Full system (disk image) - mirror drive?

My favorite is SuperDuper. It will do what you want even in free demo mode. Registering it (about $30) will unlock Smart Updates, scheduling, and other cool features.

Other things that will work are Carbon Copy Cloner and even Disk Utility's Restore feature.

TimeMachine isn't really a good choice, it's only a rotational backup of your boot drive, not a full bootable clone like what you want.

I use Carbon Copy Cloner because all the options are free to use, they do ask for a donation and it's extremely powerful and detailed. right up your MacPro alley.

I've found the perfect cloning arrangement for my laptop.

I have the boot drive partitioned in half, as the second half of hard drives are always slower so I tend to avoid using that part.

So I have Partition A cloned to Partiton B daily, this provides only software protection (while I'm on the go), I can either grab a accidentillay deleted file from B or even boot into B and clone B to A if necessary if A isn't booting for some reason.

I also have CCC asking daily to clone to a external drive that I keep disconnected, I may hook it up or not depending if I need it or not, suit my scheduale.

Then I keep another clone on another drive back about a month or so just in case.

With the external hard drive clone I get malware and hardware protection, the partition clone is just a more immediate protection and alt boot option while on the go.

I forgot to add that I don't advise mirroring (aka RAID 1) as your copying any software problem immediatly to the second drive, a timed clone is better and a RAID 1 isnt' bootable, you'll have to use some command line magic or Data Rescue to access the data or make it bootable or something.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3358920