George Foot wrote an excellent little utility that can back up your eeepc (or any other PC) at the file or at the disk image level.
It’s called EeeBackup.
You start with a Linux box and a USB stick. Run the self-executing shell script [1] to install the utility to the memstick.
Then boot the memstick, select the partitions or the whole drive, point it at the memstick, and off you go.
Perfect for eeeHackers whose experiments flail out of control ever so often.
[1] A bit of a hack in its own right. Read the source.