Time Machine won't work for me. What's the best way to "mirror" my storage drive??

I have an internal storage drive with all my data on it. I have an external drive that is the same size as the internal. I recently switched to OSX from Windows and I need to figure out how to do backups the way I used to.

On Windows I use a program called SyncToy that's provided by Microsoft for free. It allows you to easily select a source and destination folder and then choose whether you want to synchornize or echo (mirror) the contents of the source to the destination. I always use the mirror option so I would have exact copy of all of my files/folders on both the internal and the external drive. I can't seem to find the same thing for OSX without having to pay $50. Is that really my only option???

Time Machine won't work for me because I use Virtual Machines, Entourage, etc. and the large files end up getting backed up over and over again, quickly filling up my backup drive. Also, I've never really been a fan of "restore" methods anyway. I'd rather just have an exact copy on my external drive that I can simply copy back to a new drive should the internal drive go bad.

Any information on this would be greatly appreciated. Time Machine would be great if not for the problems with large files that change all the time.

Thanks!

SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner should do the job for you. Both are free although some features are disabled in SD unless you register (you can still do backups and it is not time limited in the free version). Try them both to see if one suits your backup needs.

CCC looks like it'll do the trick. Thanks!!