back up entire hard drive to image file? with a live cd
 

Hello. I want to know if there is any easy (and free) way in linux, with out downloading any special backup or recovery disks,(just the live cds I have) to back up a entire hard drive to one file onto another disk or to a server so that later I could restore the harddrive to exactly how it was when I backed it up. Including the mbr and all that stuff. Thanks for the help.

Have a look at http://www.sysresccd.org/ and http://www.partimage.org/ - they may do what you need.

Partimage is the best I've come across - knoppix and kanotix live cds include it. Check it out here http://www.partimage.org/ and see what you think.