BTW, I tried Macrium Reflect 4 on the same Vista machine as the one I used Paragon B&R on.  I was impressed by the speed in full and differential mode (twice as fast in full mode).  I also noticed that the driver pssnap.sys is installed and runs all the time.  Last time I tried, when Macrium was offered by GAOTD in June 2008, this driver had some problems, but it was with last year version.  I will probably try it some more, to see if the problem has been solved.

I think the FAT32 format for the image is for file-backup only : when you backup files and not partitions, the backup uses the same proprietary format as for partition images, it's just that they have chosen FAT32 as format for this kind of image.

For regular partition images, the mounted drives retains the filesystem type of the source.

As my lawyer advised me, I can't recall.

Ahhh, the Political Defense

BTW, about Macrium, their support forum is only accessible to users that have a paid license.  When you are in the 30 days evaluation method, you cannot ask any question.  Not cool.  Especially since I have one : when I mount a virtual drive from an image, I cannot unmount it, it doesn't appear in the mounted drive window.  Am I the only one to see this ?

All these image software tend to show their limits when it comes to image mounting.  I recommend to all to verify this feature works well on their system, and not only the basic backup/restore.

BTW, about Macrium, their support forum is only accessible to users that have a paid license.  When you are in the 30 days evaluation method, you cannot ask any question.  Not cool.  Especially since I have one : when I mount a virtual drive from an image, I cannot unmount it, it doesn't appear in the mounted drive window.  Am I the only one to see this ?

On Windows 7 32 bit and Vista64 it works as advertised.  I can remove it from the Restore tab of the program or just leave it until I reboot.  It would be nice if they had an Unmount as well as Mount in the Explorer shell integration though.

edit: I just looked on the Macrium forum and they say an Explorer command to unmount a mounted image is on the ToDo list.

The easiest way to explain mounting an image is probably just to say it's virtually the same as mounting a CD/DVD image in any of the virtual CD/DVD drivers, (eg. DaemonTools, Alcohol, VirtualCD, etc).

About the only difference is that with mounting a backup image the drive letter is assigned on-the-fly.

Linux has a lot of frustrations for someone coming from Dos/Windows but one thing very cool is the mounting mechanism.  You could boot a floppy or CD, mount your HD partition on a mount point like /tmp to fiddle with it and when done mount the HD partition as root.  Assuming it's a working Linux partition you are now running off it without rebooting.

Very nice  

ps. the author of that article, Ashraf, hangs out at DC 
http://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=17560

Wow, excellent features comparison, Ashraf.

@Ashraf, just to round out your list:

As per Macrium Reflect, the commercial version of Paragon Backup & Restore, (either Drive Backup Pro 10, System Backup 2010 or Backup & Recovery Suite), include WinPE2.1 based recovery media - usually a separate download for licensed users.

Paragon Backup & Restore Free 10 will also restore to a different hard drive or partition providing:
a) for a partition, that the initial backup was not a complex backup, (ie. doesn't include the MBR and/or First Track data).  Otherwise it will, basically, complain there is no empty drive to restore to.
b) if it is a complex backup, (contains MBR and/or First Track), then the restore operation is to an empty drive.

Also, Acronis TIH will restore to a different drive/partition, (how I used to migrate my system to a bigger drive - completely forgot it had a clone feature).