Ok, I have the USB Hard drive...

[TallBill]

I have a 500gb internal HD, and a 500gb external USB drive. I'd like to back up the entire contents of my internal HD maybe every week or so. What method should I use? Make an image, and if so, whats the easiest way?

 

[Roguestar]

You can use Acronis to make scheduled total or incremental backups to an external drive.

http://www.acronis.com/homecom.../06-30-atihome-sc.html

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Are you going to be leaving the USB drive connected 24/7? If so, then defniitely get Acronis for scheduled backups / imaging.

 

[MichaelD]

A 3rd party backup/imaging program is indeed the best way to go. But, Windows has a free, built-in backup utility called NTBACKUP.

Just type NTBACKUP at the Start\Run prompt and follow the wizard.

Now, are you wanting to backup the CONTENTS of your C drive or take an image or picture of your C drive so you can easily restore it should your C drive get infected, or hard drive dies?

ps
Remember this; the best HD backup is to a physically separate HD. Backing up to another partition on the same physical drive is useless if the drive dies.

 

[TallBill]

The USB drive doesn't have to necessarily be on 24/7. None of my data is super important, mostly just a pain if I lose it. I'm thinking that I'll want to go the image route, although not entirely sure.

I just used the tool in Vista and it made like 800 zip files on my external. Looks like this option might work too?