Whats the best way to back up C Drive?

What’s the best way to back up C Drive so when it breaks I can just slot in a another hard drive with minimum of hassle?

Can simply make a mirror on a second hard drive and then unplug that harddrive (I know XP will want me to re-activate for these changes and I cant be doing with that). I dont like running 2 HD all the time cos of added noise and I work hard in making my PC silent.

Like you said a Raid 1 "Mirroring" would be the best. Its also quite cheap to do as hard drives becore cheaper. Running 2 hard disks shouldnt be noisy. I have 2 in my current PC and i cant hear them at all.

*plum*

Raid 1 is a good ideaas Grim has said. Obviously you cannot connect/unconnect a HDD whilst the pc is turned on but you can jsut remove it once it has shut down and you won't have to alter any settings.

If you dont want to have to do that, you could always look into getting an external USB HDD. the USB format is "Hot Pluggable", meaning they can be connected or disconnected whilst the PC is running.

The USB method will have speed issuses as obviously its not as fast as RAID.

Regards,

Mirror way: The question is when C drives dies can I simply boot from the backup drive?

External way: Can I take out the external USB HDD and stick it in the main PC and boot from that?

Sorry for such dull questions.

Serial ATA is "hot swapable",only problem is the with the power supply as that usually cuts out if you plug any thing in without restarting (i know this by experiance )



If a drive fails then simply go out and buy another one of the same type and swap it in. Both of the drives have to be THE SAME else the mirror wont work, or after usage the drives may end upcorrupt due to data being written at different speeds.

*plum*

If I cant find a THE SAME drive and thats a possibility it should still work with just the one 1 drive?

My PC is already set up and running and so RAID may not be an option this time (will do it next time).

I am thinking an external USB drive is best.

It is possible to boot from an external USB HDD, take a look at the link below:

http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm? ... 678&page=9