Thread seems 'cold' but people may still be searching for the topic to get advice.
Use Hiren's Boot CD in an external optical drive. The Acronis utility works fine, #3 on the menu. Identifies Linux partition correctly, and makes the original partition-type the default option, during restore.
Total time for user-modifiable partition imaging, about 6 minutes (but I haven't yet added much, waiting to get rid of unionfs, first).
I backed up to an external USB2 drive. For some reason, the Eee wouldn't boot Hiren's when the optical drive was plugged into left-hand port. Moved both connectors (optical, hard drive) to the right side of the Eee, then everything worked, just the same as on the Windows desktop PC.
I have only done this once, but the restored image both verified and functioned correctly: the Eee booted normally to prior state, after the process.
