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#21
System imaging (in Macrium = 'Back up Windows') only images the partition set necessary to restore Windows (possibly several for Win 10 on UEFI). Thus it does not include any other data partitions.
Provided you are aware of which partitions are included in a system image (and I had a problem with this with Aomei in coming to Win 10 at that time) and you then image your other partitions as well, then you should be covered.
'Disk Backup' - if by that you mean file-based selective backups, some use that in addition to maintain ongoing current backups whilst disk imaging tends to be run more periodically.
Factors to consider:
1. how do you manage the storage space taken up by disk imaging (Macrium can do this for you quite neatly)
2. how long does it take to create a backup (imaging takes longer than specific file backups but is much faster for SSDs than HDs
3. how much new data are you creating and how critical is it
Finally your backup location should ideally be physically remote from your PC.
(Noted on the VSS related problem - naturally restoring an image of Windows is done from the imaging program's boot medium, so this would not arise then. But did the problem arise in creating or restoring the image? Noted the idea of mounting the image to identify this. What is worrying is there was no indication of failure during the process. I assume the files/folders concerned were not on C: (?) )