>>>>>>One thing I know for sure is this will never happen again, and then I won't have to worry about such decisions. There are going to be multiple forms of backup, including DVDs (Ghost) and offsite storage in the event of fire or burglary.
>>>>>
>>>>>There are only 2 types of people:
>>>>>
>>>>>- True Believers in backup
>>>>>- Those who are about to become True Believers
>>>>>
>>>>>;-)
>>>>
>>>>The disappointing part is I already was a true believer, running an automated backup program every night. What I have learned is my approach was not sophisticated enough, with enough layers of redundancy.
>>>
>>>Probably some corollary of Murphy's law:
>>>Your backup problems will be shown to you if you sufficiently depend on your files.
>>
>>
>>My external drive, the doomed backup drive, is a Western Digital My Book. The slogan on the box is apropos: "Put your life on it."
>>
>>Actually I now have a second My Book. I was in Best Buy yesterday and saw the 500 GB model on sale for $129. To date I have not been backing up the Mac at all, since there is little or no data other than music. But then I remembered the countless hours I spent shuffling CDs in and out of it to record close to 1000 music CDs into iTunes (and from there onto an iPod). Do I want to do that again? No, sir. $129 is cheap insurance.
>
>I have a network hard drive that has an option of hooking up another network hard drive and mirroring them. If I ever did mission-critical development in my home, I would definately look into it.


That is essentially what I will be doing, with the added benefit that I can disconnect the My Book after backing up to it (per Jay's advice). I don't have any hard drives sitting around loafing so would have to buy a drive anyway.