Sector by Sector or?

I am running ATI 2011 Plus on Windows 7 Ultimate. For my full backups I want to backup by boot drive so that I can restore it to another machine and or drive with different geometry in case the unthinkable happens.

When setting up a drive / partition backup you have the option to select sector-by-sector or not. This means there are two ways to back up a drive
1. sector-by-sector, or
2. "other"

I also have three options for doing a restore and I want to be able to restore under all three of these conditions.
1. Restoring it to a new purchased machine with an operating system and drivers already installed.,
2. Restoring it to the same machine, but with a new hard drive and geometry
3. Restoring it to raw iron, new motherboard, new drive (same or different geometry)

My basic question is are both methods (sector-by-sector and other) appropriate for my restore options, and if so, what is the difference / trade-off between them?

Larry