Thanks camerionian - I was thinking of a product that does image the hard disk to another drive and takes care of file size issues and the FAT32 to NTFS issue automatically while allowing re mounting of the saved drive as a logical drive on a different Computer. There are some issues if the Backup is from an NTFS Machine as the security file descriptors on the NTFS backup will not always allow access (e g \my documents ) - But your point of thinking ahead of Vista and future possible file systems e.g like photographic archives in longevity is another bigger problem entirely.
CAT III.