Hi. My primary C hard drive started clicking and stopped functioning. I have used a hammer and freezer and got it going intermittently, enough to make a back up of data, but having to re-install, re-register, update, tweak settings etc for all my software would be a real pain.
It is connected to a secondary D drive (SATA RAID) which I thought was mirroring the primary (mistakenly) in case of this eventuality. The secondary disc is fine but is a copy of how me primary was about a year ago. I want to make this a clone of my primary so that when the primary dies (very soon) it can function as a primary.
I can't find any software on my computer to do this, also tried right-clicking to see it was an option, looked in Control Panel etc.. Do I just copy a the whole C drive contents to the D drive? If not, what....? I don't want to risk having to start from scratch with my D drive if it doesn't work.
I am currently trying to copy the entire C drive to a USB hard drive as a back-up.

You may want to check out an imaging program, such as Acronis True Image Home. But I would be prepared to just do a complete rebuild. Backup and imaging programs really only work best when the backup or image was made when the system was working perfectly.

Thanks for helping Digerati, My hand is now forced as the drive has died. Windows XP is working fine on what was my D drive, though programs are now out of date and some drivers need updating. What about leaving this now as my primary disc and buying a new secondary one? Any issues it might throw up?...

If Windows was installed on "D", moving it to the "C" position will totally hose up the installation as the registry will be pointing to "D" for system files and folder locations.