Hello guys, Happy new year to you all.
I frequent this forum just about every day, although I end up hardly ever posting, usually because if I have a problem it's already answered, or if someone posts a problem I know the answer to, that's already been done by someone (or everyone!) here, and usually in a more understandable and 'straight to the point' approach than I could ever accomplish!!
There is an unquantifiable yet very real character to the cake forum that exists almost as a buss output, of which you all make the sum of its parts.
Anyway, for anyone still reading, as the title suggests, I powered up today and got a blue screen on bootup. I nearly died there and then because with all the great offers on music software over the holiday season, cake included of course, I've spent a small, actually not so small, fortune on download applications. Luckily it booted ok on retry, but I always see blue screens as a warning!
I would just like to ask, does anyone know of a backup method I could use before my life is destroyed in a haze of blue light?
I have other drives and things, and have procrastinated thus far about properly backing up. But it got me wondering whether I can simply back up the entire drive somehow?
cheers!

I always have 2 hard drives. One backs up the other in case of failure, and all my important stuff is backed up to both.

Have you ran a SMART test to confirm that its definitely a HDD that's the problem? What does the blue screen actually say for the error message?

Blue screens don't necessarily mean there's anything faulty, they can be caused by drivers, or incorrect hardware settings and most are easy to fix.

Windows 7 has a built in back up utility that is reliable.  I backup to an external USB hard drive using the built in windows backup.  I also select "create a drive image" with my backup.  I have used this method to essentially clone my drive so that I can install a new drive and recover my whole computer.  I went from a 120GB SSD to a 256GB SSD and restored my saved drive image using the built in windows 7 backup tools.
 
I copy my project files to an external drive and backup my computer (with drive image) daily on another external drive.  I would have to lose three drives for me to have an unrecoverable problem this way.
 
You can also install or use an internal drive(s) for this purpose instead of or in addition to external drives.  I use external drives because that's just what I had.  Ideally I'd use my SSD as my main drive and a HDD internally as my backup drive with my projects folders and files copied to an external drive as needed.
 
You could also spend more money and setup and install a RAID drive system.  I chose to use external drives instead of a more expensive and complicated RAID system.  But for heavy duty drive performance and reliability, RAID is the way to go.

Hopefully you're using "per project folders" with your projects . . . so you just copy those to an external drive for project back-ups (project file and audio data) . . . but backing up your whole system drive is another matter, and perhaps you need to look at some back-up software like Acronis to do a system image. If you're at the stage of blue screens, it may be too late for a system image. I'm sure someone on the forum with more knowledge of this will offer some help with this. Blue screens are usually symptomatic of a hardware issue.

Hey guys,
Thanks for the quick answers. Vab, good to hear that bsod's don't always signify absolute trouble. I forgot to  mention that the os and sonar etc are on an SSD. I have some past expierience with mech drives, a fair bit actually, but seeing an ssd do this has put me on red alert! Overkiller, I set the system to back up nothing when I first got it, although if win 7 has a way of mirroring the entire drive I need to look into that asap!

noynekker, thank for the reply. I think you share my thoughts of taking this as an 'abandon ship' warning!

With mech drives I used to roll my eyes to the sky when this happened and alway felt 85-90% sure I'd get it back, and most of the time I managed to. But with an ssd, I'm not really expierienced or knowledgeable about them as hardware entities and thus my sudden run into the arms of cake forum!

Yes . . . Control Panel\System and Security\Backup and Restore . . . create a system image (to an external drive) is  a back-up method I use . . . but never had to restore yet ! (here's hoping) . . . that's why I suggested Acronis, because I have cloned an Sata drive and had it work flawlessly . . . cloning SSD drives is trickier, you will have some reading to do.

Thanks noyekker!!
 Cheers everybody, from these answers alone I've got enough info to be going on with already.
The win native backup sounds interesting as does Acronis.
Feeling a lot less panicky now! It's taken literally 2 years to get my system running so well. Took the same amount of time with the last one, then it all blew up in 2010! Totally loving the drama of being a Sonar producer owner tho!
Never got Logic because I wanted a power PC, but just recently I'm wondering whether I've been in the right boat all along. The press seem to be buzzing with that sentiment lately!

Sonar is great and works well with a high end gaming PC.
I just impulse bought sonar after seeing the recent upgrade offers. Don't regret it at all, it works wonderfully and dkes everything I need.