Have everything you want to back up loaded on both hardrives.
This would be a dual boot system with identical activation codes.
Install winxp on your slave drive.
Install your programs and sync them-cmpm
1) "Have everything you want to back up loaded on both hardrives." -
presume that mean the files/folders (i.e. not the installed software/OS)
2) do you know, if you add a new drive to your computer, can you still activate as shown in your link above?
3) when you say -sync programmes- what exactly do you mean

??
would regristry have to be the same on each drive - or not?? (different paths relevant?), programmes often store (or try to) info all over the place ...
4) dont understand this I'm afraid -
Other benefits of this setup is you can work with files on your master from the slave (Or the other way around). Because none of them should be in use, that would free up some operations that require the file to not be in use.
-cmpm
-well I guess I do understand but probably not of importance to me
5) Would an advantage be that if the main drive dies, you can than boot up the other?
Imho if you're doing backups, you should be doing them "right" - incremental or differential sets to some external device (fileserver with mirror or parity RAID, or external USB/FireWire/eSATA drive). Preferably with a set per day, so you can guard against partial corruption etc.-f0dder
of course
cmpm's idea could be done
as well as incremental backup ...
