I am looking for assistance in determining the best way to protect my
home PC from data loss (goal #1) and to allow relatively easy system
restore and recovery (goal #2) with mimimal impact to performance and
storage efficiency (goal #3).  I am happy to have this be a
combination of hardware/software setup, and am willing to spend
approx. $100+ on additional stuff, if necessary.

My setup:  Windows XP self-kitted tower PC, Athlon XP 2100, Soyo
Dragon 333 MB with onboard HW RAID, 2 WD 100GB (7200rpm) HD's, both
NTFS format.  Have one external 100GB USB2/firewire HD, IBM drive.  I
also own Powerquest DriveImage v.8 and PartitionMagic v.6.

I can (and have) mirror the 2 WD drives with hardware RAID 1.  I like
the protection from disk failure, but worry about system corruption or
OS foul-up, or virus damage.  No back up.  I would like to be able to
make an image of the boot drive (mirrored or not) with DriveImage, but
in order to image, DI must restart in DOS...in DOS the system does not
recognize the external USB HD.  Originally I had wanted to mirror the
two drives, then make an image every week or so to the ext HD (kept in
a fire safe) to enable system restore from a catastrophe.  No go.

I could re-partition the main drive to put my vital data in a separate
partition (to allow DI to image from within Windows), but then I don't
have a full image of the boot disk for restore in case the whole
system goes south.

What about RAID 5?  I could purchase another 100GB int HD and
(supposedly) get 225GB net storage with redundancy.  Perhaps I could
then image the boot and other partitions to the array itself, then
copy the image files to the ext HD every week or so.

What makes the most sense?  Are there other products or workarounds to
allow images to be taken of the boot partition more seamlessly? 
Ideally, I would like all of this to be automatic.

Hi nc_twindad, 

This is a good question.  Data backups are too often overlooked until
disaster strikes.  It sounds like you've got hardware failure pretty
well covered with the RAID 1 setup, but it doesn't do much for you if
software ruins your OS install.  Using another drive and switching to
RAID 5 wouldn't do much to solve this either, and anyway I would
imagine that your motherboard can't handle RAID 5, which would mean
purchasing a RAID controller as well as another drive.  This could get
expensive pretty fast!

You already have a copy of Drive Image, which is a decent package, but
has various limitations that I'm sure you are aware of.  It doesn't
support backups to USB devices, and it doesn't allow you to make an
image without rebooting to DOS.

I think your best bet is to get a copy of Norton Ghost 2003.  Ghost
has proven itself to be a fantastic tool time and time again, and the
new version is particularly well suited to what you want to do because
it now has a Windows interface that doesn't require you to boot the
system from a boot disk in order to make backups (though you would
still need to use the boot disk to restore a drive image).  It has USB
support so you can make an image of your drive on to the USB drive you
have attached to your system, but it also has full support for network
imaging, so if you have a network with multiple machines you could
make images on to the drive of another machine.  If you aren't backing
up huge amounts of data, Ghost also allows you to make images straight
to CD or DVD.  It allows you to use file compression, so if you have
100GB drives to backup but your external drive isn't quite so large
you should still be alright.  The new version also supports USB
connection to another computer, and supports USB 2.0 to local devices.

What Ghost doesn't have, to the best of my knowledge, is any way for
you to automate the backup process.  Fortunately making a drive image
is a very simple operation of about half a dozen mouse clicks, but if
you need complete automation you might need to consider another
package.  I hesitate to offer suggestions because I don't know of any
applications in your price range that offer truly reliable automated
backups.  Ghost, while in that ability, has been an excellent and
extremely reliable tool in my PC repair arsenal for years.  Oh, and to
reassure you, it does support NTFS.

You can check out the Ghost page at Symantec's web site here:
http://www.symantec.com/sabu/ghost/ghost_personal/
It's available for purchase right from the web site for $70.

And, before you ask, my gushing praise for Ghost comes from experience
and not from any affiliation with Symantec!

I hope Ghost proves to be the right solution for you.  Please let me
know if you need any further information.  I did some searching around
for shareware/freeware products that do the same thing, but there
isn't anything out there that I feel worth recommending.

Best of luck,

Hibiscus

Search strategy: drive image software, drive image automation, ghost
drive image comparison

A decent answer with minor errors.  Essentially amounted to a
suggestion to try the other software product, which I did.  My MB does
support RAID 5 and Norton Ghost (like DriveImage) DOES REQUIRE
rebooting to DOS to create an image, despite both companies'
advertising to the contrary.  Seems to be when you need to image the
boot partition, but I think my question made it clear that's what I
needed to do.  Ghost is much more user friendly at any rate due to its
boot disk wizard process.

My comments are as follows:
A backup process won't be helpful with just fancy hardware without
strictly following schedules
for backup.  A complete backup could be helpful to get the system into
an usable state.  It
could also be used to handle hardware failure(disk drive crash), if
you could maintain the
backup in an identical harddrive and use a harddrive enclosure for the
active harddrive, since
it will help in reducing the downtime.  The only issue being it cannot
be incremental and it
takes a lot of time, but should not be a problem as you do it only
after significant change to
your installation(say every time after installing significant
software, or significant amount of
critical data buildup).
The one that could be handy is the incremental backup. It needs a
suitable software inorder
to be space efficient as you will be doing it often(a software install
breaking the system etc.).
Additional dedicated harddrive(probably a fixed one) could help
overcome the space issue
allowing sufficiently long incremental backups(which could be
automated too).
RAID could be helpful, if you would like to recover from an hardware
failure that happened
before an incremental backup has been performed.
The external storage could be helpful to supplement the need for
additional storage for
incremental backups.  A standalone media backup using cdrom is
preferable to using
precious harddrive space for the same.

The only thing that you need to be wary of the backup process is the
ability to document
and remember each incremental volume as well as the full disk image
backups.  Without
sufficiently detailed documentation it could become a game of trial
and error.  It would be
advisable to have this description in hardcopy as well.

If you are really playing a lot with experimental software, it might
be better if you
could use a virtual host such as vmware for such purposes, since it
will allow you
sufficient time to identify the stability of a system before making an
install that could
corrupt the system.

These are just few of my ideas and hope you find it helpful.

Regards
ldavinci-ga

Can you purchase a large drive (if your actual os/data is 100gb,)
purchase a 100gb or bigger? If this is possible, I would suggest
Ghosting from drive to drive (not a compressed image that you need to
boot in dos), Just "clone" your raid onto the backup drive with ghost.
 If your computer goes down, just boot up the second one.
OR you can use something like a dlt tape backup (incremental) with
Veritas or some similar backup software that can catalog all your
data, so you can just recover what you need, in Windows.
I set up a 100gb drive as a master, a 200gb as a slave.  The slave
just as a ntfs partition (no os) dedicated to periodic nt backup
images of my active drive, and most importantly an original image with
all the basics, os, service pack, office, etc.  that I know works. 
This saves me the trouble of reinstalling the OS.
You can easily incorporate any of the 3 strategies to your raid set
up.  Either that or a $4,000 SDLT or Ultrium tape device :).
good luck
ag