Are there any recommended methods for Backing up an entire HD? I want to backup my data. I do not care about the OS file. I just want my work, movies, and music. I have about 600 GB of work, movies, and music so a bit worried about fragmentation if I just copy and paste.
Try tar with compression. Since you have a lot of data consider basing your creation of tar files on the existing directory structure, rather than using exact image opies of your disk.
You will need storage somewhere, not on the disk you are backing up, for the files you create.
Example back up of a primary directory.
cd /path/to/root_of_disk_device # the mountpoint or the / directory
tar cfz /path/to/backup/device/music.tgz ./music
Why make smaller backups? You want to restore a file. To recover anything that large, decompressing 600 GB and searching for, and restoring filenames is tedious on huge backup files. And requires lots of resources.
Also consider making incremental backups, like once a week. Backup any file that is newer than the time and date of your last backup.