[Stratoscope]

> Why not just setup backups from inside the VM's, while having the base VM image backed up somewhere (once) as well?

That would be quite a project, compared with backing up everything on the host system as I do now.

I have all sorts of VMs. Some of them are extremely minimal OSes (think router/firewall distros). I have no idea how I would be able to back these up from inside the VM. And even for the VMs where I could do that, why bother? It seems like a lot of work.

By having an extremely fast sector backup running on my host system, I can be sure that all of my VMs are backed up, with no extra effort when I install a new one. I don't have to worry about how I would do a "restore" in any of those specific VMs, I can just restore files on the host OS and know that it will work perfectly.

A much simpler and more convenient solution.