Check out my blog for useful scripts and tips...
http://igurublog.wordpress.com/

and a wikibook...

How To Backup Operating Systems - A step-by-step guide for creating backups of the operating system(s) installed on your PC (Linux, Windows, etc). Specifically, it describes how to backup and restore hard drive partitions and MBR boot code using free tools.
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/How_To_Backup_Operating_Systems