I have two hard drives in my current desktop. 40 GB Maxtor used for OS/programs and a 160 GB WD SE that I use for my data. Anywho, I have been using a program that monitors the SMART info from my hard drives and Im finding my 40 GB may not be in the best of health. Anyone have any recommendations of drive imaging programs - I would like to schedule a drive image once a week or so to my larger drive.

If you comment on one please let me know how easy it was to get back going after a failure with the program your using.

I reccomend Norton Ghost, its made to fill your needs.

Add_ I dont really understand your question. I think you want to know how easy it was to make the image? just a few clicks, as for accuracy, its good.

My questions was have you ever done a restore and how well did it work / how easy was it.

Ghost has saved my ass many times. I "try" to back up every week and keep two weeks worth of backups on spare hard drives. I've got some documents, graphics, and pictures dating back to the early 90's that I've never lost.

If you use Windows my favorites are:

1st choice = Rembo autobackup, a bit tricky to setup but by far one of the best automated backup solutions out there. (if you can get your hands on a copy that is)
2nd choice = Norton Ghost, great for simple stuff and extremly easy to use. However Don't even think about ghosting your computer with norton ghost if you use logical paritions or RAID volumes.

If you use linux:

1st choice = Dump/Restore, old school all the way baby
2nd choice = Take your pick, you have a ga-gillion options for free out there

I guess to answer your question directly, if you have one partition on one hard drive ghost is the easest and most affordable way to do it. As far as automating it goes, im not sure norton has an automated procedure for ghost out of the box but its easily done with a batch file which could be schedualed to run in my scheudled tasks.