Looking for backup solution after HDD failure

[cr3flo]

Yes, my HDD does not show up in my bios so I'm pretty sure it's toast. I took my computer with me on a trip to Kansas City and when I got back my HDD started making barely noticeable noises, so I knew that it could potentially be damaged. I was about to make a backup CD for all my files and settings when it crashed the next day...bummer. Lost everything I had been working on for a few months since my last backup CD. Now I'm looking for the best backup solution so this doesn't happen again.

Ideally, I would like to have an external hard drive that is a complete duplicate of my main hard drive including operating system, settings, and program files. I would like to be able to keep this external hard drive in my safe and take it out every so often to update it as I use my computer without having to re-copy the entire image. That way if my main disk ever fails again, I can simply install a new one and use the external hard drive to copy everything back the way it was. Is this possible? If not, what would you recommend?

 

[montyuk]

my personal solution is to use two 1tb external drives connected to my main machine, i use a 120gb drive as my internal drive on which i have installed my os and any programs that need installing, i store all my media files / archived files on the externals, the reason for the small internal drive is to pretty much force me to keep it from getting bloated with useless programs and also stops me from storing anything unnecessary on it.

now i only have one external drive on all the time, the other is switched off unless im backing up my files to it, this way if anything happens to the main external it wont carry over to the other one, also reduces wear and tear on the backup drive.

also i have heard / read reviews of externals saying they have a lower life expectancy that internal drives (feel free to shout this down) hence why i use two instead of a single.

im sure others can post some image backup software, ill recommend synctoys 2.0 for folder backup as im using this at the moment and im finding it fast and very simple to use.