Drive imaging/cloning software suggestions

Hi there, I'm looking to clone my C:drive on my netbook after reinstalling windows xp. I've partitioned the drive and the C:drive is only around 9gb so I'm looking to clone it now, and keep that copy as a fail safe whilst making copies as I go and backing up the D:drive to an external HDD.

The cloning/imaging progs that I was aware of were Acronis True Image and Norton Ghost but I've read that Acronis won't clone individual partitions and that there've been lots of problems with Ghost since version 9 when Norton took over. Clonezilla's been mentioned but what do you guys use and why would you recommend it?

I use Clonezilla now, use to use Ghost. Clonezilla isn't the easiest tool to understand intially, but plenty of help on the net. Where are you cloning C: too? I use an external drive, but usually don't bother with my own laptop prefer a rebuild if i have to, but for servers and stuff use clonezilla all the time.

Ah right. I'll have a search for a tutorial unless there's one you can suggest?

As it's a new install any time I'd be doing another clean install I'd only really be using the same set up anyway so I figure this way it would save me time in the long run when it comes to the inevitable strip down and start again as well as if something happens and I need to do an emergency reinstall.

I'm looking at putting it on the external hdd I'll be taking away. Roughly how big would the image of a 9gb drive be - is it like for like with regard to sizes?

Sorry I was sort of walked through it by a colleague, as its based on Linux and its not really my area of expertise.... A quick look and maybe this tutrial explains it ok. Its really just the linux nomenclature that can be confusing.
http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/free_imaging_software.html

i'm not sure on what compression you can expect on a 9GB windows XP partition, but I'd suspect you'll be looking at around half to 2/3rds maybe. Worst case assume 9GB and you'll be fine :-)

I have used the free version of Acronis to clone my netbook (2 partitions) and it was easy and worked fine.

Cheers Justin23 I'll take a look in a mo. It actually comes in closer to 8gb so I was wondering if the compression would drop it sufficiently so that I could squeeze it onto dvd's as a backup.

PhiMeow, I stated in my post that I wanted to clone a partition not the whole drive and was under the assumption that you could only clone whole drives with Acronis - obviously I don't want to clone 400gb just so that I have that 9gb partition backed up. How many partitions were on your drive?

I have 4 partitions on my netbook.
You can choose which partition(s) you want to backup.

Well I'm still trying to decide. I've had a look at the clonezilla tutorials and they seem reasonably straightforward, I guess I'm just used to programs with user interfaces that make things look a little simpler than they actually are!

Phimeow, have you used the images at all or just backed them up? Was it a simple procedure?

I successfully used the image to upgrade my netbook. It had a 16GB solid state hard disk and I replaced that with a 64GB SSD. Did not need 2 original partitions (vendor partitions) so put back the boot and data partitions only.
All works well - that was 3 months ago and no issues.