Macrium Reflect works great and they have a free edition.
http://download.cnet.com/Macrium-Ref...-10845728.html
Creates an exact image of your drive to another drive (one big file). Later, if you need to restore you can restore the entire thing to your current HD or to a new HD.
Another cool feature is access to the image. Once you do the backup and have that large image file you can use Reflect to open it and it will appear as a new HD with a new drive letter so you can copy one or two files if you need to.