I had a 12V bus on a power supply that was out of spec more than the 5% allowable. The result was a slow file corruption as if I had picked up a boot sector virus. took me six months to find out what was causing my HD failures due to the file corruption. This did not destroy the drives but the data on the drives. I have been using WD Data Lifeguard for years to copy my primary boot drives in several computers. Has worked great. I have two removable HD bays in each computer. I have 2 to 4 backup drives for each computer. This has saved my ass many times.
You may want to try a realtime replicator on an external HDD. For $100 you can offer yourself such a device and get the free Karen's replicator here http://www.karenware.com/. This setup will continuousely compare your c:\ to your external HDD and write/update the new files. If you need to image your C:\ (which is different from backup) have a look at www.majorgeeks.com under backup. There is a ton of good imagers there for all prices.
Actually I have heard great things about karenware but when I run it I always get a few errors and have no idea where they are or what to do about them -- so I am not confident that my backup is useable.
If one were to install a 2nd internal HD + get Casper XP 3.0, one could clone the primary HD in about 1 minute at any time. Once per day before shutdown?
ur right, the replication process gives few errors. I suspect (without having check this further) that these errors come from various windows hidden files that cannot be replicated by the program. But don't worry about those, what you wanna make sure is that all your files are properly copied to the HDD. Now if u want all files to be copied then an immager should do the job for u.
You really don't want "windows hidden files that can't be replicated by the program".... Cloning programs copy every HD sector exactly [at least they're supposed to]. "Imaging" is the budget approach to "cloning". If you can spend the money on an extra HD or two, cloning is much better, faster and safer. Acronis and Casper are the two big players in this marketplace. And if the software included with a new HD doesn't perform perfectly [which is sometimes doesn't], looking elsewhere is not likely to be rewarded. Backup capability is a BIG deal to me. I've tried several of the other cloning programs... both free and not. They ALL were either slow or unreliable. I have used and HIGHLY recommend both Acronis and Casper XP... you can't go wrong with either.
Yes, it's possible. I've had a few computers over the years.... and two PSU failures. You can always get one at CompUSA or any of the big retailers.