I need to periodically backup my hard drive in case of failure. Can anyone recommend the best way to do this? Is an external hard drive the way to go ?

 

Thanks

i used acronis true image, bloody awsome it was, you can do a drive clone, and do backup's and all check out http://www.acronis.com/

i personally recomend this, and i would use an external drive to be extra carefull

i use mirroring raid

 

its where you have 2 harde drives & 1 coppies the othere all the time if one failes you just pop a new one in & start the mirroring again & away you go

i use mirroring raid

 

its where you have 2 harde drives & 1 coppies the othere all the time if one failes you just pop a new one in & start the mirroring again & away you go

 

on my main pc i have a PCI RAID controler and that is perfect in RAID 5, indedpendent from any os also so if your main harddrive dies you still have all your data just how you left it

Personally I'd stick the files you want onto DVD. It's easy, robust and best of all cheap.

 

If you do decide to go down the RAIDed drives route make sure you read up on them first. Cheap integrated raid controllers can wind up being problematic. The nForce 4 nvidia raid controller is terrible and is known to corrupt data resulting in the dreaded BSOD.

 

If you go external I would get a housing with an eSata connection rather than USB. USB is just too snooze when it comes to moving large quantities of data.