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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.

Windows XP comes with an excellent backup program that will restore from bare bones. It doesn't install by default on XP Home Edition, but it's on the disk and free.

I've had to do a system recovery restore in an emergency situation and it worked like a charm.

The 900 dollar server backup program from Veritas was a total loss. Completely unusuable when actually needed to restore a server.

Your website on backups is good - thanks.

I've converted from tape to disk for backups, as hard drives are now about the cheapest solution, as well as more convenient and faster.

I had been using external drives, attached by USB or such, but that's slow, and one pays a little extra from the external packaging.

I just stumbled on a nice, functional and economical internal removable drive solution:

http://addonics.com/products/combo_hdd/aechdsa35.asp

Combo Hard Drive for Serial ATA hard drive
The Combo Hard Drive for Serial ATA hard drive is another innovative hard drive kit solution from Addonics. This drive kit enables any Serial ATA hard drive to be used as a hot swap removable hard drive and as an external Serial ATA hard drive. To provide efficient cooling for the high RPM Serial ATA hard drive, high air flow is forced through the drive enclosure by an innovative fan system located at the bottom of the drive cradle.

Product features

Support any 3.5" Serial ATA hard drive
Innovative bottom fan system for fast cooling
Pass through Serial ATA and Power port at the front of drive cradle
Point to point Serial ATA connection (no cable to connect hard drive to enclosure)
Power and hard drive access* indicators
Install into any 5 1/4" drive bay as a removable hard drive
Hot swappable hard drive can be removed or add to the system without restarting*
Convert any Serial ATA hard drive into an external Serial ATA hard drive
OS independent
Simple installation

The cost for additional drive enclosures is just $9 per drive, the fan in the drive cradle (the part that screws permanently in a 5.25" external drive slot) keeps the disk cool, and it all works quite nicely.

For systems built in the last year or so that have SATA controllers, if one has both a spare SATA connection and an available 5.25" external bay, it's the cat's meow.

I'm adding a PCI controller board for SATA, since my mainboard's SATA doesn't support hot swap, so I won't have to power down to swap backup drives. I run two backups, one to a permanently mounted internal harddrive, and the second copying that to a removable that I swap out now and then. Both run automatically, a couple of times a day.