Based on my experience...

Hi Greg,
Thank you for your reply.

All this is for my understanding and equipping myself for the day I have to use this knowledge under duress in case of system crash.

(1) I understand that suppose I select D partition during system image creation then during restoration contents in D partition on the hard disc would be deleted and replaced with the previous contents of D during system image creation

(2) Again, suppose I do NOT select D partition during system image creation then during restoration what would happen to contents in D partition on the hard disc ?? Would they be wiped off and the space simply unallocated ??

In both the cases I would not be selecting "partition and format" option during restoration, and so C would be duly restored from the image in both the cases. In the first case, D partition would also be restored exactly from the image, but what would happen to the D in the second case ???

Actually I am running short of external spaces to back up data and hence the need to have latest data in D partition untouched during system restoration, while just doing a fresh(image) install of Win-8 on C: from image.

Thanks.
Regards,
Rakesh