I need a Windows 7 Techy

[BillyJack™]

I have a 5 year old Dell Studio XPS with Windows 7 Home Premium. 2 weeks ago I had a catastrophic failure and ended up formatting the drive, reinstalling Windows and then all the base software I use. Took me the better part of 6 days to reinstall all the updates one at a time just for Windows because multiple updates all at once is what crashed my system to start with. Then another two days to reinstall my base software. Now I have a completely clean, updated system that runs perfectly. Here's where I need input. I have never used an image backup and have a few questions:

1) Do I need a dedicated drive to put the Image on?

2) If I have a hard drive failure and need to replace the drive, will the Image bring my machine back to where it is now?

3) Can I use the Image to set up another machine and if so, do the machines have to be identical hardware wise?

[birdman1981]

Check your p.m.

[sevenof400]

BillyJack,

With all the graphic stuff you do, why don't you use a Mac? 

[BillyJack™]

BillyJack,

With all the graphic stuff you do, why don't you use a Mac? 

Use to IBM and the cost of completely changing over makes no sense to me. 90% of my software (some very costly) is for the IBM clones and if I'm going to have to run Windows on the Mac anyway, why switch?