Backing Up External and Internal Hard Drives

Hey,



What is thee BEST way to back up a hard drive. I'm totally clueless as to what one has to do to back up a hard drive, to be honest. If I have a 250 gig external, do I need another 250 gig to back up the first one? Please tell me this isn't the case. I really don't want to have to buy another separate hard drive and waste 250 gigs just to back up the first drives files.



I heard something about imaging - what's that? And is it a method used to back up drives?



Any (and ALL) help is greatly appreciated.



Thanks!

What information on your current hard drive would you not want to lose?



For me it's pictures, MP3 music files, and some game modifications. I have about 6 gigabytes worth of storage space on several USB flash drives and that is enough for me.