Windows Azure Preview Portal and deleting a Virtual Machine

Question

So I understand that VM roles are supposed to be stateless, but I noticed that if you delete the Virtual Machine you will get an image that you can restore off of in the disk. Now, does this mean, in the case of a server crash that this image is lost as well? Or does it simply mean that an image like this is not created when a crash happens and the VM state is lost.

Also, why can these images only be restored once? 

Answer 1

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/WAVirtualMachinesforWindows/thread/d32915b7-a37e-4089-aa34-ef6977bf9856

Looks like it is persistent in the new Azure Portal.