Awesome.. just built a system for my G/F's father (for father's day).. nothing fancy 3.0 AMD, 2GB ram, 9500GT, 160GB Hard Drive.. Win XP...
Got windows installed, all updates, drivers, etc.. then I used Acronis to make a restore disk.
First, I made a 6GB partition on his HD and made a backup image to it.
Next, I made a boot-up disk image (ISO).
Then I realized that the boot-up image only takes up a fraction of a blank DVD, so I had just enough room to squeeze his backup image onto the disk as well!
Now, if he ever screws it all up, all I have to do is boot from the disk which loads Acronis, then point to either copy of the disk image (on back up partition or on disk) and restore it. Of course, he'll have to reinstall his games, favorites, etc... but still much easier than reinstalling windows and redoing all of the 100+updates, etc. AND if the drive crashes, I can use the image on the disk.
Pretty cool stuff! Even though this version is free, I may end up buying it anyway!