The inability to create a bootable 100% backup of a live Windows machine seems to be a real stumbling block.

Here, I do confess to having exactly one machine with WinXP-Pro on a hard drive. I've yet to figure out how to prevent having to do a full OS reinstall in the event of catastrophic drive failure.

The best idea I have so far, is to install a second identical drive, and boot from Linux/USB to bit-clone one drive to the other. Slow, and not terribly practical.

The second best idea is to do something similar, booting from Linux/USB, except do a file-by-file copy to the second drive (both drives ntfs). But for this scenario, I have no idea how to make the backup disk "bootable". Perhaps someone here knows a simple recipe for that?

Thanks