External Backup Method - Alternate procedure

Question

I normally do a backup of my Macintosh HD partition to an external drive using SD (all files to an image on external drive) and also do a backup of BOOTCAMP when within Win 7 x64 using Acronis True Image (again using all files option to a single file image).
Naturally both procedures above are executed using 'file by file' backup which is quicker than sector by sector backup. I have a 1TB WD Scorpio Blue stuffed in the Macbook Pro with apprx 700GB partitioned for Mac OS 10.6.5 and the remaining 300GB allocated to BOOTCAMP, the external backup drive is also 1TB with equally matched sized partitions
I would prefer to change my backup/copy method to just copy the 'entire disk' within the Macbook pro and mirror that to the external disk of the same size, a snap-shot mirror in one foul swoop with no messing about between two different OS's as stated above.
What would be the best procedure for this?
Would it involve booting externally from my OS X SL DVD disk and then running a disk copy within the utility? Best practice suggestions appreciated.

Answer 1

I have indeed had three drives with hardware failure already and another three or more instances where the data and/or structure of the data on the drive, i.e. B-Tree file index structure on a drive, had become corrupted and in some cases could not be repaired by any utility software as it was beyond fixing. First drive hardware failure was a desktop Lacie d2 but luckily it was just one of the connection interfaces that failed (firewire 800), fortunately it had a triple interface and I was able to salvage the data through the USB-2 interface only, this was probably a good thing as the drive was excessively noisy anyway and therefore may not have lasted much longer. Second drive to have hardware problems was a portable WD MyPassport Essential 1TB, for some reason this produced a fault when only a few months old and was not recognised by the OS, however bizarrely if I turned the unit upside down and laying it flat (as these drives are not the standing-up type being portable) and then plugging it back into the Mac, it would then work! Because of this I then got a portable Seagate GoFlex 1TB ultra portable in order to transfer the data from the upside-down WD MyPassport Essential and then take that back to the store, however this turned out to be the worst mistake because the Seagate GoFlex 1TB Ultra portable completely and entirely failed after only a mere 4 weeks of careful use,it would not appear at all on the desktop and no software could help it with some reporting a hardware failure code. It's worth pointing out that a desktop Western Digital MyBook Studio 1TB drive that I've had for some time now has been fine, I've had the MyBook Studio before and during the problems encountered with the two small mobile drives I'v had mentioned above and the MyBook Studio continues to perform well (even with the taxing task imposed by Super Duper when using the convert image to Read-Only mode for backing up all files - you can usually hear the drive become very noisy with the read-write head going ballistic as it converts & compares)
From the responses to this post I can see there's quite a lot to bare in mind when doing a sector by sector backup, such as replicating file-system errors or damaged data from any bad blocks, non defragmentation. I usually do a verify/repair & permissions repair first, as well as to clean up the system with utility software that runs the Mac daily/weekly & monthly housekeeping scripts in one go, the clearing of logs, resetting and emptying of all browsers and by then some automated background utility has completed it's full disk scan in the background for any bad blocks. To be honest I'm looking forward to the day I can affordably buy a decent 1TB SSD to eliminate the mechanical wear & tear factor with improvements increasing with the performances, wear levelling management, MTBF (mean time before failure - usually 2 million hours/228 years, for decent ones), transfer rates and power saving gains. OWC sell what appears to be a very decently specified 480GB SSD and soon they may have a 1TB version with lower future pricing per GB. Must point out though that Pure Silicon have had a One terabyte 1TB SSD SATA 2.5" 9.5mm MLC (multi layer cell type) drive for 2 years now since January 2009 when it was announced and the even more vastly superior SLC (single layer cell type) at an unheard of 500GB two years ago, but these are for military applications as well as medical, government and specialist enterprise server applications.. so they wont sell you one, but consumer companies are catching up.
http://www.puresi.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id= 4&Itemid=9
Anyway, I've been going off subject a little myself here so in light of the different methods available, I think what I'm kinda looking for was a method of just backing up the whole drive in one go without having to do so from within the two separate OS's installed. Also this would be useful if or when I eventually get a 1TB SSD and therefore transfer the Mac OS partition and Bootcamp Windows partition straight over without upsetting them in case there would be problems using other methods. It's obviously not that straight forward doing sector backups, so I will have to experiment when I get another drive. Also being put-off with the failures I've had from previous external drives I'm therefore considering the RAID 1 disk mirroring route for my next external drive (cost permitting though).