The rapidly falling prices of hard drives does make the copy-disk approach much more viable. However, one should still be careful to have multiple copies of important data going back in time. A not uncommon problem is where an important file gets corrupted or accidently deleted, and you don't notice it right away. A nightly copy-disk operation will then copy the corrupted or now-missing file over the previous copy; and if that was your only backup, it's now gone. :(
I'd suggest rotating through several external disks (or alternatively, partitions on a single super-sized external disk). This gives you several days' backup and you might want to keep a few weekly or monthly copies depending on how much data you update per day and how costly it would be for you to recreate it. For example, my most irreplaceable data--including five years' worth of digital photographs of my family--is currently sitting on 4 different hard drives. It's also been burned onto a couple of CDs which I keep offsite in case of some catastrophe that takes out all my disk drives (e.g., my house burns down). -Jeff [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- "You can't brew a premium lager with a kool-aid mentality." --Harold Green in _The_Red_Green_Show_ -- The iMac List is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | - Epson Stylus Color 580 Printers - new at $69 | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> iMac List info: <http://lowendmac.com/imac/list.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/imac-list%40mail.maclaunch.com/> --------------------------------------------------------------- >The Think Different Store http://www.ThinkDifferentStore.com ---------------------------------------------------------------
