Just wondering.
Would it be possible to backup an entire hard drive to another, including the windows installation, programs, user documents, registry, everything..? Litterally a clone if possible.
Should be able to, but I think some redirections in files might break if you change the hard drive.
Elmo?
Google also helps a lot btw
It is possible with certain programs. You wont be able to just simply drag them from one drive to another, since Windows wont let you.
I do however highly recommend you to just make backup files and then reinstalling instead, as you'd probably be left with some issues if you choose to clone it.
I've been learned that its .. well, possible if you have exactly the same computer where you are going to use the backup on. As in, your current windows installation won't like it to suddently run on a complete (other/)new mainboard.
I had to backup a system a couple of weeks ago (upgrading my 'TV' server failed miserably, long story).
I used a combination of GParted and partimage, both are included in
SystemRescueCD
Unfortunately, it's quite a complicated process as you'll need 3 hard drives - the source, backup location and destination. I don't think you can safely do it directly from 1 drive to another. The backup location can be on another computer on the network, but it must have enough free space to hold the backup (which you can save compressed if you need to, but it'll take longer).
If that's the way you want to do it, I'll see if I can find/knock up a guide tomorrow.
p.s. you want 686 on a vaguely modern PC.
586 was the original Pentium/AMD-K5; 686 is Pentium Pro/II/III/AMD-K6, which basically everything is compatible with these days. 786 is P4/K7, but very few packages are built to require it.