Backup methodology after severe failure of laptop and loss of data

Hi folks after finding this wonderful forum and associated advice already received. I was badly burned by a sever failure on my laptop and can only hold my hands up that I’m guilty of not putting the proper processes in place to ease the heartache and aid the recovery of my machine. With this at the forefront of my mind I’d like to ask the following question:
When my machine is fully rebuilt (it’s a 500GB hard drive)

(1) Should I separate the O/S and programs from my data. i.e. is it good practice to have the O/S and programs on the C: drive and data on the D: drive (same drive partitioned)

(2) I’d like to have the following process in place


Backup up my machine to one of my externals and then backup this external to another external. Therefore I’d have 3 copies of data at any given time. In an ideal world it would be great if the backup process would run in the background and when a file is changed then this would be reflected across my external hard drives. I believe you may have to have a RAID configuration for this. In the event of not having this I could live with backing the machine up say once a week (there’s never that much data that would change during this time) and in the event of a failure I’d only lose a weeks’ data.

(3) there will also be some files (itunes) on one of my externals that wouldn’t be on my laptop due to it’s size. I’d like to ensure that this is copied to external no 2 to ensure piece of mind in the event of failure of external no 1

(4) Ideally if I made a large change to my machines hard drive say add 500 photos then I’d like to commence the backup on this day to ensure I have a copy of those precious moments on my externals.

What is the best methodology to complete this?

What would the recommended software be to do this?

It would be best if the one piece of software covered all scenarios but maybe that is not possible.

Thanks in advance...

Thanks Colin & Barry I appreciate your responses. I'll look at the free options, but buying Acronis isn't a big issue providing I never get intio this position again. If I use Macrium (as in image) does this mean do an image to one external and then the same image to another.. i.e 2 jobs? or image to one and just copy to another?

Barry as in Acronis what version and what is the name of the suite that performs this. As they have multiple options I believe. And does Acronis run constantly in the backgroud performing these inc updates?

In an ideal world you'd be working at your PC and the backups are streaming to your externals, then as you change any files these are sync'd as well. But this would probably hog any resources you have and kill the machine.

what I'm trying to achieve sounds simple enought it's just putting the processes in place to accomplish it..

Thanks you.