PC Imaging software

[Clippy]

A couple of people I know have recently lost data due to HDD failures which has spurred me on to review my 'backup strategy'.

I have a desktop PC (XP) which I use at home and a laptop (Vista) which I use on site.

I backup each system individually by connecting separate external USB HDD and manually copying the data over, say once a month.

Anyway, I want to improve the process by using imaging/ghosting software.

I'm familiar with Nortons Ghost from several years ago (back in the days prior to it being owned by Symantec and you could fit it onto a floppy) but haven't used it or similar products for a while.

Anyway, wanted to get a heads up on which one to go for - something cheap, effective and easy to use.

I saw Acronis True Image mentioned on here recently and may go with that unless someone knows of anything better.

Others that come to mind are Ghost.
(Looks like thos feckers at Symantec have purchased DriveImage and Altiris).

The aim is to image each unit to an external USB HDD, so key considerations would be:

Supports Vista
Supports NTFS
Supports imaging to and restoring from a USB HDD
Can browse image file to extract data

P.S. I know this is not the most sophisticated backup routine but neither is my IT setup so think this would be perfect as it would:

a) backup up my data and
b) allow me to restore my unit quickly

[Zorba]

Apart from all the paid for apps, there are also such offerings as the Trinity Rescue Kit which bundle convenient and free Linux apps for imaging (and other stuff - the antivirus on this particular disc is awesome). Since you're just imaging it doesn't matter if it's Linux or Windows based. You obviously can't do scheduled imaging though.

Edit - just re-read your post and noticed that you said you want to be able to extract files from the image. Not sure if the above can do that.