clone HD for emergency backup?

hello im looking to make an almost exact copy of the hard drive that is currently inside of my AOA-150 to another hard drive so that in the case of a hard drive falure i will be able to swap the drives out and pick up almost exactly where i left off without having to re-install or configure things and avoiding serous down time.

can this be done without the use of USB Memory drive or CD/DVD Rom and how would i go about doing this,is there any free programs?

I am running Vista.
I am using an AOA-150.
The internal HD is 120 gig.
The Backup HD is 100% identical to the internal and verified to be the exact replacement HD.
I use a SATA to USB adapter to connect the Backup HD.
I do not have any other hardware available at this time.

Please help.

 

Use a back-up cloning software like Acronis True Image.... that's what I use, works perfectly. Clones a 100% exact image of your HDs.

 

Will Acronis True Image work without the use of a USB thumb drive or a CD/DVD Rom and if so is there any free alternatives that work like Acronis True Image?

 

Seagate sent me this link, quite some time ago. I never needed it but it might be worth a look:

ftp://ftp.cmsproducts.com/$cmssupport/BBExpress7-Seagate.exe

 

so i downloaded this prog. installed it, erased my backup drive in preparation for the new full backup i was going tp do with the prog mentioned above. tried to run back up a couple of times and each time the prog said there was an error.... oh well ill just find something else and run a backup with another program tomorrow.... nope i went to sleep and when i woke up my laptop was destroyed... unfortunately there was a hard drive password installed threw the bios as well so now that the laptop is useless well i cant access the drive from another computer even due to the bios hdd password.. what a nightmare.. i have a specialist trying to do a data recovery on the drive now to the tune of 350.00$ i have 12 years of business data in the drive id pay 10 times that if i had to but wow....

could this have been from the program above or maybe the aspire one just took a crap at the wrong time....
the thing was dead ... just a green power on light, no screen light, no fan, no keyboard, no nothing.

 

This is terrible news! Sorry to hear it.
I wish I could offer more but as I mentioned I never used it.
Have you tried bios recovery?
It worked for me when I had a driver failure install and my Acer went dead.
In fact it seems to have worked fro quite a few people here.
http://macles.blogspot.com/2008/08/acer-aspire-one-bios-recovery.html

 

it wasn't your fault thanks for trying to help... no i got so angry that i took the hard drive out and destroyed the aspire one actually. just got my aggressions out i guess. hopefully this data recovery guy will save my last 12 years worth of work and as much as I've stood up for the acer in the past, i don't think ill be buying another. this situation just reminds me how valuable stability is. anyways thanks for the help.

 

also norton ghost