[holymoly]

Thanks for any help, suggestions, & recommendations.

And now I have to get to work. I'll check back this afternoon.

Oh, I'm also considering a second/slave HD. However, I know nothing about "Ultra ATA". Are these things "backwards compatible"? Western Digital 80GB Internal Hard Drive

[Future Snake Eater]

I had been using a tape drive & NovaStor software to backup files.

1ghz Pentium 3
512mb RAM
Win98
20gb IDE HD (I forget the manufacturer)

I'm not sure, but you may be able to find a hand-crank CD-R somewhere to keep with the motif. :-)

[BigSkyFreeper]

Are these things "backwards compatible"?

Yep. All you need to worry about is whether the ribbon cable will fit into the slot. There's at least a 99% probability it will work.

[NeonKnight]

Jesus! You have been using a tape drive?!?! scary!

Skip the CD-R. Why not just get a DVD-RW? 4.7GB of backup there.

[BigSkyFreeper]

20gb IDE HD (I forget the manufacturer)

There's four possibilities who manufactured that drive. Maxtor, Seagate, IBM or Western Digital.

[NeonKnight]

I have both an external DVD-RW and an external 80GB drive.

[Noumenon]

Visit my website for a good take on backup systems and strategeries. There are some good, inexpensive products out there that'll do a world-class job. "Bare metal" restoration at the drop of a hat should be your goal, but there's more to it than that.

Highly recommended:

1. Acronis True Image 9.1
2. Maxtor One Touch III external HD (forget the software that comes with it - it sucks.
3. Plextor CD/DVD burner

While I re-sell these products, they can be had cheaply from NewEgg.com. Check it out.

[js1138]

Skip the CD thing and get an external hard drive. Backups aren't much good unless you do them, and you will quickly tire of backing up to CD.

[HitmanLV]

Get a DVD Burner. I just bought a nice 16x one for around $ 60 at Officemax (Lite On 1635s) last week and installed it in about 10 minutes. Blank DVDs are cheap now, and a DVD burner can burn both DVD-Rs, DVD+Rs, DVDRW, and CD-Rs.

[HitmanLV]

Pretty sure your PC specs will be ok for the DVD burner - check the side panel of the box to be sure!

[NonValueAdded]

CD-R drives are dirt cheap under $20), especially from mail order sources like geeks.com. If your data volume is small, CD-R will give you the most portability but if your backup files exceed 700mb, then DVR has come down enough in price to be a consideration. How does that $15 - $20 range compare with what Office Max is quoting you?

[Future Snake Eater]

Well, now that I got the jokes out of my system, here's some actual analysis:

CD-Rs and DVD-Rs are basically the same price these days. DVD-Rs can burn at least 4.7 GB/disc (assuming you don't get a dual-layer burner) and still have CD burning ability if you need it. There are two highly-recommended ones by the excellent AnandTech.com website:

NEC 16X ND-3550A--$36 shipped
Pioneer 16X DVR-110D--$43 shipped

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Go with the slave drive scenario and install Norton Ghost or some other cloning software. There are some freeware ones but Ghost is the Best.
Norton Ghost allows you to take snapshots (images) and clones (duplicates).
Use this second hard drive (A NEW one) to store snaps and clones of your hard drive. This way, to recover your entire C:\drive in case of disaster, you need only replace the dead drive and then send a duplicate or your latest image to the new drive and you are back up and running just as if nothing ever happened.

I used to use an external USB drive to take full and incremental backups of my C:\drive using Dantz (EMC) Retrospect. It was good but it was clunky and took too much time to run a full backup even with USB 2.0.
This new system I use takes less time and negates the need for having to reinstall Windows as a first step to Disaster Recovery. I still do a once-per-month external backup as I used to but for day to day DR purposes I takes snaps each evening.

Give it some though. Tape is dead and CDs are too small. Even DVDs are too small if you have lots of data to backup like I do.

[Quix]

ANOTHER COMPUTER QUESTION:

I have started but stopped downloading:

MICROSOFT ONE CARE

--ANTISPYWARE, ANTIVIRUS, AUTODOWNLOAD ETC ETC ETC.

But it insists on Norton and Zone Alarm being uninstalled--perhaps other such.

Have uninstalled Norton SystemWorks but am hesitant to end up with just Microslop guarding things. Very hesitant.

On the other hand, I like the notion of the characters who wrote the operating system getting their act together a bit more and more automatically getting/keeping things more shipshape.

What are the experts' hereon's opinions of all such?

Please and thank you.