I have been reluctant to do a restore from a system image for fear (based on years of desktop computing) that it won't work and I will be in trouble. Therefore, (my system is working perfectly) should I be brave and take the issue by the spherical objects and do a restore from a system image and get it out of my system?
"it won't work and I will be in trouble". If it won't work, would you rather know that now, when you are not under pressure and all hardware is working fine---or later, when you are in a jam with a failed hard disk?
Put another way: Is it better to be in a Fool's Paradise and be blissfully unaware of it or to be aware that you are, in fact, living in a Fool's Paradise?
Better to know or not know that, as a matter of fact, you don't really have car or medical insurance? etc etc.
You could certainly do this:
Make a temporary partition on your SSD. Call it F. Put something on it--pictures of your cat or whatever. Make an image of it. Restore that image to some other drive--an external, another internal, etc. Can you then find and open your cat pictures on this restored partition? If not, you don't have the know-how to restore an image of Windows.
This leaves aside the additional issue of whether or not your imaging application has in fact backed up the necessary files to restore Windows---as opposed to pictures of your cat. The cat pictures partition is not bootable, does not contain Windows, is not expected to ever be bootable, etc.
You could also make an image of your SSD, store the image on your external drive, then temporarily replace the SSD with a standard hard drive and try to restore the SSD image to the temporary internal and see if you can boot from it. Your SSD would be unharmed because you removed it for the test.
A note: my C: drive is on an SSD while all my Documents, Pictures etc. are on the internal HD and also backed up externally. However, the SSD contains some important programs (Photoshop, InDesign, MS Office). I think I would need to re-install those (is that correct?) and that is another source of trouble (I have installation files).
If I understand you correctly, no, that is not correct.
C is a partition. Not a drive. Images are typically made on a partition by partition basis. All partitions, some partitions, 2 of 5 partitions, etc. If you wanted to "make an image of everything on the drive", you'd have to select all partitions on that drive--one way or another, manually or automatically, knowingly or not. That in itself can lead to surprises for the uninitiated.
And images are typically of EVERYTHING on a partition. Not just some of it. Not just the Windows part. Not just the cat pictures. Not just the applications.
Therefore--if you in fact make an image of the C partition (who knows?), it will include EVERYTHING on C--Windows, cat pictures, applications, licensing information, minute details of the configuration, etc. Whatever is on C, in its entirety.
This is complicated by the fact that your so-called "system files" aka "Windows files" may not be just on C. It's up to you to know where they are and see to it that you have an image of that partition as well as C.
Windows Backup and Restore has its own idea of what the "system files" are and tries to include the partition on which they are found. I've only read about this, but it has confused some users. On the other hand, Macrium is more flexible and gives you direct control over what partitions are to be imaged.
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