Hmmm . . . backups is a very large topic. One of the most important basics to understand is the difference between file system type backups vs bit image backups (partimage is in this category).
In the former, files are copied using the file system, and they are restored using the file system, essentially the file system is rebuilt a file at a time. The copied files are placed in a container to be managed as a set, the container is compressed to save space - such as the .tar file YaST Backup uses. You can use it, see inside of it, extract specific files from it, just like any other compressed container file, like .zip or .rar. This is the traditional method of backups. It is also slower than imaging both for backup and recovery, as there is overhead reading the file system during backup plus doing the compression, and there is overhead rebuilding the file system during recovery.
With a bit image, the partition (or with some tools, the entire disk) is simply copied sequentially sector by sector, front of disk to end. One long string of bits. It is literally an “image” of the partition or disk. Typically the resulting image is smaller than the method above, although with recent compression methods the results are fairly close. Imaging is typically used for disk cloning, it is often used by PC manufacturers to “re-image” the OS rather than re-installing it, it is useful for “snapshot” backups because imaging is faster than the file system method. But there are several downsides, too. First, if the image somehow gets corrupted or there is some incompatibility with the device the image is being copied to, the restore/clone may not work. Bad blocks on the disk may (this varies by tool) be copied to the image, and transferred to the new disk when restored. And there is no visibility inside the image nor method for recovering individual files from the image; it is all or nothing - but this issue is addressed by some tools which create a catalog of the files in the image, allowing selective recovery. Finally, since the file system within the image is restored exactly as it was (rather than being rebuilt, as happens with the other method), it will be sized to whatever the source partition was; hence if you restore an image created from a 100GB partition to a 200GB partition, only half the partition can be used without taking further steps.
What you use depends entirely on your needs and preferences. Partimage is one of several linux imaging tools, probably the most widely used. I don’t use imaging any longer, so I can’t comment on it. I would say that it is prudent to test an imaging tool with one’s own particular setup, before using it for production; years ago I failed to do this with a commercial tool, only to lose everything as a result.
There are a lot of tools which take various approaches to the traditional file system backup. In the openSUSE repository, there is DAR, rsync, rdiff-backup which are well thought of. Usually you can find a gui front-end, although the command line will be more powerful. But there are others, too - I haven’t used those, so can’t comment. (I use rysnc to mirror all our systems - extremely fast, flexible, powerful - but there is a learning curve.)
Hope some of this helps. You can find loads of opinions on this topic on these forums and others.
