What is the Best Way to Back Up Entire Dual Boot HDD including two OS?

[robertq]

Hi,

I would like to back up my whole Hard Disk including OS & all partitions few times a day everyday so that if something goes wrong I should have another Hard Disk Ready To Go in matter of few minutes without having to do anything.

I have been doing this with a software called XACT Copy that makes an exact copy of the whole hard disk on a slave drive with OS & all the settings & programs & all the data. In case something goes wrong with one drive I can just replace it with a second drive in less than a minute by connecting the second drive.

The only problem with that software is that it works only with Windows XP & not Windows Vista.

But now am switching to dual boot system with Win XP on C drive & Windows Vista (Ultimate) on the next drive to learn Vista before I switch completely to Vista as my main OS.

Can you guys tell me how do I achieve my above objective ?

Raid -1 is not a good alternative because if Virus is caught it will corrupt both drives and I am not sure if Raid-1 will work with Dual Boot system.

Please help me.

Thank You Very Much.

 

[LookinAround]

Look at products from Acronis.

I use Acronis True Image Home for imaging my drives (some dual boot). True Image doesn't keep a "hot stand-by copy" vs. providing a backup image copy on an external drive(optionally compressed, up to you) which can be be easily recovered.

 

[gbhall]

Total backup several times a day is surely overkill. A full image once a month or so, plus some means of backup up changed data on a frequent basis is better and less time consuming.

I can recommend SyncBack http://www.2brightsparks.com/ which is cheap at $30 and very, very effective. Possibly not the easiest interface to get to grips with, but that is because it is so comprehensive.

I set up backup schedules with various time lengths, and basically forget about it, it does the job.

 

[raybay]

Use a USB enclosure with two hard drives back up each partition to their own drive... or use something good like Seagate Free agent. Those hard drives perform a backup with a press of one button... and are trouble free. We have a large number of clients on them. Less trouble than Ghost, Partition Magic, Acronis, or SyncBackj.