Linux Backup Question
 

I'm running ubuntu server dedicated to backing up my servers using rsync. This works great. However I had a question where in an event of a disaster, I would somehow need to have a physical copy of those backups, in linux is there a way to take an image of the hard disk while its running and somehow save it to a file which can be burnt into a DVD or CDROM? No, I'm not running LVM. I came across a resource that had this kind of utility but I cant remember where it was. Any pointers will be greatly appreciated.

easiest to run a raid1 system and just break the mirror when you want a static block device to copy.

Yes, that would be a good idea. I'm currently running or raid 5 which I don't think will work.

no, not that way no. raid5 is a good idea on paper i find, but gets hard and restrictive down the road. really depends what your data is doing minute by minute... you could just dd off /dev/md0 if you want, and if you were to reimage that, you'd just be in a crashed state, which should be fine, but i don't know of any low level mechanism to actually give you a microsecond snapshot wihtout breaking mirror or using lvm snapshots (which are COOL)