Best way to create an image of entire Hard disk?

[Buchanan0204]

Hi,

I have two SSD's in Raid0. I am getting really low performance out of them recently and would like to reinstall my operating system.

However, incase nothing improves I would like to make a complete image backup of the array. What is the best way of doing this, using what software? It's around 100GB, so would have to be stored onto an external drive rather than dvd's.

I would everything stored, not just the main system files etc. How would I go about restoring it? Would it be done from a boot drive etc?

Any help?

Thanks.

 

[Buchanan0204]

Went from this a couple of months ago.

To This!

 

[Buchanan0204]

If you're using Windows 7 you can use the built in facility to create an OS image.

How would I go about restoring that image to an empty formatted drive?

I think there has to be an OS already installed to replace that image. Not sure though.