Acronis True Image certainly had problems imaging an open OS, just one of the reasons I gave up on Acronis about 5 years ago and have used Paragon exclusively ever since.
I use Paragon Hard Disk Manager Pro (about $100), which includes most of their disk management and virtualization features, but they make a number of more limited programs available
free for personal use.I've never had any problems restoring from, or mounting Paragon images as virtual drives, both of which I do on a regular basis, particularly when installing or updating systems
