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Ok, so after yet another virus scare from my brothers side of the computer, I decided to tell him he HAD to invest in an external HDD so we could back stuff up in case I end up for whatever reason having to reformat, or we just suffer some inexplicable data loss.

I'm not sure exactly where to start though. I've done some googling, but not really sure still. One thing that sounded appealing, albeit initially time consuming, was the idea of making a ghost image of my main HDD, which could be immediately restored to the HDD in case of any problems.

With this in mind, we have a 1TB external HDD, and a ~200GB windows partition. Do I have to back up the ENTIRE HDD or can I simply create a ghost image of the windows C:\ partition, to be restored if need be? Also, how can I set this up, so that space that's not needed for the backup, is freely usable for other purposes? (I'm thinking music/art storage to be honest)

Any and all help appreciated, any extra info needed, just ask.

That's what I'm working on myself right now. What I'm doing is I grabbed an old 40gb, reinstalled Windows, then updated with all latest patches and installed the software I always have on any installation. Whenever my lazy butt gets done with that I'll make an image for quick restore purposes.
Files and other data I keep on another drive.

I don't know why you would only want the windows folder backed up, that's the one folder that you can restore with a windows disk and not lose personal files. I believe you can setup Windows to backup itself periodically. Windows has a backup utility that lets you pick what you want.

Alternatively, you can buy a matching size harddrive and setup Raid 1 (mirror).

I was referring to the Windows Partition, not the Windows Folder. I also have a currently un-used Linux partition. o.O

look down.

What?