Windows 7: How does system image of Windows installed along ubuntu work?

I plan on dual booting Ubuntu along my Windows 7 system. The only thing I am concerned with is how would I go about making a system image of Windows 7 and restoring it if I have to...with Ubuntu already installed? Would I have to wipe my hard drive of both OS and reinstall Windows 7 with my back up image or is there ways to install the windows 7 image without affecting Ubuntu or both?

Ubuntu has the buzz but from personal experience I'd recommend Madriva One 2011 esp. if you have broadband internet connected via a network card.

http://www.mandriva.com/en/downloads/

Easus image backup free:

Best free data backup software. Hard drive backup and recovery freeware. Hard Disk image freeware.

with this program and an external drive you can back up the entire HD or particular partitions.

What I would do:

Burn the Boot CD for Easus ToDo. Make sure your system will boot from it and you can see your HD and external drive before doing anything else. If the restore on the Boot CD can't see the drives try a different program. Another is Macrium Reflect Free:
http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

In case of disaster you have to be able to restore the image using the Boot CD.
The image back up tool is only as good as the Boot CD with the restore. If you can't see it, you can't restore it.

Use the Back up entire disk option before you start altering partitions. Be able to get back to square one if anything happens.

Then once you have Windows and Linux peacefully coexisting and booting correctly, use the back up option to make an image of the individual partitions. If Linux breaks, just restore the Linux partition. If Windows, just the Windows etc..

Both Easus and Macrium are very easy to use. There are others also.
Take a look on thefreecountry.com: Free Programmers' Resources, Free Webmasters' Resources, Free Security Resources

So pretty much I can just make an image of both OS's? Will that affect the bootloader? I appreciate the advice.

It would be my guess that restoring any partition will restore the MBR. But the boot menu is files in the active partition. I would think you'd have to restore the active partition in that case. But EasUs also has special tools like partition recovery and other stuff.

For info right from the source I'd look on their forums:

View Forum - EaseUS Todo Backup - EaseUS Software

When I set up multi-boot with Linux the way I did it was to install Grub in the Linux partition. When I got the initial boot selection screen from Windows and selected Linux, then I'd get the grub boot menu. There are many ways to skin the cat. Look for Linux HowTos. You find a lot of details how to add Linux to a Windows machine with one HD, two HD, .. much more detailed info as they have to accommodate Windows beng there most of the time.

Ahh, I see. I dual booted ubuntu and windows 7 on another computer once and I had the option of installing GRUB on the linux partition or replace the windows boot screen. It would be windows boot menu, pick ubuntu, the grub boot menu. I guess that method will probably work better for back ups. I'll make sure to look into the recommended programs. Thank you.

Well, you can do grub either way but I liked to boot Windows boot menu like
Windows Flavor 1
Windows Flavor 2
Linux

Then if I do Linux, grub comes up with a bunch of choices.
Back when I was doing Linux it was more common to compile your
own custom kernels.

You might have a grub menu with original kernel that came with the distro as first choice, custom kernel 1, custom kernel 2 etc.. and various module set ups.

Now hardware is pretty standardized. Not as much need to roll your own.

When you do a backup with Macrium Reflect, it automatically include the disk MBR in the backup.

When you later go to do a Restore with MR, you have the option of overwriting the MBR from the backup, or leaving it alone.