Full Backup into a USB hard drive

[edong]

My boss wants me to backup her hard drive into a Seagate USB hard drive. I do not know the make of her internal HDD. Belarc Advisor or Device Manager won't show it. (There is a reason why I do not want to open the PC). Used space is about 20GB. Which one is better, clone it by making an image file or copy the "actual" files? In either case, can you recommend some freeware program to do it? Her OS is Windows 2000. I wonder if the Windows 2000 backup utility is reliable and can be easily restore when time comes. Thanks.

[rhegedus]

Is it a system drive?

[edong]

Yes. I am wondering if I can back it up to the USB drive and then if the need arises, I can transfer them into a new hard drive and boot up without problem.

The Seagate USB drive has 160GB capacity so I can do both "actual" files and "image" file backups.

[jameshgross]

Get a copy of Norton GHOST it will backup to a USB drive or a network drive or other HD in the computer. GHOST is also very reliable.