Drive image software

[meton_magis]

I currently have a problem of windows vista not being able to be installed on my computer, unless I remove some of the ram, update it, and finally put the ram back in. this is a very annoying process, and I'd like to take a disk image to be able to only have to do this 1 more time.

Does anyone know of a disk image application that works in linux, and can take an image of a windows (NTFS) partition? I'm looking for something that doesn't take as long as dd (drive is 500 GB), but is not incredibly difficult to use. I'm comfortable with CLI, so it doesn't HAVE to have a GUI. Also, I REALLY prefer free software (speech and beer, though free as in beer is the must have here.)

I tried googling for it, but only found pricey software.

Thanks in advance.

[oz]

Most of the apps that I know of for this purpose are listed here. I think they all use dd, though. I always use TrueImage running straight off the LiveCD, but it's not free.

[meton_magis]

Thanks ozar, i'll give them a try. Maybe one will suit my needs.

[Sunnyside]

How about I throw a couple more options, one CLI and free, the other is fast and not free.
Seeing how you're comfortable with CLI, check post #6 here, not sure if dd knows which clusters are unallocated in NTFS, but worth trying. Making the initial image can still take a while as you will go through the entire drive and remove all unallocated clusters. But restoring should go allot faster as your image won't be written to 500GB. It has been tried by others and apparently works.
Second option is my fave, like Ozar's, it's not free, but my time is expensive and Bootitng saves me more than it costs 100's fold. It basically does the same as the first option except faster, simpler, and you can direct the image writing to various mediums including optical drives.

[L4Linux]

You can try Clonezilla that has similar functionallity to Ghost + it can do a restore to many PCs at once.