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>Ok, that sounds reasonable. I think I'm going to go with a program that Mike Cole mentioned: Acronis True Image 10 Home
>
>I was going to get an external hard drive (great deal here: http://www.jr.com/JRProductPage.process?Product_Code=WD+WDG1T5000N&JRSource=DealTime.datafeed.WD+WDG1T5000N#productTabShipping ), but I wonder if the following scenario has merit.
>
>I have a laptop and a PC. I have a wireless network so they can see each other. There is plenty of space that is not being used on both hard drives, and would like to backup the laptop image to the PC hard drive and then the PC image to the laptop. It sounds like I'm looking into a mirror facing a mirror suddenly, and everything will eventually implode, but it somehow sounds like it would work. Anyone have any thoughts? Thanks!

Check if the Acronis version works for your networked scenario - one thing the versions differ on is the kind of targets allowed for the images.
If you have ample space, setup different partions - this adds a small security layer (mostly against yourself).

regards

thomas