Safety clone usage

[camner]

I want to make sure I understand how the Safety Clone concept is intended to work....

1. A Safety Clone (SC) is made from a stable system onto a separate partition...and if one chooses "Shared Users and Applications" SD! creates the smallest possible SC by not copying Users or most of the Applications folder.

2. One then boots from the SC from now on

3. If one wishes to install an update (OS update or 3rd party hack) one installs it on the SC

4. If a problem arises, one simply recreates the SC from the main partition via a Smart Update, thus bringing the SC back to the status quo ante

5. If, after a while, it seems clear that no trouble has occured, one then can apply exactly the same update/hack to the main partition. (or, one can "clone back" from the SC, but that's riskier, no?)

Do I have this right?

Now, is there a modification to this that can do the functional equivalent of what I used to do in OS 9, which is to periodically copy and Stuff my System Folder, just in case at some point I wanted to go back to an earlier System Folder. How about this...

Before step 3 above, one creates a clone to an image of the safety clone, which then in effect becomes a "checkpoint" or "rollback point", right? Theoretically, at some later date, if one really wants to roll back to an earlier state, one can use SD! to restore the current SC from the image of the backed up safety clone. Does that work? Does one need to boot from the main partition so one can overwrite the SC?

Thanks for this wonderful product!