I've been thinking about buying either Ghost 12 with a CD or
Acronis 10.0 with a CD. Both claim they can backup everything
on your PC.
You can email them with your questions. They answered me.
acronis 10.0

It sounds like you want to move the data more then just back it up. You should be able to accomplish that with an external drive.

The question is, do you have enough music or other files to warrant purchasing a 750 GB drive over a 320GB

A couple things to remember, the external drives are great for a temporary storage medium, but I would rather have them on a solid medium as a backup such as a dvd. They do go bad as often as, and sometimes more often then internal drives.

I have been working on computers for a long time, and I never understood why someone would back up the whole computer versus just their data. Most of the programs do not have the ability to restore your computer from a backup.

You should have the setup cds or dvd from your computer so you should be able to (if needed) reinstall the operating system from scratch should the drive go bad or you get a virus that kills it.

There are programs out there that can backup the whole system, but why would you want to?

Raid, This is where you have 2 or more hard drives running the same data/ os. If your computer came with the ability to do a raid setup it is usually just 2 or more hard drives with the same data on it.

For a detailed description it would be best to do a google search for it. There are different levels of raid. In my experience, the lower levels of raid aren't of much use. I have seen cases where the main drive dies and the data is not readable. In the higher levels of raid, it is spread out or stripped over several different drives and protects you from data loss.

Over all, I think for home use it is just best to use a good backup strategy for data (CD or DVD or Tape) of the actual data and should something bad happen, you can restore the data and load the OS from scratch.

Here is a link that might be useful: Raid defined

I tend to agree with mrlizard on backing up just my data rather than the whole thing. Backing up everything is only relevant at that very moment. Do a few things and it is not the same computer data wise.

I created a folder called 'Data' and then point all my programs to sub folders inside the data folder. Then it is so easy to do a backup as often as I feel necessary.

Regarding hard drives I cannot imagine who would/could fill a 720 gig HDD. Today's Best Buy flyer has Western Digital 160gig HDDs on sale for $59.99 each meaning you could buy 3 for the price you quoted for the one 320gig.

Agreeing again with mrlizard I would prefer to see the extra hard drive installed inside the computer rather than another item cluttering up my desk. That is unless you have more than one computer and need to external drive to pass data from one to the other. If you now have one HDD and one DVD/CD writer installed you might well be able to install 2 more hard drives with no problems.

Not too sure if RAID is a significant advantage to the average computer use. Geeks may well find the benefit when seeking higher benchmarks. I set one up long ago but was never sure if I had any noticeable improvement in speed. I tried it just to prove to myself I could do it successfully, much like installing 2 or more operating systems on one computer.

Quick look at Geeks dot com
under a hundred for a 500GB Seagate 7200RPM SATA

Get the technology advanced cousin to sit down with you and help pick out a hard drive to buy online from pricewatch or somewhere discounted online.
He should be able to install it to in a jiffy when it arrives.

Another consideration I have thought about. IDE drives are on the way out very soon, they have been around forever. How old is your computer? Can you use SATA drives which can then be migrated to a new computer you purchase or build down the road? SATA drives are much faster than the older IDE drives for data transfer.

Thanks all. Very helpful so far.

Mikie I wish I could get cousin to sit down with me, but since he's in Colorado and I'm in DE, be a bit hard to do. He's really very good at computer stuff and I've always found his advice to be helpful.

He agrees that it's better to install another internal hard drive then go with external one. As mentioned here external ones seem to fail more often.

secsteve,
Can't help you with the other questions but as far as: "Can you really backup an entire OS as well as everything on the drive?"
This is from one of my previous posts:
I use 'Acronis True Image'with a desktop and an external drive. The Acronis 'Secure Zone'(backup) is on the external. In fact, had some problems today and restored my entire drive in about 20 minutes. You can use Acronis 'Snap Restore' which will allow you to start using the drive while it is backing up (backs up critical system files while you're working).
It's not free but the time it has saved me in restoring my PC was well worth the price.
You can buy it online or 'box'version at one of the major stores.
Acronis will back up the entire drive 'sector by sector' and restore a mirror of what you had before, to include the operating system, programs, and settings.
I have used Acronis for 2 years now with excellent results.
There are others out there including 'Norton Ghost 12'. Google 'drive imaging software'.

Witz

Here is a link that might be useful: Acronis True Image 10

secsteve-
All your cousin is saying is to get the lowest price per GB. And you have to do the math right...you've got the numbers inverted. 750GB for $300 = $0.40/GB and a 320GB for $180 = $0.56/GB. The first one is the better deal per GB (although it costs more in total). Figure out what you're willing to pay ($100, $125, $150?) and then shop for HDs at about that price that give you the most GB.

Thanks everyone for all the input. Kudzo9, as you may have noticed, math isn't my strong suit!

I'm going to go with 500GB at $149.99. It actually works out to be cheaper in both aspects. The 320 is $179.99 and the 700 $299.99. Total cost per GB is $0.30 for the 500 GB.

Best Buy also sells the Acronis True Image 10 you talked about railheadwitz and a couple of people I talked to highly recommend it.

Thanks again for eveyrone's input. Much appreciated.