I am unexperienced with cloning software and I've decided to use Clonezilla as it seemed best as freeware. I chose device > image and left most options standard. I chose expert mode anyway to see what I could configure, and decided to try the lzop algorithm instead of the default one for compression. The rest was left at default.

When Clonezilla asked me which partitions to clone (I chose parts to image), I chose the C:\ drive but Windows 7 also creates a 100MB partition on setup for system files (the actual boot partition?). I copied that into the image as well. The reason I didn't choose disk to image is that I also have a data partition that needs to stay intact.

Now I'm simply not sure that this is the way to go, should I ever need to restore my disk image. Will Clonezilla know what to do with both partitions and will Windows 7 work perfectly after restoring?

Edit: apparantly a similar question has been asked before. The link to the first article in the answer is not relevant to me since it covers a device-to-device clone.

It appears the windows installation disk can repair the 100MB partition. As for Clonezilla, it copies "hidden data after the MBR" by default too. I don't know, I feel I'll be allright whether by restoring the partition with Clonezilla or repairing it with the Windows 7 disk.