Backup Strategy with New Laptop

I am seeking advice. I just received a new Dell laptop from my employer with a 80GB SATA hard drive. I am very deliberate with backups and have been using an old 120GB external IDE drive for that purpose. They tell me that we will be moved from XP to Windows 7 next year, and I want minimum hassles with that transition. I also deal with large data files and I need more room on the HD.

My plan is to do this:
Clone the 80GB drive to a new 250GB SATA drive with external USB2 enclosure using TI
Swap the drives so I now have 250GB on my laptop with data and OS together.
Create two new partitions on the new drive - one for data (Q:\) and one for an OS backup (S:\)
Move the data files to Q:\, leaving only the OS in C:\
Set up TI to do NonStop backups of the OS from C:\ to the S:\ partition.
Back up the data in Q:\ to the 120GB external drive at least daily.

Does this make sense, and how could I improve on this strategy? Can TI create the partitions? I've always kept everything (OS and data) on C:\.

#2: With the spare 80GB SATA drive I was thinking I could clone just the C:\ partition with the OS so I would have a spare HD that I could swap out in a hurry in case of HD failure, but alas TI clones entire disks, not single partitions. If my 250GB HD fails, what is the best way to take advantage of the 80GB drive so it could act as a temporary replacement until I get my hands on a new 250GB drive? 80GB won't be big enough for everything. If I create an image of C:\ on the 80GB drive I understand that it will not be bootable ...

Sorry for the long post, but I am having a hard time researching a sound backup strategy for a someone who travels a lot and depends heavily on a fully functioning computer.