"David" wrote in message
om...
As the organization of my home life becomes ever more paperless I
really need to sort out my strategy for backing up my PC on a thorough
and regular basis... bit OT I know, but (a) I really value the
opinions of like-minded people in this NG, and (b) the idea I want
feedback on is sort-of diy related...

At the moment I back up onto CD-RW, using Windows XP's built-in backup
software, which bizarrely doesn't let you save directly to CDs - an
extraordinary PITA which means you have to create sequential files on
the HD less than 650Mb, then copy them over manually. So I do this
far less often than I should.

My idea was to set up my old unused PII machine in the back of my
garage with a wireless network card, then do my regular back-ups to
its hard disk. The principle being that if my house burns down or is
burgled, the (detached) garage is unlikely to be similar affected (and
vice versa if the garage is hit). Couldn't replace CDs altogether due
to risk of losing all to a virus, I suppose. Does this sound like a
reasonable/cost-effective solution (I currently have only a hard-wired
network and router).

What do others use/do? Is there a better hardware/software combo that
I should use instead?

To be honest, although I have several Gb of data I need to have backed
up, there's only a few Mb per week which are changed or added, so
really all I need to do is a regular cumulative [1] backup rather than
backing up the whole damned lot at least every week - and for that
purpose CD-RW is probably fine? Except that cumulative backups are
not supported by Windows Backup AFAIK...

Your thoughts very much welcomed!

David

[1] if I understand the terms correctly, cumulative backups record all
changes since the last full, archival backup, which is what I need;
whereas incremental backups just save everything since the previous
incremental
backup (a bit tortuous and useless)

I use a second HDD which is permanently installed in the machine, but is
only used for backups of important files. The operating system is on its
own removable disks, so if the machine goes down, I can at least reload the
main bits. But having the second back-up drive is ideal because the machine
detects it and will use it like any other driver it has, so it makes
back-ups directly without having to copy through software then on to
removable media.

The regular back-up is scheduled for the early hours of the morning, and it
works really well. The drive is only 20 Gb capacity, which, after nine
years (yes it's been in three machines) is not even a third used and it also
holds some of my needed software programs which you can't anymore. The
other bits and pieces are all on floppy.