Cloning a drive and mirror backup techniques

Hi all,
I have configured my new Mac Pro and loaded new apps and am at a point now where I want to put together a 'backup plan' for backing up work files and a clone drive of my OS/apps drive. I currently have my OS/apps drive (the orig 320GB) in bay #1.
My 'work files' drive is a seagate 500GB in bay #2. I am not familiar with 'mirror backup' technologies but an ideal backup plan for me would be to have a drive in bay #3 that automatically mirrors anything I do on my 'work' drive in bay #2.
Can anyone help me out with suggestions to accomplish this or have a suggestion on a different backup plan? I also would like to have a clone OS/apps drive in bay #4 in case my main OS/apps drive should go down. Again, an ideal situation in this instance would be that any updates or app adds that I make on drive #1 would automatically be mirrored on clone drive #4. Is there a way to accomplish this without having a RAID array and drives? Also, is there a way to make a clone of my up to date OS/apps drive in bay #1 on a drive in bay #4 without having to load all the software and OS again?
Thanks in advance for any input.
I have found this forum invaluable, especially since upgrading to Mac Pro.
As I was contemplating a while back on the upgrade and asked in this forum
for input on moving to the 24" iMac (which is a great machine) vs. the Mac Pro, someone suggested that the iMac may be more cost effective in the short term but the Mac Pro would ultimately be the most cost effective in terms of expandability. I am so glad I went with the Mac Pro.
Best,
Dennis

If you stay on the small side 1 or 2 external FW800 or eSATA drives work rather well. If you start having 5 or 10 1 - 15 TB hard drives then the mentioned sled type external drives are nice. I have really too many external drive cases. I finally purchased a 4 drive Sonnet eSATA, FW800/400 & USB2 interfaces which requires only 1 cable for any of the 4 types of connections & have easy to change hot-swap drive sleds.
Drive makers usually have s Server class hard drive for the best reliability. Seagate's are called their ES2 line of drives. They come in sizes up to 1 TB. Their Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB Hard Drives still have a 5 year warranty, but are not rated for 24/7 use.
FW800 is an easier to use external drive connector scheme. And as others have mentioned, a back-up can be done slowly in the back ground so does speed really matter. I do my backups to both internal & external drives. Internal for speed & ease. Then external for safety. If you really have information that could cost you a lot of lost time, effort &/or many then an off-site back copy is very important. This could be kept at your parent's, kid's, brother's, sister's, relative's, friend's or storage off-site storage unit.
My son uses SuperDuper for his clones. I use CarbonCopyCloner most of the time, but I also have a copy of SuperDuper. This is what I use to copy my working system to a new drive, then I keep up the old drive as my backup system. All you have to do is keep the files up to date, or reclone them when there is enough changes made. I like to do the updating & then use the system to be sure that it works way of doing things.
the beauty of all of this is that there are enough different ways that you can find 1, 2 or more of them to meet your current or future needs. As someone else said what works for him, may not work for you.

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