[CentOS] Backup

We have a RHEL2 server that has had one of the drives in the raid array fail. I would like to do a full backup of the system before we replace the raided drive, in case the second drive decides to die during the procedure.

What is the recommended way to back up a linux system? I was thinking of doing a snapshot, but the system is ext3 with no LVM. It has been suggested to hook up a usb drive and do an rsync of /. Are there any better solutions?

The reason I wanted a snapshot is that I wanted to get an image of the disk, so that I wouldn't have to reinstall and reconfigure all the apps.

Russ