Hard drive "ghosting" advice

I'm setting up a pc that I'm going to inflict great damage on, for testing purposes. I want to be able to do battle w/ all manner of viruses and malware in general, deal w/ key program files being deleted/corrupted, and become intimately familiar w/ the windows recovery console functions and procedure, etx. So I think it will be fun intentionally, totally messing up a pc, then dealing w/ it, trying to fix it. I was thinking of doing pc repair on the side, so I think it would be a good tool for me to learn on.

But I dont want to have to reinstall windows, and go thru all that every time, once Im done and want to restart again. So I figured that I would do this "ghosting" thing. Mess it up to the point of no return, redo the image - done. I have never really had a use for it, since my computers are all very secure, and my stuff is otherwise backed up, but now i think I want to be able to do this. I see TONS of products online, some free, some older versions of Norton's even.

Anyone have any preferences? I want something that's free, easy to use, and can be used on a drive that's practically inoperable due to major malware/programming armageddon. There's advice elsewhere, but Id rather trust my rpg compadres to give me the straight scoop.

I use Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD), which has everything you need for free. It boots straight from CD into a custom linux environment, so it doesn't matter how bad Windows is, and has a bunch of useful apps.

Don't worry if you aren't comfortable with linux, because it's entirely menu-driven. From there, use HD Clone (or whichever of the 5 or so that take your fancy - beware, some of them have limitations).

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

...or check out UBCD4Win, if you'd rather something Windows based, although I haven't used that one.

ive got a little linux experience, my other pc has a linux partition that i mess w/ now and then. That's smart, seein' as Windows may be utterly trashed, it would make sense to use Linux. I do want to get it to the point that I have to use the recovery console to redo the MBR, where most people would just throw their hands up and call it toast. Of course, I'd probably just reformat it at that point anyway, but it's not always what a customer would want to do.

Ive been reading a little more into the ghosting thing, and most people recommend Norton - but I want to avoid that.

Thanks dhruin!

I've had good luck with Acronis True Image.

Supposedly you can make a bootable DVD that also has your image on it, but I have used it primarily from a USB drive.

I just ghosted my machine with it yesterday in fact as I gave Vista the boot and went back to XP Pro.

I did use Norton Ghost in my PC shop for many years and I have to say, it rarely let me down. We must have Ghosted thousands of drives.

I never, ever used the full installed-in-Windows suite but only the boot-disk you create from the Windows suite.

Just remmember that if you get particularly nasty viruses they might affect boot sectors and bioses, and it is even possible to detroy hardware in your PC.