XP Mirror

Use Norton Ghost or a RAID setup in Mirroring feature. But w/ the RAID you will need another of the same model/size drive. My main machine motherboard was purchased w/ an onboard 2 channel RAID function (you can get an add-in RAID card). I also purchased 3 of the same exact size/model 40 GB Maxtor Drives, set it up just the way I wanted it set up in RAID Mirrored Array mode w/ 2 of the drives fully synchronized.

I then removed the second channel drive & replaced it w/ the 3rd. same size drive, within about 35 min. of clicking on rebuild I had a perfect mirror of drive 1 on drive 2 and a full beginning copy on the spare drive. Whenever I perform a full cleaning and know everything is just right, I will swap in the extra drive in place ofdrive 2 & sychronize & update the drive for a complete out of case backup (always making a ghost image of both drives first just in case, but have yet to need these ghosted images).

The plus to this system is that if a drive were to fail in the Mirrored Security RAID setup, one click & I can continue (then remove the drive & send it in for warranty replacement), while I can continue to work on not losing any data or worktime. When the replacement drive comes in, mount the drive in the box & click rebuild.

first of all the easiest and fastest way to ensure that your data is safe in case of failure is to have a on-going backup, don't use any version of adaptec take two (which comes bundled w/ ez cd creator) that program is unstable and not dependable.the use of a second hard drive is your best option in speed and automation. i keep my data seperated from the OS (extremely important!!!) when the OS crashes it always becomes a nightmare to retrieval of data that resided there. use PowerQuest's partitionmagic to create an (1) OS and (2) data partition. then use powerquest's driveimage to take a snapshot and copy that drive and partitions. if your system ever becomes corrupt, simply boot up to your image file and your back in business as though nothing happened. now if your drive physically fails, the second hard drive is already loaded with multiple partitions, keep at least 1-2 GB unallocated to re-install OS and the remaining as your backup data partition, you'll resume where you left off

i also highly recommend making weekly backup's to removable media such as cdr (i'm not a big fan of cdrw, it's not too dependable for me with being rewritable, and as cheap as cdr's are you can't afford not to use them

good luck