Maintaining two different full backups with one of them having differential backup

Hi,

I just wanted to ask advice to see if my understanding of differential backup was correct and whether for my use case I would need at least two manual tasks.

For my laptop, I have allocated an Acronis Secure Zone to store my backups for the relevant partitions on one disk which are Drive C (Windows 7 Boot), Drive D (Data), Un-named partition which is a recovery partition for the default factory system image, a special 200MB boot partition that I believe it used for a special boot process for the recovery partition. There is another SSD which has two partitions that used as by ExpressCache.

For my use case, I want to have a baseline image of Drive C with all the applications and configurations needed. This would be the "master" baseline image.

Over time, I would install new applications and utilities, with new configurations, and then when I reach what I consider a stable state, make another "working" baseline image.

And subsequently, I would manually create differential backups from the"working" baseline to revert back to either the "working" baseline image if things go really wrong or to separate differentials made.

For example, the first differential could be after installation of a new software application and configuration set, and then the second differential could be after installing a new trial utility. And if I did not like the trial utility or the changes it made to my system, I could restore the first differential.

Am I correct that I would need two manual tasks or schemes for the above? Or do I just need to check off the option "Do not delete the initial version" that I saw in one of the dialog boxes?

For differential backups, when using them to restore, do they do it sector-by-sector? Can we consider them as a snapshot? For example,

i) after creating the initial full backup, I created a file A.DOC and installed ABC application, and then made a differential backup.

ii) Subsequently, I created B.DOC and installed DEF utility, and then created differential backup #2.

iii) If I now ran the restoration of Differential #1 to Drive C, would it mean it would be as if the things in (ii) never happened?

I am aware that I could use the Try&Decide feature but I have not used it or understood enough of its inner workings to be sufficiently comfortable with it.

Thanks for any assistance.

Gordon