Ken,
An internal second drive backup does have some of the potential
disadvantages that you mention. My personal belief and experience is that
those occurrences are very rare (Except for a virus attack, I've never had
one of those things happen). Much more likely for the average home user is
non-recoverable "C" drive crash, a virus infestation, a drive physical
failure or a self induced screw up by visiting a "bad" site or opening an
infected email attachment. Reversion to an internal second drive would
allow recovery from any or all of those. Thus I don't consider it the
weakest of all backup forms, in fact I have found it to be a very good
approach and have used it to "recover" many times.
That being said, I agree with you that there are better forms of backup. My
personal "best choice" --- a belt, suspenders and thumb-tack approach, and
the one I use myself is:
1) A second internal HD, physically identical to the "C" drive.
2) A third, physically identical HD mounted in an external eSATA enclosure
3) A fourth HD stored in my bank safe deposit box. (protects against
computer theft or home fire)
Using a good clone app (I use Casper 6.0), I clone my "C" drive to the
second internal and external drives about once a week. About every 6
months, I insert my fourth HD into the external enclosure and clone my "C"
drive to it, then return it to my safe deposit box.
All HDs are WD 320gig drives, about $50 each, and the external enclosure is
a VanTec eSATA unit $35-40.
Sounds complicated but in fact is really quite simple. The cost of the
extra hardware is not trivial, but for me, the peace of mind is well worth
it. As I said in a previous post, a very valuable side benefit is that I
can do all the experimenting, fooling around, etc. I want with my "C" drive
with the knowledge that recovery is just a click or two away.
As an aside, thanks for all of your past posts and good advice. Hope they
will continue in the future regardless of what MS does with their forums.
Well I know far less than any of you, but I got the impression that an
array of two SATA drives, set to keep one identical to the other, is
done in order to have an always present backup.
A friend gave me a mobo and two SATA drives, but I havent' yet
assembled a computer around it.
If I eventually do, won't I have my HD backup, like the OP wants?
What you are planning on doing is the weakest form of backup there is.
I don't recommend backup to a second non-removable hard drive because
it leaves you susceptible to simultaneous loss of the original and
backup to many of the most common dangers: severe power glitches,
nearby lightning strikes, virus attacks, even theft of the computer.
In my view, secure backup needs to be on removable media, and not kept
in the computer. For really secure backup (needed, for example, if the
life of your business depends on your data) you should have multiple
generations of backup, and at least one of those generations should be
stored off-site.