Just to make sure there is no confusion, running a program such as Ghost or Drive image or any of them is considered "imaging" the drive. "Back up" is a term most used to make copies of data files you can't lose. Ghost will make a snapshop of your entire drive, OS and all. I suggest you go one further and buy a second drive just like the one you have in the box now so your hard drives are identical. I prefer to not save my Ghost (I use Drive Image) images. I have heard hundreds of people go on and on about how they have "backed up" their drive and they did not understand that they backed up data but not imaged it to where they have a bootable OS on the spare drive.

Summary:

BACK UP moves copies of data files (doc, jpg, mp3, seq.....) to a secondary device

IMAGING makes a byte for byte copy of the entire drive and makes a second bootable hard drive