The other program is Acronis True Image. The current price is $49 but if you have a Maxtor or Seagate hard drive you can download their respective recovery programs from their web sites. This is Acronis modified so only Maxtor or Seagate drive can use it. Note these are 104 meg downloads.

Acronis do put the program on sale but that is usually just before a new version appears, they have just released a new version so there might not be any sale for a while. Current market conditions might cause that to change.

I have Acronis, but there is a free program available, I have not used it but know many who do.
DriveImage XML

It is best for any of them if you have an external usb hard drive to back up to rather than cd, and the prices are dropping so much on the external hard drives it makes it pretty easy to pick one up.

Norton Ghost once was the leader but in my opinion Acronis is tops now. these imaging programs image your entire hard drive, Operating system and all.

you need to refer to the thread currently here asking about backup hard drives it has very good info you could use.
Another question about using an external hard drive

Thanks,that pretty well answered my question. Now ,does anyone have a recommendation on an external hard drive? My currant one is not Seagate and is 80 gigs and I have only used 11 of that, so I would not need a very big one,thanks.

I got seagate for the length of their warranty plus they are good drives. I got and like the seagate free agent PRO there is one that is not a pro version also. When I was looking I originally was going for a Western Digital but reading reviews online found many having heat issues and a friend bought one at the same time I got my seagate and had to send her WD back the next week for that reason so I was glad I chose seagate.
Lacie also makes very good drives they are usually more expensive though. You should be seeing some great prices on externals real soon. Buy.com has had some great prices.
Of course you should be aware of what type of format they come in, for me the fact the seagate came as NTFS was a plus.

Thanks again. One more ? NTFS format means nothing to me, I have a 1 year old re built machine running winxp pro, would'nt any external drive work?

well some come formatted as fat 32 and some as NTFS, you can reformat them to which ever format you prefer but windows xp is set up as NTFS so having one that is already set up as NTFS is just one less step to take for me since that is what I want, I like less work in my old age.
Choosing Between File Systems
NTFS vs FAT
those might help you better understand the differences.

is just one less step to take for me since that is what I want, I like less work in my old age.

Thanks again,can't argue that!

ravencajun
would this work?
Seagate FreeAgent Go 160 GB USB External Hard Drive ST901603FGA1E1-RK