My HD croaked yesterday and all of my un-backed up files went to the bone yard with it, so I suggest (for dunces like me should any exist) that you back up your files daily.

Signed,

The idiot who did not back up enough....

A lesson hard learned by many.

It's not just that your HD can die, these days with so many Internet borne infections, you never know when you might get infected and (worst case scenario) have to re-format and re-install.

A good backup strategy is essential.

You may of course be able to retrieve the files from your fried drive, but this is best left in the hands of those who deal professionaly with such things. Few of the available software programmes in my experience do a good enough job.

My backup strategy. Macintosh

Daily scheduled backup of all data to an external drive using Chronosync (http://www.econtechnologies.com/site/index.html) This is a great shareware utility that can be scheduled and runs in the background. Mine runs at 5:00 every day and backs up my selected data folders (photos, customer art, projects, Quicken, database files etc.) Shareware $30. Great tech support. Allows for synchronized or copy only backing up. This is not a bootable backup.

Weekly backup of entire hard drive (bootable backup) with SuperDuper (http://www.shirt-pocket.com/). Shareware $27.95 This utility makes a bootable backup of your entire hard drive or (once you've created a backup) do a "Smart Backup" that updates the existing cloned backup on the external drive to reflect changes made since the last backup. Backing up can be scheduled (mine runs every Friday at 6:00 PM). Again, great tech support.

My external backup HD started making odd noises a week ago, and so I'm awaiting delivery today of my new Seagate Free Agent Pro 750GB USB drive. Instead of just backing up my documents, now I'll be able to backup my entire drive. And it doesn't use a powerbrick!

Yes, you do need a daily, automated backup to a drive external to your computer (it can be a networked computer, remote FTP site, service, or any other as long as it's safe if your computer explodes).

I am really leary of any backup utility that encrypts or streams the data resulting in a format that you cannot just "use" or be able to double click to launch a file. They always require that in order to restore the data you have to install the backup utility to decode the file data.

It would be such a pain for example to have a "streamed" backup on a drive that was done under XP, but you need to restore the data to Vista. Your backup software may not even run under Vista. Give me clean data file backup every time.

I have my pictures copied to an external hard drive while working on them. When I am happy with any changes I burn the pictures to DVD.
After that I have made it practice to backup to tape for archive.
It has worked well so far and I haven't lost a single file in the last year.
Just my 2cents.
Drew.