I feel stupid asking this... What exactly is an "image"? As in "an image of a bootdisk", "Image of a hard drive", etc. And how do you do stuff to it, and what does it do? Is there any need for software or anything like that? Why are there "images"? Everytime I go on these forums and "image" is mentioned, I often feel as if something very important is hidden from me. It would really help me to know what this is.

BTW, I didn't know which particular forum to post this, so sorry if this seems a bit awkward.

As far as I know it is an excact copy of something. So if you want to backup your Hard drive you image it, make an exact copy. hope this helps

A file that is created using Symantec Ghost or other disk cloning software. An image file of a disk or partition is created and used to produce duplicates of the original disk or partition.

From; http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/d/disk_image.html Also called a disk clone, an exact copy of a computer’s hard drive. The copy includes all the partition information, boot sectors, the file allocation table, operating system installation and application software. Disk images are used to transfer a hard drive’s contents during a hardware upgrade, to restore a hard drive’s contents during disaster recovery or when a hard drive is erased, and to transfer the contents of a hard drive from one computer to another. The process of creating a disk image is called disk imagine or disk cloning. Typically, special disk imaging software is required to copy the hard drive data.