I am building my business computer running xp Pro. I have 2 hard drives, 1 for backups. What is the best way or software to duplicate my daily backups? I have been told bootback is good however I have never heard of it. Please make suggestions. Thank you

NovaStor backup is one of the easiest to use. and you can back up to a hard drive or to CD or DVD disc's.

While Ghost will dot he job, I have seen even experienced people trash and installation they were trying to back up using it. which is why I don't generally recommend it.

I've used Ghost and I like it. It is a very powerful DOS based program that can make backups to CD, DVD, internal hard drive, networked hard drives. Human error can *7%K! things up if you don't have just a single partition on a single disk. I have a RAID 0 array with three partitions on it. I gave my partitions names like Windows, Programs, Storage instead of C, D, E. My Windows XP install is spread across all three partitions. Most Windows conponents are on Windows, all programs (even Windows programs) are installed on Programs, all my emails, music, video, data files are stored on Storage and the operating system has been setup to automatically put things in the proper place. I create an image of all three partitions on a second internal hard drive and test the image to see if it's good. It reads as good, so I reinstall everything from the image as a test and try to boot into Windows. Everything fails because Ghost installs partitions in alphanumerical order. All my Windows components (which were on the first partition) got switched to Programs because the letter P comes before the leters S and W in the alphabet. All my programs (which were on the second partition) got switched to Storage because the letter S comes after P and before W in the alphabet, and all my data (which were on the third partition) got switched to Windows because W comes after both the letters P and S in the alphabet. During the boot cycle Windows goes looking for your profile which in my case was on Storage partition but had been moved to Windows partition by Ghost. The operating system didn't know it had been moved so it went looking for my profile on Storage and couldn't find it there and the boot cycle stopped. I have since corrected the problem by making sure that all the partitions list their drive letter first.

I am a great believer in keeping things simple and the less geekish you are, the simpler it should be. Ask the forum and you can take your pick of the advice given!
My backup is to a NAS (Network attached storage) and is run from Backup Genie. I believe that if the system crashes then there was reason for it and a ghost restore is probably not the best option; this is why I only backup the data files and not the whole windows installation.
One of the reasons for the NAS drive is that is deals with the backup from my laptop as well - and it is sufficiently portable to be locked away when I leave the office.

All I want to do is back up my operating hd to my storage internal hd. What software should I buy or download?
Software

Acronis TrueImage 6.0

I believe acronis is up to version 8 or 10 now. most of these programs have downloadable trial versions. download a few like NovaBackup, Acronis, Etc. and see which one you like,.

Norton Ghost v9 is absolutely great for making partition based backups. Infact it save my **** a couple days ago when my Laptop hard drive failed. Well, sorta. my Ghost for my boot partition was 4 months old so I didn't get too much out of it, but it did make recovery a lot faster.

But thats about all its really good for. Incremental backups are sorta useful for making really fast backups, but not too useful.

What I could use now is a program in a by schedule basis backs up directories or drives of my choosing. =)

Genie Backup Manager - the free edition has a couple of annoying restrictions but you might be able to live with that.
http://www.genie-soft.com/products/g.../download.aspx