Also, a very simple and inexpensive approach is PowerQuest's DriveCopy 4.0. It it is best used from its own boot disks (created by the program) so Windows is not involved at all. It makes a perfect, bit-by-bit copy that requires no restoration. It handles NTFS with ease. It costs about half as much as its big brother, DriveImage.
I clone my drives every week and use DC4 from a bootable CDR I made. Cloning an 80 GB drive with 6 partitions takes about 25 minutes on my system. (Drives are in mobile racks so they can be individually switched on and off.)