True Image (WD Version) Clone vs image backup question

I don't see a specific forum for the WD version but I believe the answer will be the same regardless.

Had a hard drive fail dead (no boot) on me this weekend. No real backups of it, though it was really just a utility computer anyway and I had a second hard drive in it with bulk of data there anyway as well. However, the reinstall of xp windows, service packs, driver etc was a long painful night (not to mention all the apps/settings etc were gone which I haven't even bothered with yet). Anyway - opened my eyes that I need a serious solution for my main daily computer, as I do home business stuff on it.

On my main computer, running Windows 7 home Premium (not professional) I have a 1TB WD1002 drive which has two partitions on it (C: for the main drive with the operating system, files, data etc with 931GB total space/700GB used and E: for some small system reserve of 100MB? Not sure how that partition came about but was probably during the initial operating system load.

My Goal - if possible - would be to buy a second WD1002 drive (or maybe even a 1.5TB or 2TB drive (which you'll see why in a minute) and do a * clone * of the current drive (I assume both partitions). The main purpose here is to have an instant ready drive should something happen to this machine. Some of the data will clearly be out of date (only as good as when the clone was made) but my main concern is having instant access to the internet, email, and the bulk of programs and data there. The problem that I see with the backup approach, is while you can create base images and incremental, you also need an available drive to restore this all to, which is nowhere to be found at 10pm on a Friday night.

Continuing this goal, I would like to leave this cloned drive physically connected (though somehow not marked by the bios as a bootable drive (yet) so it doesn't conflict with my primary drive, but some create an additional partition that is accessible to the system for doing incremental backups to. I wouldn't need the 2 cloned partitions to be available at this point, since I only need to should my primary drive not boot, but I would need the 3rd partition available all the time for the ongoing backups to be stored. Then, when that fateful day comes, hopefully all I have to do is turn a bios setting on to activate my clone disk, or at worst maybe move it to a different cable connection where the primary was. Then I'm up and running and can execute restores on data that has changed as I have time.

Is this approach even possible? Is it practical? Should I be considering a different strategy? Thanks for your help here.