May as well add that an even more perfect solution is to have TWO external
drives dedicated to backup, swapping them every week and storing the
disconnected one offsite. This can either be two complete external drives,
or two drives using one external enclosure (former is easier, latter is
cheaper.)

--
Gary S. Terhune
MS-MVP Shell/User
www.grystmill.com

"Heirloom" wrote in message
...
+1 on Gary's suggestion. I use Acronis, backing up to an internal HD. My
primary is actually a RAID 0, but, I have 5 HD's in this machine. If one
craps out, I can restore to another and replace at my liesure. The nice
part about an external HD is that you can keep it in a safe place away
from your machine....in the event of a theft or fire, etc. Acronis True
Image is a great program, I highly recommend it.
Heirloom, old and do have backups

"Gary S. Terhune" none wrote in message
...
I should mention that a better solution is to get an external HD, and use
a decent backup program, like Acronis True Image, to make regular images
of your system to the external drive. Then all you have to do if the drive
goes bad is to install a new one and use the bootable CD method to restore
the latest image to the new drive. That way *everything* you've done on
the old drive, up to the date of the latest image, including tweaks and
personal data, is restored to the new drive, bootable and all.

--
Gary S. Terhune
MS-MVP Shell/User
www.grystmill.com

"Gary S. Terhune" none wrote in message
...
BootIt NG will do what you want for free. www.bootitng.com. Download the
executable, run it to create a bootable installation floppy or CD, boot
to that (after installing the drive), CANCEL the installation, then use
Partition Work to Copy your C:\ partition to the backup drive.

--
Gary S. Terhune
MS-MVP Shell/User
www.grystmill.com

"caroloyl" wrote in message
...
Having three C drive failures in just two and a half years requiring me
to
reinstall and re-set up every program I use (which I'm doing now) makes
me
wonder if it's possible to copy/backup my entire new C drive to a
comparable slave for switching out when this new primary master also
goes
belly-up down the road.

I've replaced enough internal hard drives now to know how to switch
them and
their jumper pins so the mechanics aren't a problem. But will this
duplicating idea work to give me a fresh bootable functioning Windows
et al
with a minimum of trouble?

My thanks in advance for your experience and insight.

calamity carol