5 Options for Backing Up My Home PC - Part II

I would like to say thanks to everyone that submitted comments to my previous post. This is what I ended up with over the weekend:

1. I went out and found an external Maxtor USB 300Gb Hard Disk at Fry's for $229. At the rate we are adding photos and videos to the machine I calculated this gives me about 18 months of expansion.

2. I installed backup software and setup five backup jobs for my main libraries (photos, music, videos etc.). All of the backups run once a week and I have a nightly differential for the most important files. 

3. I installed a Double Layer DVD drive (Memorex, $79.99 with a $20 rebate) to take these 8Gb backup files to DVD once per month. This will be a manual task, but allows me to get some of the data "off site". At today's price of $40 for 15 x DL DVDs I can't afford to do this any more frequently!

4. Foldershare is re-setup to synchronize all of my libraries with my laptop and a second machine.

All in all, I'm hoping that this should provide a reliable strategy regardless of what happens to the machine in the future. Call me paranoid, but it amazes me when I think how impossible it would be to replace all the photos and videos we have collected. On my quest for the ultimate backup solution I also found:

1. I'm way behind in disk drive technology (after accidentally purchasing an Ultra ATA/100 interface instead of a SATA) - I didn't even know there was more than one type... 

2. Windows XP supports RAID 0 (striping), but does not support RAID 1 (mirroring) in software. For this I would have had to upgrade to Windows Server 2003 or installed a new disk controller.

3. The return people at Fry's are pretty friendly - providing you get everything back within 15 days of purchase :-)