How do I image my harddrive to maintain my files?

This is kind of a buddy post to one I made in the Vista forum.

I am downloading the new test version of Vista, and I asked in that forum if it could be installed alongside XP as part of a dual-boot configuration.

My question for this forum is, how do I make a image of my harddrive that I can use to restore my PC should I not like Vista and don't want it? I'd hate to have to reformat and reinstall everything from scratch, and I have several files that'll take forever to backup. Is there a way I can image my entire harddrive, and what will I need? I have a CD- and DVD-RW, so if imaging to several DVDs is an option, then let me know.

Thanks very much.

 

What are you going to image to?

You can use the rather inelegant native NTbackup utility and do an ASR backup.

I would purchase and use Acronis True Image, which I think the class of this product genre.

But there are several good utilities.

Please see your Vista thread.