G-CPTN,
First, as parabellum pointed out, I think this question would have probably been better suited to the Computers forum rather than Jet Blast. However I'm sure one of the mods can wave a magic wand and teleport this thread there, so don't worry.
I have a device that will accept hard drives, and I want to 'archive' the contents (data) as well as cloning my current hard drive including the Operating System and installed programmes (if possible) so that I can, if necessary, install a new HD and retain my Operating System settings.
Are you sure you really want to clone the drive ? It's an easy way to eat up a lot of storage space. Personally I'd look at only backing up user profiles plus user data stored in partitions/disks outside the profiles.
Should I partition the 1.5TB so that I can have various locations for the various backups?
In this day and age, 1.5TB is not that big. In legacy operating systems, you would have had issues with large partitions, but these days it's not much of a problem ....XP/2003/Vista are I believe limited to (2^32)-1 clusters (so between 16TB and 256TB depending on cluster size. With GPT on 7/2008, I believe the limit is even higher.
So basically, you're probably wasting your time partitioning down a 1.5TB disk. If anything, it will likely only come back to bite you when you run out of space on one of your mini-partitons.
If so, what software is recommended (ie Windows Vista)?
Vista has built in backup tools. If you're insistent on cloning, take a look at Acronis.