Backiing up

[#1]

Time and again  I've been going to improve my backup and restore ability; it's time to pay a visit to my local PC World.
At this time I back up my image files to a second non-operating system drive in my computer  and also to DVDs but as for the system itself - in fact all that is on the drive, I have been thinking about an external usb connected drive.
My question is do you think an external drive is a good backup scenario and also is it possible to simply copy the entire o/s internal drive and in the case of a total wipe out be able tp restore full function by simply transferring the external  drive contents to a new internal drive.

[#2]

You would have to take an image of the drive first, using a program such as Norton Ghost, Paragon Drive Image etc.  Some of these are available as trials or full products on Magazine cover disks (got my version of paragon hard disk manager 8.5 from a computer shopper DVD... Full version)
Once you have taken the image then you can transfer the image to an external drive.  This is exactly as I have it. I have a Drive image, and backups on a second internal drive, also backed up to an external USB drive, as a 2nd archive. Most of these Image programs, have their own restore CDs, that boot their own OS in case of a disaster.

[#3]

I've got my system C drive backed up on a 250GB external USB drive using Acronis True Image Home 9.0 - this was free on a magazine DVD!! Haven't had occasion to do a full restore yet tho'!!
Penfold beat me to it!!

[#4]

Backing up to an external drive is probably only better than a non-system internal drive if you are keeping that external drive physically separate from the computer. If you had a fire that that damaged the computer and the external drive was sitting next to the computer, both are likely to be damaged.
If at least one of your drives is a Seagate or Maxtor drive, you can get free disk imaging software from them (Disc Wizard or Max Blast 5). The software has Acronis True Image built in.

[#5]

A full restore does not take long, bout 15mins it took my system.  This was however, not a disaster recovery, but my system had become bloated, so decided to backup the documents, restore the system, and restore the docs.  all in took bout an hour.
@johnJ,  didnt know that!!  learn something every day.

[#6]

Thanks everyone, looking at the advice from all  I'm going for an external drive and drive imaging software. That seems to be the best solution for me.

[#7]

Good solution a pen drive for docs which you can move away from pc is worth while a 4 gig isnt dear now and must be enough for most people.
I use a google mail account and send anything really important to there so I can get it anywhere in the world I just keep it to real important stuff but with 2 gig you have space for a fair bit