Thanks for your info.
I do have two partition for such instances. I have everyday use MAC on 32GB SSD and backup mac (for repair) on other partition on other HDD, and when I have a problem with first one, I boot to backup and do the repair. However I use restore feature in disk utility to clone, but is CCC better?

As far as update goes, I am good wih updates as far as iLife update and 10.6.7. I don't know updating 10.6.8 will help me or not, but thinking about it. I hear so many issues with 10.6.8 because of IOUSBfamily and IOPCIfamily also I hear 10.6.8 doesn't have HD5670 frmaebuffer so I have to use 10.6.7 kext to run my HD 5670 on 10.6.8. so I don't even know if it is worth the trouble updating to 10.6.8 while I feel I got it pretty good with what I have.

Currently I have
AMD PII X4 955 OCd 3.8
ASUS M4A78T-E
ATI HD 5670 1GB
DDR3 8GB (2GB X 4)
OS X 10.6.7
Nawcom 10.8 kernel
Chameleon 1455