Copy a hard drive on disk?

[ZENARCHER]

Hello,
I just formatted my HP laptop and reloaded all my favorite stuff.
It takes a long time to get everything right, so I was wondering
if there is a way to copy it, just the way it is now to a disk or another
HD, so next year after I've mucked it up with all kinds of crap I could
just use the disk or HD to restore it to the way it is now. My c drive
has 7.64 gig on it right now, and I only have a cd burner on this
laptop.

Thanks Zen

[redwudz]

There are programs made for that purpose, a couple of popular ones are Acronis True Image and Norton Ghost. I like True Image a little better. I'm sure there are some freeware ones also. Some other members can probably give you their favorites. You can use CDs as the data is compressed and doesn't take as much room on the backup as it does on the boot drive.

The problem with trying to copy directly without a special program is the hidden files, and just having the data doesn't mean you can restore the boot drive from it.

EDIT: Here's a few, some should be freeware: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=freeware+disk+backup+programs&btnG=Google+Search

[Krispy Kritter]

Norton Ghost will do what you want. It works best with a 2nd HD. You just create the image on the 2nd drive. When you need to restore, you boot from the Ghost cd and restore the image. It will also backup to cd or dvd.