Never reinstall OS again

[LeapFrog]

It scares me to think of the number of hours (days) I have spent over the years reinstalling various forms of windows. Apparently my XP license has been used on too many different computers and now I have to call Microsoft every time I reinstall.

I do most of my work in various VMs of which I have saved pristine copies, but my base OS is XP and my goal is to never reinstall it again. Of course, I will be doing some research myself, but I thought perhaps some knowledgeable individuals could save me some time/offer some advice based on experience.

So, I'm pretty much looking at two methods. One, some form of disk imaging such as 'Active@ Disk Image'. Two, a raid array.

I am not very familiar with what raid config it would be but I am guessing that with the right setup I could just plug in another hardrive, it would clone, then unplug it and store. If I need to reinstall, clone from the saved drive.

As for the software option I would probably partition my HD into two equal sections then copy an image onto the other partition. I'm looking for something that can run in DOS so I can just bootup and make the copy. Any advice on what software is a good choice?

The 'Active@ Disk Image' software apparently is $100 -- for that price I'm thinking I might as well go raid. Thoughts?