Automatically Duplicate 2 Internal Drives

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Hi,

I am about to purchase a new Dell Vista 64-bit system. I originally
intended to have a pair of 500gb to 640gb hard drives in a Raid 1
configuration, so I would have automatic duplication of both OS and data
files. If one drive failed, I could just swap in the other, and be good to
go.

The particular system I'm looking at doesn't offer a Raid 1 configuration,
only Raid 0. The system is otherwise exactly what I want, at a very good
price, so I'm trying to figure out an efficient work-around. Systems that
do come with Raid 1 installed and active just don't have the hardware I'm
wanting.

Basically, I want to accomplish the same thing as Raid 1 - have 2 identical
internal hard drives, including all OS files, boot files, partitions, etc.
so the duplicate could be swapped in if the primary one were to fail. Is
there a utility that will automatically do this, or one that I can schedule
to do this on a daily basis, for example at night?

If so, I would buy the system with a single HD, purchase a second HD myself
(cheaper than from Dell directly), and then just install and use the utility
to duplicate the primary drive, and have it automatically update it on a
nightly basis, so I don't have to think about it.

Any suggestions on an efficient way to accomplish this, and the
tools/utilities needed?

Don

P.S.:

Getting a system with an installed Raid 0 configuration would require me to
reformat/reinstall everything to switch to Raid 1, which is possible, but a
time consuming task I'd rather avoid if possible.

Getting a system with a single HD, and no Raid active, and then installing
the 2nd drive, and activating Raid 1 is apparently not a simple task. From
what I've read, it might require cloning to a 3rd drive, wiping the 2
drives, then activating the Raid 1 from the BIOS, copying the image to the
Raid 1 system, etc., etc. Not a very elegant solution.


.

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