Question: You have a complete image of your C: drive (which contains windows XX, and your programs), saved on a removable drive or DVD(s), your C: drive fails (mechanical, malware etc.). You replace your C: drive with an essentially "blank" new one. What are the mechanics of utilizing your image? It seems if you used Windows imaging creation system, you have to be running windows (which you don't have, since it is on the failed drive); unless you made bootable emergency media (or have your original installation disk) you can't do anything.
Does the emergency disk allow you to retrieve your image?
PS: Using MS disk image creation system, you cannot selectively restore files, it essentially takes a snapshot of your whole drive, and is supposed to restore that snapshot.