Carbon Copy Cloner type software for PC

[Gipsy]

I'm taking the Mac in tomorrow for its hard drive swap, and after reading this thread I decided to go down the belt and braces route so bought carbon copy cloner. Now I've got a Time Capsule back up, and also the CCC disk image on another separate hard drive. I'm most impressed with the CCC. I've tried it out, and I've booted up from the external hard drive, so all being well I should be OK when I get my Mac back.
I was so impressed it set me wondering whether there was similar software available for the PC. I'm currently keeping a disc image of a separate external hard drive using the Windows 7 backup and restore facility, but wouldn't mind having a 3rd party piece of software just as a fail safe, but with the ability to boot up straight from the external hard drive.
I'm sorry for the long post, and if you haven't already died of boredom I'd be grateful for the collective advice.

 

[1130cc]

If I need to image PCs I always use DriveXML - http://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm

Whilst not the same as CCC, it does give you an image that you can also browse to extract individual folders/files.

There are a couple of ways to make it abootable recovery
http://www.runtime.org/data-recovery-live-cd.htm
http://www.runtime.org/peb.htm

EDIT:
Forgot to mention.......

DriveXML is FREE

 

[cookie]

in the days when i bothered with PCS, Acronis saved my arse a few times.

looking at their website now, it appears to now be a cloud backup service where it used to be more like CCC. maybe an older version would be more suitable?

 

[Womble]

We used to use Norton Ghost for this sort of thing, but we moved on to a Linux based solution because that is cheap and does what we need. However, for home use, googling for Ghost should throw up a few good alternatives.

 

[Deleted account 190920001]

http://www.todo-backup.com/products/home/free-backup-software.htm I use the paid for version of this at work but this is free for personal use. You can backup to image or you can clone the drive to another which you can boot from.

 

[Gipsy]

http://www.todo-backup.com/products/home/free-backup-software.htm I use the paid for version of this at work but this is free for personal use. You can backup to image or you can clone the drive to another which you can boot from.

Thanks Marki. Think I'll have a look at this tonight.

 

[Backmarker]

Probably no use to you but I use Windows Home Server (version 1) to backup all the bootcamp windows partitions on my macs. Hate windows, but WHS is remarkably Mac-esque in ease of use and general relibility. Doesn't do the incremental backups, but does the whole re-bootable backup that I use CCC for on the macs.

 

[boredrider]

Windows Image

Have a look at Macrium Reflect. Free - and does what it says on the tin.