I want to create my own install disks

Hello Everyone
I would like to know if it is possible to create a set of rescue disks that I could just feed into the computer one after another until my machine was restored to the way it was before the crash. I seem to crash it alot and I really hate to reinstall all my programs one by one. Major Attitude's sticky on backing up mentions Nero Burning ROM and I own that software but the instructions are not meant for a dummy such as I. I would like to fdisk, format and begin restoring without using each app's install disk. That way I would have my machine back in precrash condition in a matter of minutes. I use a lot of backup software but in the event of a crash I don't have access to it so whats the use? I have three HDDs, C:, a 70 gig with 33 gigs used. This is my system disk and then I use PowerQuest DataKeeper to back up the entire drive to E:, a 120 gig HDD. I also have a True Image backup archive of C: on that drive. But like I said, in the event of catastrophic disk or system failure I still would have to reinstall everything. I have another 30 gig HDD that is partitioned into one 10 gig and one 20 gig which I use for "D"Keeper's alternate backup site and downloads respectively. I hope this is enough info but if it's not please just ask. I thank you very much.
SYA Cmdr Chill
Any configuration suggestions would be very welcomed thank you very much. I built this machine and it is an ECS P4M800PRO-M
with an Intel E6300 core 2 duo with 2 gigs of DDR2 RAM. I run Windows XP SP3. Thank You Very Much!

 

The concept behind making regular back ups is to put important data on external storage devices (hard drives, CD/DVD, USB thumb drive) so if your main hard drive takes a dump (drive C: ), you still have your tax documents, resume's, addresses, family photos, and the like, on the external device, safe. Then when you reload on drive C:, you can access all the saved stuff. Unfortunately, you cannot back up actual programs in their installed form on your PC. If you have SATA or an IDE RAID controller, you can set it up for 'mirroring'. For example: you'd hook up 2 identical hard drives (two 250gb drives for example) and the RAID sees them as one drive. It automatically makes an image of drive A to drive B in real-time, so both drives are always identical in content. So if drive A should fail, you have a duplicate: drive B. Drivers can be backed up using WinRet or DriverMax or something similar.

 

Thank You dlb for your reply. I have been doing this all wrong. My mobo supports raid setups but I do not have identical drives. Would it be possible to make two identical partitions on different drives? I don't see how this would protect me against malware though only mechanical failure. Wouldn't viruses and such be "mirrored" to the backup drive? Could I use the leftover space on the larger drive for data backup? I guess what I'm asking for is a "bulletproof" data backup configuration. I was thinking use the 70 gig raptor as my system drive and my 160 gig partitioned to 70/90 with the 70 gig partition used as the raid mirror and the 90 gig partition as data backup. Does this sound like it would work? I use this machine for video editing and I read somewhere that the system and apps should be on one drive and the storage (video) should be on another. It was supposed to improve rendering accuracy. Thanks again for the help and I look forward to your reply.
Cmdr Chill

 

Hi Halo it is good to hear from you again. I thank you for the input and the Acronis link. I am thinking I will try dlbs' mirroring suggestion in addition to the Acronis backup software. Do you have to start from scratch with raid 1 or can I enable it in the bios and a mirror is made automaticly?
Do the HDDs have to be identical or can I partition two the same? I'll let you know how it gos. thanks Cmdr Chill