I hope my question is sufficiently within the topic to be tolerated here .....

Having been alarmed by these issues I want to make a better effort at backing up stuff. I use the word "stuff because I already do backup but I want to do a better job of it. I've just ordered a new 3tb usb hard drive which I plan to connect and disconnect solely for the purposes of backing up to isolate it from any trouble.

My main PC is purely home use and I don't want the backing up processes to become so that it "overtakes" me and I become lazy. My thoughts are to take a whole fresh image of the main drive (I use seperate drives for programmes and data - and already have backing up drives - but these are left permanently connected and are intended solely for data and for HDD failure on one of the data drives) and to use Secondcopy for routine backing up of all my data drives.

I'd appreciate recommendations as to whether the current Windows 7 backup programmes would be OK for systems and programme backup or whether there's something else I should buy to image the main drive. In fact - I should ask - is full disk regular imaging ie not incremental the best approach? I plan to do this say once a month or so.

Any pointers on software, processes and procedures written loud and large and simple would be appreciated.