Question about backing up/mirroring drive

I want to back up my computer completely, everything, exactly the same. Basically, I want to mirror the drive, so that I have two that are identical.

To do this, I would need two drives, and the one that I would be copying to would need to be the same size or larger than the one being copied, correct?

Is there any software that does this in Windows, or would I need to make a boot disk to do this?

Would any implementation or RAID do this?

 

Correct. I may be mistaken, but in order for RAID to work, I believe both drives must be the same size. This is if you want to use the motherboard's built-in mirroring options. If you simply want to make a one-time copy of a drive and put it away for safe keeping, then it doesn't necessarily have to be the same size. The same thing applies if you'd be making manual drive copies on a schedule; let's say you'd just want to make a back up of your hard drive once a month or so, again, you wouldn't need to use the motherboard RAID options, and you could do it manually using one of the programs listed below. As long as the target drive has enough space to hold your data, it'll be OK. However, some imaging/mirroring programs will not function if the target drive is smaller than the source drive.

You can do it either way. Personally, I recommend using a bootable utility. I think they're more reliable and thorough, but that's just one man's opinion. There are many quality programs that will mirror your drive, some are free, and some aren't. Some motherboards with RAID capabilities will do the drive imaging for you when you configure the RAID settings. Here's some pograms that are free, and have good ratings. I haven't necessarily used them, so I can't really 'vouch' for them or provide any tech help:
* http://majorgeeks.com/DriveImage_XML_d4919.html *
http://majorgeeks.com/Digital_Dolly_d5183.html
http://majorgeeks.com/EaseUs_Disk_Copy_d4845.html
* http://majorgeeks.com/ImageMaker_d3914.html *
* http://majorgeeks.com/SelfImage_d5588.html *
* http://majorgeeks.com/XXCLONE_d5534.html *
http://majorgeeks.com/Partition_Logic_d4780.html
http://majorgeeks.com/Partition_Saving_d5753.html
And those are just the FREE ones!!!! The links marked with *asterisks* are programs that (I think) will run from within Windows, the others are bootable. I personally use Norton's Ghost to image one drive to another. It isn't free, but it's fast and reliable. Ghost lets you create a boot floppy or CD and will auto detect the drives (IDE, SCSI, SATA) and it copies the partitions FAST, and if the target drive is smaller than the source, Ghost checks it to make sure there's enough room to hold the source data. For best results with any mirroring or imaging program, be sure to make the source hard drive as lean as possible; remove any and all junk files and run a defrag (or two) before copying. Most of the major hard drive manufacturers also have free downloads on their web sites for imaging hard drives, and sometimes this software is included when you buy a new drive (for example, I know Western Digital used to supply a utility CD with their new retail drives). More programs (both free and paid) can be found here at Major Geeks:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/downloads8.html
http://majorgeeks.com/downloads3.html
Good luck! I hope this helps!

:major
[dlb]

 

It sure does, thanks!