Hard Disk / Failed To Lock Drive

I am running windows 7 64 bit, on an eMachines lap top, I have purchased an external HDD and now I am trying to create a perfect copy of my system. I used DriveImage XML but it failed. I have used this program in the past with great success on a different computer running WindowsXP.The failure I get is "failed to lock drive". I've tried skipping the lock drive option and going straight to shadow copy; same problem.I can only assume the failure to lock drive is based on permissions and files being in use. So I think I need to attempt this without loading windows. Is there anyway of running a "free" drive cloning program from a DVD or USB Flash drive without booting into Windows?I would just bit torrent a win7 OS, install it on my external, and run the program from their, but I don't want to have to resort to law breaking, and I have never run linux.

Also I tried using a "backup" feature on Paragon Partition Manager, it did "backup" the system, but it didn't clone the drive. All the backup files are written in directories such as "C:/archive/" and thus I assume there is no way of booting into a system written that way. I assume it's like windows system restore, and what I need is a bootable image of my primary drive.Oh and I should clarify, that it's not my external drive that fails to lock; the external HDD has been formatted, partitioned, and can read and write data just fine, and has way more than enough room to copy the HDD in my lap top.Also, the HDD on my lap top has 1 primary partition, with two logical partitions. I have no idea what the logical partitions are for and if that could be causing the problem.