making a h-drive image..size has to be same?

[CD32]

Might sound like a stupid question but I've decided to back up my hard drive by making an image to a second drive..will have to look into how...dunno if it's possible on win7 or have to use what I've heard of..acronis..don't know yet..never done it...(shame )

Anyway..to make an image of my hard drive..does the second drive have to be identical? share any qualities?? ie...size etc?? Or will any do as long as it's at least big enough...was gonna buy a second caviar black 500gb (as is installed) but can't seem to get hold of one now.

Windows has info about your hard drive in device manager etc therefore I would have thought booting up with a backed up image on a different drive would mean the system would end up with incorrect drive info...unless it would auto detect a different drive & update settings?

Also gonna have to look into what would be best...raid for constant backup..(I know there is risk here...virus's on both...power surge killing both drives etc..plus more power usage...Or backing up an image every month & storing the drive away..

Tnx for any info...Andy.

 

[CD32]

Tnx Skyripper..that just about answered my queries...

I made a bootable recovery cd last night...I've heard of the drive docks & yeah it would save a lot of messing about...just need to order a 2nd drive now...(don't seem to be so cheap anymore!

So a drive with an imaged partition (instead of drive) & no boot sector would boot the pc as if everything was identical from the original? (apart from drive of course)

Tnx again...Andy.

 

[CD32]

Cheers Ripper & Raptor...If I remember rightly some people had probs with the power going on portable usb drives..or something like that...so kinda put me off em...plus I'd want to shove it in the pc anyway as a replacement should the main drive fail.

some useful info above which is appreciated.

If you have copied your C: partition to somewhere else, and that doesnt have a boot sector - you can't boot off it.

If you want to do that, image the whole drive, not just the partition. This will let you clone your boot drive to another and you can just put it in the cupboard. You can boot off that.

You got it in one..this is what I was a bit unsure about.

Tnx again for the posts & help....Andy.