Well the backup thing is a quite long procedure
if you are known to Norton Ghost then its pretty easy for you safe and steady
Depends on the size of the partition you installed the OS
If like me my C Drive only have xp which barely takes after drivers 1.2 gb
So running ghost for a 1.2 size takes 5-6 mins
On the otherside Win7 takes 9gb minimum while making image of that 9gb ghost will compress it to around mmm 5 -6 gb
which will take like 10-12 mins
depends on the hard drive also
My drive sux so its slow