Windows Backups.

Hello, I have several machines running Windows 2000, Windows XP and some windows 98. I need to do back ups on all those machines in a way that they can be easily and quickly restored without having to reinstall the OS or the applications. So far we are doing this based imaging, but this takes too long and consumes too much disk space. So, my question is: is there a way to do a file level copy of the whole installation and be able to restore it to disk after i have done the disk partitioning, etc..? I am trying to achieve what DISM can do, but to older OSes... Thanks.