...after having to reinstall 10.2 from scratch (My Norton Ghost images failed me) it made me start thinking about alternatives and was wondering how other Linux users backup their systems.

I burn and copy my /home and /root directories on a monthly basis.
But when you tweak your system the way I do (or at least try to do) then a good image program/clone is a must.

I dual boot with XP, so I'm looking for another program that is reliable to clone my system and store that image either on DVD or on a separate partition.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

partimage and System Rescue CD are your friends. Partimage can backup and restore Ext3 and Ext2 partitions (for Linux) and NTFS and FAT32 partitions (for Windows). Someone else on this forum warned another poster away from partimage because the NTFS support is "experimental". However, I have been using it for over 18 months to backup and restore all kinds of partitions, Windows and Linux, without _any_ problems.

Here are a couple of links:

System Rescue CD

Partimage

Have a read of this. Interesting
HowTo Backup and Restore Images of Partitions on Hard Drives Using Linux System Rescue CD and PartImage
Maybe this too:
HowTo: No-effort Backup Solution for Partitions and Hard Drives

Swerdna

> My Norton Ghost images failed me

could you please elaborate?

maybe that's just unfortunate. ghost has been solid on me for various systems i had (dual or more) booting. the only item to caution is that you need to check fstab, menu.lst etc make sure it works correctly when you have partition table changes. thus i would suggest this despite.

when restored (different story if not able to) you can at least mount to access your user/config backups it if not bootable.

mondo rescue is the best