Norton Ghost 14 is a great program that takes care of your backup needs. With an easy to use interface, you can back up any part of your hard drive including direct HD cloning. All features available are clearly labelled. Whether you want a onetime backup or backups on a weekly schedule, it can be done within this one program.

You can also store profiles which enable you to set predefined backups, and run them when you choose (if you want to back up your work data to a flash/pen drive but you dont want to do it on set dates, you can tell Ghost what it needs to do, and at any time you can hit backup and it only backs up your work files). Setting up regular backups is easy and takes minutes. The programme's startup screen ensures that you have backed up recently and if you haven't, you are presented with a huge "At Risk" message... the good news is, it tells you how to fix it.

My favourite feature is the ability to clone a hard drive entirely, so if your active hard drive breaks, you can plug in your backup and you entire system opens from the backup. Windows starts and you can use your system again. Obviously it's only as recent as your last backup, but it's a great feature, to avoid down time. I also found, unlike other backup software, that it doesn't slow your computer down when it's backing up, so you can continue work, whilst it backs up your data. I have had no crashes, or corrupt data with my weekly backups, run for about 6 weeks. With 10 extra backups for my flash drive.

I'd thoroughly recommend Norton Ghost, for total backup protection. Get something that works.