Backup/Recovery (was Duplicating a hard drive)

Ok now I know I do not want to do this.

Another approach I was considering was
creating a CD which would do the recovery
of the drive. (sort of recovery people get
when they buy computers from places like IBM)

The objective would be to allow for auto
partitioning using specified scheme
and then restoring the applications, setup and
accounts.
Additional data would be kept on another CD.