"Clonezilla" or "Partition Image" disk imaging software - anyone used?

[SourChipmunk]

I've searched through the threads and "Norton Ghost" or "Acronis" seem to be the recommended disk image software, but I'm trying to find out if the open source programmes "Clonezilla" or "Partition Image" do the trick for someone that's a little out-of-luck financially.

I'm personally getting tired of rebuilding his PC everytime he (or his wife) do something stupid on the internet and am looking to get a good clean image that I can fall back to. Yeah, he buys me beer to do it, but 8 hours of updates is really annoying. At least I've got him saving his personal files to a central location now so I don't have to scan his entire PC.

Yes, that's one of the sins of letting your neighbour know you work on PCs. I know. We've all been there. But, that aside, any votes for the above?

edit: WinXP, btw.

 

[swinnie]

I've never had any experience with Clonezilla, or Partition Image.

But, DriveImageXML is a very good application, and runs from a bootable BartPE Disk.

Question, do you have Acronis, or Ghost? If you do, create an Acronis Bootable disk and use that.

If you have Ghost V8, integrate that into a Bart PE CD.