Archive a restore point permanently?

Restore points are saved as Volume Shadow Copies. They can be mounted and backed up. Start a command shell with admin rights. Then typing

vssadmin list shadows

will give a list of available shadow copies. Pleas note that the list will be empty if the system is not set up to make restore points.

Pick the one you want and mount like so:

mklink /d <mount point> <shadow copy volume>

Actual example:

mklink /d c:\shadow_copy1 \\?\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolumeShadowCopy1\

Copy any files, or the whole shadow copy. Remove when finished:

rd c:\shadow_copy1

[EDIT] It seems you can create disk images from Volume Shadow Copies, though I haven't tried this yet: http://windowsir.blogspot.com/2009/11/working-with-volume-shadow-copies.html

Good question. I've never heard of such a feature, but similar is to image your drive. I'd recommend Driveimage-xml or clonezilla to make a complete back up of a system that you've got working and tweaked to perfection. Note that a DIXML image needs to be restored from a different drive. Not yet used Clonezilla, but I've heard good things about it.