True back-up with a clone.

[NighEve*{MEOW}*]

  If you think your hard drive is about to go to the great HD heaven in the sky (making funny noises, blue screen of death) then a clone may be the answer if you can get it to operate long enough. Cloning is also good for moving everything to a larger drive if you are out of space on your primary drive.  Cloning used to be limited to desktops but now even the laptoppers are getting into cloning.
  If done right, you can clone a drive, replace the existing drive with the clone and the machine never knows the difference. . Occasionally Microsoft will ask you to authenticate windows XP (different drive serial no.) but there is no problem, it authenticated itself over the net. 
  I am suggesting that this is a good way to back up a critical machine.  Backing up data and saving images of your drives is a good thing. But there is no better way I think than cloning. I clone my main machine HD about every 3 months but since this works, I will probably do this once a month or so.  I also use the external enclosure by copying other drive's data to a large drive for storage.

 I had cloned a drive or two before using Clone-max, good program if you don't have multiple SATAs and IDEs on one machine, so it had it's limitations.  I was running out of space on the primary drive C:.  I needed to clone to a larger drive and of course back up the PC.
  So I got Acronis True Image Home 2010 that said it can even clone from USBs.  I had already had a Manhattan external enclosure for an IDE drive that connected via USB.  Guess what Acronis does clone to or from USB.    
  It accomplished it in about 2 hours (160gigs)
You will need the software, a drive as close to the one you are cloning as possible (but usually larger).  This software allowus you to use USB but you can clone to a slave drive withing your computer..the drive jsut has to be as big or bigger.

http://www.manhattan-products.com/en-US/products/6735-drive-enclosure

http://www.acronis.com/promo/ATIH2010/   (probably several other brands out there that wil do the same thing)

You gurus have already done all this, I'm sure.. just thought that if I can do it anyone can.  You have to have a bit of mechanical knowledge of the insides of a computer, also.

If you put a new drive in the enclosure sometimes it needs to be initiated and formatted.  Right click on [My Computer] click [Manage] then [Disk Management]

[NighEve*{MEOW}*]

Forgot to add that Acronis will back-up/clone from within Windows, but it better to boot from the Acronis CD and let it clone or back-up without Windows present.

[WildKatZ*{MEOW}*]

 

[NighEve*{MEOW}*]

Okay I edited the original post.maye it makes more sense. 

[THEKATZ*{MEOW}*]

Thank you Eve.  I use the Acronis which works fine. 

[NighEve*{MEOW}*]

YW..din't know if this was stupid or not.  I had not seen anything about it.  Cloning is a radical backup I'm sure, but for us not so skilled computer people it's an easy way to get a system backup and running. 

[Jugulator*{MEOW}*]

I did that once when i got a Sata drive and my system wouldnt let me install it as a windows  boot drive. I cloned  my former IDE drive onto the sata and after that i was able to boot to windows from the sata drive.

[Jugulator*{MEOW}*]

if you set up raid in your system it will do all that automatic and continuous i believe. I think raid involves having two drives in your system. they have identical data at all times. I haven't set one up myself but, I'm not sure of this but i think most sytems today are raid ready, i think you turn it on in bios and the drivers may be on your mobo drivers disk. then you wouldn't have to clone the drive, it would always have an up to date duplicate ready.
maybe someone has more info or can correct me if i'm wrong.

[NighEve*{MEOW}*]

If yo simply need a larger drive then cloning is the answer.  A simple free program called CloneMax works fine.

[NighEve*{MEOW}*]

Well I was just trying to put out a bit of info.  It may not be practical or it may not be nessessary, but anyway. I did'nt even know a raid array could do that. ...lol well never mind.

[Raidien{MEOW}]

yeah if you do a mirrored raid, it will keep your data on both drives... striped raid makes multiple drives look like 1... mirrored and striped is good for 4+ hdd... software raid is cheap and slower, but hardware raid is extremely expensive and fast... in a server-like environment or studio you would want raid, but most home/workgroup computers don't really need it... you can even schedule free programs like toucan to sync your files like from 4-6am when no one is normally using the computer... just some alt suggestions

[Jugulator*{MEOW}*]

I'm not knocking your idea Evey. Your idea is a great way to backup. I never thought of cloning a drive for that purpose. you can't overlook backing up anything that way, And it's a simple way to similate what raid does.  Good suggestion.

[THEKATZ*{MEOW}*]

Creating an image is a very efficient way to back up.  This is perfect for those critical issues we all have had and wondered why there was no easy way?  There is and it is not new. Thanks to Eve for pointing this out.
Here is the gist - When setting up a machine for the first time - or after a reformat I found the best thing is, install your updates fully any other programs/games you have (Not necessary if you have disk and can just reinstall but follow me here).

Once you have everything updates including the service packs and drivers it is time to create that image!  The nice thing here is simply the idea that if your HD goes south or your OS is messing up - bring it back to it's pristine state with that image - the only thing missing is what you installed since That image.  Remedy, make constant back ups/overwrites to the original image.

People, there is nothing fun about having to reinstall your chit.  With an image - your back in business in 30-40 minutes and guess what, your back in it in 30-40 minutes.  Did I say your back in playing your game in 30-40 minutes?  Point is, no more graphic driver update, Windows updates or anything else other than a possible update lingering since your last image.
Nice Eve!  Been doing this for a while now and wouldnot do it anyother way.

TK

[NighEve*{MEOW}*]

Thanks you two.