Multi-booting 2x Win7-64, but prefer daily use of Xubuntu-64 (latest version is 13.04-beta).

In the last several years, Linux has been able to easily read-write Win7-compressed partitions.  It is as error-free & fast as normal Win7; i.e. like W7, it needs checking with the GUI version of "chkdsk /f", in Windows-7.

Linux has had several versions of partition imaging & restore. Unetbootin (available in Windows & Linux) is the preferred method of create the USB-STICK program.

To find the latest partition imaging program, I daily monitor DISTROWATCH.COM.  Not all the imaging or 'rescue' programs are using Linux's most popular version (based on Ubuntu).  Like all the computer world, each day has different brands leap-frogging over each other into being the "best".

ATM: not into partition imaging.  Prefer fresh install, with new registry, etc. All my data & archives are on different partitions to my op sys partitions, so it is very quick & easy to fresh install.  Having multi-booting & multi-PC choices also adds safety, speed, security, redundancy, etc.

Retired Chief Information Officer (1984), Australian Capital Territory