How do I image my hard drive for backup? Or do I just need to backup the files?

Posted by NoCatharsis on Super User See other posts from Super User or by NoCatharsis
Published on 2009-11-09T20:17:28Z Indexed on 2010/06/11 10:43 UTC
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Windows

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backup

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image

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freeware

I have never imaged a hard drive, so I don't know what software to use or how to prepare my system for imaging. Is this the best way to backup? In the past, I've always just kept a copy of my important files on an external drive and in Gmail or DropBox for smaller stuff, but it would be nice to just take one image and restore from that if something ever goes wrong.

Thanks for the help.

EDIT: I'm sorry, I forgot to mention the OS. I would like to do this for my home and work computers, which are Vista and XP respectively. And actually I'm about to upgrade to Windows 7 at home, so details on that would be appreciated too.

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