>I've heard of organizations actually "pulling" a hard drive out of a RAID array and taking it offsight as a backup. Does anyone here do this? Any ideas/insight would be appreciated.

This really won't work... you can't rebuild a complete system from 1 disk in a raid system (raid 3 or 5)

You could use mirrored HDD's which would give the desired effect but it's probably not reccomended to pull one out.

To partly answer your question (and to confirm what Hilmar has said) Client server is the best way to go
SQL server/ Oracle etc are designed for this kind of thing.. VFP is not

Not sure if this is possible with Mirrored HDD's, but it may be worth inquiring... is it possible to un-link the second (or third) HDD from the Mirror, then back it up onto a Dat, then re-connect the mirror and let it re-synchronise?

Just off the top of my head!

HTH

Will