoring the image in the future if there was such activity during the image save ?

Thanks....TRinAZ

No problem. The first thing the backup does is create a shadow copy, which is a snapshot of the disk. After that the system does a copy-on-write for any disk writes. Modify writes after the snapshot do not overwrite the old data, but are written to a new location on the disk. Data deleted after the snapshot are also preserved for the backup You then have two copies of disk data since the snapshot - a consistent copy of data at the time of the snapshot that the backup references, and the unmodified and modified data since the snapshot was taken that your running system references. When the backup is complete, the shadow is deleted (old copies of modified data and deleted data since the snapshot are removed). Computer science magic