I'm trying to use True Image 11 to image the system partition of my laptop. When I get to the place where it asks me to select the partition to image, there are two: the main NTFS system partition and a small recovery partition. Should I select both or just the system partition? I have heard that the recovery partition must be in a certain place on the HD to be usable. If so, and if I needed to restore the image , the recovery partition might not be restored to the same place and would therefore be unusable. Any advice on how to proceed here? Thanks.

you should image it to the recovery partition, although it may not be a good idea to have it on the same HDD
I myself use an external drive which is probably the safest

You should simply make images of both partitions separately, and store somewhere separate. The recovery partition is no use for storing images, it is far too small. Once you have your two images, there is no problem whatever in recreating them in the right place and at the same size (or much larger if desired) on new hardware.

Hello!
The best decision is to make 2 images of your drives and store them on an external media.
This is a reliable way to keep your data safe.

Would recommend you create at least one image including the recovery partition (how would you ever recover it again if you lost your drive?) Since it's read-only no requirement to image it more then once (so long as you still have a good image for it!)

You can also just tell acronis to do sector-by-sector imaging tho that really images the FULL disk. PERIOD. (Otherwise, Acronis doesn't include things like your pagefile which isn't really needed.)