Is there anyway to setup a fresh install of xp or vista just the way you like it with all the programs you use daily. Then Completely back it up on a flash drive for a recovery disk or backup disk
yeah its called Ghost. I use it all the time. You format your drive install the os and all the updates the av software firefox, then you create a image on a dvd/ cd, then when you need to format or do a clean install you can just pop in the dvd let it re-image and wola your back to normal, or that image at least.
I recommend Tivoli Storage Manager.
ya, im sure he can afford that.
I guess I’ve never really thought about ghosting a system in Linux. It might be nice to have that option in the event that I do something stupid to one of my Linux boxes…I do that from time to time. 
Does anyone have a recommendation for ghosting software in Linux? I like to use k3b for burning CDs in Linux.
Acronis True Image is another.
I use the HawkeCD to ghost my laptop to an external now and then, but it only grabs the XP partition.
Anyone know of a similar thing to ghost your linux?
Listen to jason, ghost is for sure the best for a complete partition backup that will actuall work when you need it, its especially good if you have to maintain a bunch of pc’s that all have identical hardware, you install on one, make the ghost image and use it to install on them all, takes about ten minutes to do an install from ghost image. I have used it for over ten years, its the only one I truly trust. There is one for linus herbie, link is here:
I havn’t used it in years, but Ghost fits on a 1.44MB floppy and should boot and image a hard drive running linux without any problems.
I wasnt serious about tivoli 
its an excellent product but way more than you will need and its $$$.
Anyway drbl.sf.net is a great pxe boot/imaging system for linux or windows. Acronis is a decent option. I am working with it right now and so far it appears to be a good product.
Is ghost still around? or has symantec rolled that out into a new product yet?
I would suggest acronis if you want a nice little gui system or drbl if you have a second computer to dedicated to backups.
Thanks for the replies, Chrisj, orangetang, and jesus, much appreciated!
How about a “migration” product? Anyone know of something where you can boot from CD and mirror the old drive to a new drive and resize the partition in one stroke?
Used to be able to do that with DriveCopy boot floppies but I haven’t used that in ages.
drbl/clonezilla will sort of do this. You need a second computer to store the images though. Otherwise you could use a live linux disk and DD i’d presume.