What about Backuping up your computer hard drive?

Question

There are oodles of different methods of doing backups, onto CD's, flashdrives, external drives, remote servers, tapes and more that I can't fit them all here.

Additionally, there are tons of backup softwares, and programs and things that do different things, some backup everything weekly and save files and lots of combinations.

What are your favourite backup tricks, and what ones do you swear by, also what ones do you avoid like the plague.

Assuming that we all plan ahead in case the unfortunate things happen (Hard drive Failure, virus etc).

Most interesting answer for the 10

Answer 1

I Swear by Acronis True Image WorkStation v9.1!!!
Yes I use this on a weekly basis to back up my primary HD that has Windows on it...
This is also Great if you want to reinstall your system...
After doing a complete format and reinstall of XP, then download and update all the patches...then you make a DVD backup image using Acronis for this...so now when you go to reinstall your system, everything is already done with all your custom setting intact!!! Takes all of 10 mins to reinstall XP this way...something to think about...

Answer 2

I use norton ghost to image the whole disk onto a DVD and backup files that I need the most onto an external hard disk.
My schedule is flexible but if you're really serious about your data you should consider an automated scheduled backup...

Answer 3

Since the registry is the most important set of files in Windows, you must have a backup routine that includes the files in C:\windows\system32\config. There is only one program that I know of that backs that and all other files up(except pagefil.sys) and that is DriveImageXML

Answer 4

all my info is sacrificable.

I copy all my media to dvd disks and catalog them. I also backup expensive programs on dvd too. I don't use outside programs, I don't even zip up my files. Everything else is sacrificable like I said. oh and my email is online so I don't worry about that.

you need to consider why your wanting to back stuff up.
You wouldn't want to back up an installed program ya know. you'd just simply reinstall it from its original source (cd or exe).

So, lets see I break it down into elements. * are what I put on dvd (4.5 gb)
installed programs
*program installers (exe or zips, downloaded from the net)
email
user settings
*media (movies, pics, mp3s ect)

btw I have about 25 dvds I've burned with backed up info

Answer 5

I have a 4GB USB microdrive. I just manually back up all my prized files every season to it. I don't think I could trust a program to do it, although I do use TrueCrypt to encrypt sensitive stuff if I ever lost my drive.