Tono,
As a recent victim of my own stupidity, an external hard drive would be the way to go. You can get a 750GB Seagate FreeAgent drive for well less than $200. You can also get automated backup software, such as Retrospect Professional. In fact, I have both. So, why didn't it help? Because, I was stupid and lazy. A while ago, I reformatted the computer, and I didn't reinstall Retrospect...I'll get around to it, I'll get around to it. Then, I cleared the drive, because there was no install of Retrospect, and I was going to need to do a complete new image anyway....

Then, I transferred all my docs and stuff to a new computer, running XP Pro and Win7. I deleted the files from the old computer, then installed Vista in place of Win7, which somehow screwed up my XP install, wiping that partition of most of my docs.

Etc., etc., etc.

In any accident, it usually involves a variety of steps, where if you didn't do one of them, it wouldn't have happened.

I could have used the Free Agent as an intermediary drive, I could have put the information on another partition of a different hard drive, I could have not wiped it from the original drive (do you like how I'm flogging myself publically???) and so forth and so on.

IF I had things set up the way I wanted to, Retrospect ($100 on top of the price of the drive) would automatically, every night, backed up the computer, and done so only with the changes from that day. I could have pulled the information, selectively, off the drive, and restored it back.

I would recommend finding an external drive, and a program that does automatic backups of your drives every day (the computer and drive need to be on during that period), because if you want to do them manually, you'll forget, or find some reason not to, and then when it happens to you, either by human error, or hardware failure, you won't have what you want.

Gary

I'm blessed watching God do what He does best. I've had a few rough years, and I'm still not back to where I want to be, but I'm on the way and things are looking far better now than what they were!