Maybe I shouldn't of assumed that he already knew this...

This is all true, but it would be easy enought to generate a gold disk of his current drive structure, and then set up the new drive configuration, and re-image from the gold disk. It could easily be done in an afternoon, and a RAID would have the added benefit of automatically backing up files on the fly. I have 2 systems on my home network with raids, not striped though.

For the amount of data he is talking about backing up, the simplest solution would probably be to invest in a good tape back up drive, but this is also going to be pretty expensive. I am not sure how much he is looking to invest.

How have you identified the data that needs backing up? Are you backing up just your important files or the entire file structure? If you are doing the entire file structure is there a reason? In most instances it's silly to back up the whole OS, because you have your original install disks. What I do is just back up my data, and I keep back up copies of the installers for every app and third party extension I use. I currently back up to DVDs.

I have to go with RHS on this, I think the easiest to use, and the cheapest solution for this massive amount of data would be a striped RAID. RAID Controllers are cheap, drives are cheap. And there is no user interaction required to back up the files.

There is one other issue with RAID 1, and it's a risk. RAID 1 users are less likely to take regular backups or ghosts/images of their system. A certain complacency seems to set in when there's the perceived security of a mirrored drive. There's the assumption that come what may ...a backup exists. Except, of course, that it is not a backup.

The same feature that provides the protection can also be the user’s downfall. RAID 1 maintains a faithful copy on the second disk of everything that’s on the first. Warts and all. Mistakes made, files irrecoverably deleted, virus caused issues, shredding etc are all duplicated on the second disk. Users tend to forget that RAID 1 does not protect against errors, it protects only against one disk going faulty.

Tape drives are not cheap especially if you need to back up 300gb

Excellent point. Unless he's got a nice chunk of change to invest, my first recomendation would be that he figures out if all of this data REALLY needs to be backed up. Really the only files that need to be regularly backed up are those that are frequently changed and modified. Your porn collection can be backed up once and it's good. Same with MP3s and such. You may want to develop a more comprehensive back-up strategy to maximize your value.

I'm down with RAID guys and my mobo does support it. But I want the backup to be outside my computer so to speak. I want to use the various external drives that I already have.

Hev take a look at this one.

Genie Backup Manager

I'm glad that I mentioned RAID Although it doesn't help if you have a fire in the house and both hard drives are destroyed Let's hope that doesn't happen

Thanks... that program seems like it could work for me.
Much appreciated.