>Yeah, I'm thinking that I need/want to backup everything. The amount of time spent getting all the programs, updates, utilities, settings, etc is enormous, so I want to just copy it all back on if something goes very badly. It's an awful lot of work otherwise. Primary though, is my data, which I keep on a different PC networked to the workstation. Still only one copy exists.

Image backups rock for getting you back to *exactly* where you were in the event of a complete crash of your system disk. Norton Ghost is the best-known example of this type of program. Ghost now supports writeable DVDs which, at 4.7GB or more each, back you up pretty quick.

It's a good idea to have archives of projects at various stages. This also helps in setting up off-site backups to safety deposit box etc. Another option for off-site backup is to e-mail stuff to a GMail account you may have.

The largest client's system I work with has about 50GB in multiple SQL Server databases. She backs that system up to LaCie 500GB FireWire external hard drives - she has 2, swaps them daily, takes one off-site. Software is Dantz Retrospect, which is capable of intelligently saving file "deltas" rather than complete files to keep total backup sizes (and times) down. She also has a SQL Server agent for Retrospect which can back up its databases while SQL Server is running.

In general, backup to another hard drive will be fastest. In the example above it's backing up from 10K Ultra160 SCSI hard drives to FireWire hard drives so it's PDQ. But, even IDE to USB or another IDE will be faster than to optical. For large systems hard drive backup is about the only thing that makes sense - especially when you consider that an 80GB IDE hard drive isn't much more expensive than an equivalent-sized tape or data cartridge.