How do I make my WD 640GB Essential bootable

I just bought a WD 640GB Essential. I manage to use it as target for my backup program “Acronis 2010” and as target for “WD Smartware”.

I would like to make the drive bootable so that I would be able to Restore from Acronis backup and then retrieve from Smartware if my machine dies.

It would also be very nice to be able to retrieve my files from Smartware to a newly installed PC if my Acronis backup does not work as suggested.

If you backed up everything through Acronis, you should be able to do a full restore through it.  And you should have been able to make the drive bootable through Acronis.  However, if you’ve backed up all your files through SmartWare, then you should be able to retrieve them.  However, you might have to retrieve them to a “Retrieve” folder in your Documents.