Windows 7: Taking the Plunge...Gulp!

OK: Where I stand... I have the following in place...

* Windows 7 64bit laptop 360GB Drive 190Gb free, no errors/problems



* unpartitioned C:\

* Backup required to restore this entire system should HDD fail

* A Clean 340GB USB HDD drive available

* Downloaded Macrium as advised

BUT is Macrium best for this need? Also, does the image have to see the same sized drive/partition?

Could for example, I save the Macrium recovery image to my 340GB USB Drive AS WELL as a Windows 7 recovery point/backup version to 'roll back to' for a less catastrophic fail?

In the past on XP I used a cover disk version Paragon (which was fussy about size of drive-to-image and laterly a little utility called Xclone which was a breeze - just like the original DOS-based Ghost utility. But 64bit Windows 7 and resultant system is so much more heavyweight and complex...

I need to get this clear before I start as I will not be able to test that is has worked until failure-day!

Thanks for going over old ground...!