Backup to USB drive?

Hi guys!

I've Googled and have gotten nothing relevant to my interests.

I have the Acer Aspire with windows XP. I wish to make a backup of the windows and drivers, (as those popups offer for acer eRecovery to do to a CD), but to a USB drive. The reason is because I want to install Ubuntu netbook remix to the drive, but it doesn't seem to auto-detect a dual-boot setup. I fear that if I install UNR, it will overwrite the alt+f10 recovery, so if I could backup the drivers and XP to a usb drive (because external cd drives are expensive), I could get Windows back if I don't like UNR after extended use.

Anyone have any ideas on how to do this?

Thanks!

edit:I've also tried AA1 Backup. It said my 8GB drive ran out of space at 5.6, if that's relevant.

 

Bump, please?

 

This would help me, too. Any responses?

 

I had Xp and Karmic dual booted and the recovery partition was in the grub bootloader, one click to overwrite the XP. I now have upgraded to W7 and Karmic. Grub; the Ubuntu bootloader automatically recognized the W7 partition. The best way to install Ubuntu is to load the iso onto a pen or thumbdrive with netbootin if you only have the windows setup. Then use f2 at boot to enable the f12 choose the boot from per session in bios, then boot with the usb in and start hitting f12 as soon as you hit the start button you need to do this same hitting the f2 to get to the bios without the thumb in just to be safe. So once your booted into Ubuntu or whatever system your using go to the disc partitioner in ubuntu 9.10 it is called gparted shrink the XP to whatever size you want, then do a restart and let the disc check happen by booting into XP before you install. You should always defrag before any of this as well. Then after the disc check and making sure XP is in good shape, boot into Ubuntu again and click on the install icon and follow the instructions and choose side by side or install in the empty space. The side by side should default a slider at the bottom to where the XP partition ends so make sure you check this so you get the partition sizes for both OS you want.

 

To simply create a backup image, I use Seagate Diskimage, creating a bootable usb sick from that software and then from the stick, create and save the image file you want (full drive c image or image of the system partition). An 8MB stick should suffice.

 

Sorry, the name of the software I referred to should be Seagate Disk Wizard