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#41
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I also noticed that Macrium have the option to "Create an image of the partition(s) required to backup and restore Windows". I assume that selection would capture boot, OS and restore partitions - have I got that right?
No.
You named 3 possible partitions: boot, OS, and restore.
A restore partition is not normally needed to restore Windows with Macrium. So, no, it would not be captured (unless it contained your boot files, which is possible in some cases).
Boot and OS partitions should be the same in a standard installation: C.
"Create an image....." should capture C and whatever other partition (if any) that happens to be marked as "system", signifying the location of the boot files. That is typically the System Restore partition, but could be any partition, depending on how your PC is configured. Maybe C alone. An OEM like Dell might put your boot files on the yadayada partition, so the yadayada partition should be captured if you want to restore Windows. That's why you have to identify which partition is marked "system".
So if a computer had been upgraded to W10 from W7, or W8.1 from W8.0, that would be useless, unless you wanted to go all the way back to original configuration, correct?
If you have W7 and make an image file that represents that W7 installation and then upgrade to W10 or any other operating system, a restoration of that image file will take you back to W7 as of the moment you made the image file---not to any later state. That's all it could possibly do. If you want to restore to W10, you'd have to make an image of the W10 installation after you installed W10.