Vista - Good free Cloning program that is 64bit compatible?

Anyone know of a good free Cloning program that is 64bit compatible? for Vista ultimate being upgraded to win7

for the specific purpose of making an exact restore-able image of the HD.
That can be copied to a reformatted harddrive after a major colaps of the os or virus damage?

I also want to be-able to do a periodic erasure of said hd for security and privacy purposes. which I would do before formatting the HD again.

I like to download a try a lot of free stuff and as you know it can mess your system up good and proper, to the point, its better to start over from a cloned image of factory settings that are up to date .

PS to my former comment. Could not modify my last post, for its still in the approval waiting.

I would be cloning to DVD or DVD dual layer

The Boot CD or disk Would need to be made by said cloning software For I am new to the Cloning world. pun intended

I've been using this for the past few months, and I like it a lot, but I'll be perfectly honest and say that I've never tried to restore an image

I can't imagine it not working though, it requests that you make a live cd to recover your backup should the system become unable to boot.

Macrium Reflect FREE Edition - Information and download

I have been using Macrium for quite a while. It is the smallest, fastest and most efficient image program you can get.

Always works perfectly for me.

I think what you want to do is create an image of the drive - store it on dvd's and then restore the image when needed.

To restore, boot the tiny rescue cd that you run off from within the macrium program - remove the macrium cd and put in the LAST dvd first.

Imaging makes a compressed backup of the used sectors on the drive. Cloning makes a 1:1 copy of all sectors on the drive.

Here is a list of free imaging programs. But you have to check the 64bit compatibility.
7 Freeware Acronis True Image & Norton Ghost Alternatives