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?
A) Windows will offer to burn a repair disk after you make your image, which contains a WinPE recovery image.
B) For Windows 7, you can download a full copy of Windows 7 from Microsoft (free, and legal, if a slow ~3GB download unless your connection is fast), and burn and use that. I believe there were trial downloads for Windows Vista that could be used similarly.
C) Many manufacturers (at least Lenovo and Dell) will send you a recovery disk under warranty, or at a small cost, matching the original OS on the system. Dell's is just a Windows install disk with the minor Dell customizations; Lenovo's last I checked was a restore image, at least on the models we get at work. I know the Dell one works to do restore; not sure about the Lenovo ones.
D) If you don't have any of the above, you can use someone else's Windows 7 installation to create a repair disk (
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/w...em-repair-disc ) -- not sure if that applied on Vista.
Clonezilla, which is my recommended 3rd-party tool, is always bootable; there's no "live" image creation on a running system. Same bootable CD/DVD/USB used both to create the image or to restore it.
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.
With the VHD-based system used on Vista and Windows 7, while they don't publicize the capability (or even make it very easy to see the VHD file) you can mount the VHD file via "Computer Management->Disk management, Action->Attach VHD" and get at individual files that way.