[Julio]

I don't know the correct term for what I want to do. Here's what I have setup: Drive 1: c & d partitions, WinXP and programs on C, and my data on d. Drive 2: e & f partitons. On drive 2, I have left the e partition empty and use the f partition as a backup for my data. The reason I left e empty was that I figured if drive 1 failed, I could just load WinXP on partition e and have a fully functional drive with all my data on it (partition f).

Is this the best way to do what I'm doing--as is, I have to manually update my data files on partition f. Is there a beter way to do this that won't cost me any money and that automatically keeps partition f updated? BTW, drive 2 is half as big as drive 1 (d1: 80GB, d2: 40GB). Thanks.

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Well if drive 2 was the same size as drive one I'd suggest a RAID mirror array. But with your setup I'd just suggest writing a DOS batch file with commands along the lines of:

xcopy D:\My_Documents F:\My_Documents /d /e /v

For example this command copies (and verifies) all files that are newer from D:\My_Documents and its subdirectories to F:\My_Documents (I recommend moving the "My Documents" folder to the D: drive).

Then all you have to do is execute the file whenever you wish to update your backup (you could even make it a scheduled task).

[Kurt_Aust]

Well if drive 2 was the same size as drive one I'd suggest a RAID mirror array. But with your setup I'd just suggest writing a DOS batch file with commands along the lines of:

xcopy D:\My_Documents F:\My_Documents /d /e /v

For example this command copies (and verifies) all files that are newer from D:\My_Documents and its subdirectories to F:\My_Documents (I recommend moving the "My Documents" folder to the D: drive).

Then all you have to do is execute the file whenever you wish to update your backup (you could even make it a scheduled task).