Backing up files

I need suggestions for backup hardware and a backup philosophy.

I have say 2 gig of stuff I work on regularly and dont have time to back up to CDs every day. Also backing up the system everyday is too much of a pain.

Is there some device I can buy that will back up critical (or even all) files automatically every night?

I thought about using msft backup thru an ethernet connection to a second computer. How does that sound?

Please tell me what works (and hasnt worked) for you with respect to backing up your critical files.

I am using Windows XP Professional

Can I connect an external HD to my laptop and mirror it with Norton Ghost? Where would I attach the external HD?

http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.p...hreadid=155495

i was working on a program that would do that...hmmm...maybe i should start working on it again

Have only done this once and that was with a secondary drive internal. Guess it should work with an external?

Could try scoring yourself one of those hard disk cradles which allow hard disks to be changed. As stated elsewhere also gives you the advantage of having a mirror disk, and actually switching to another drive for other OS's whenever required.

It's 2.30am here so probably wont make a lot of sense...

Go buy Arcserve 2000 it is superb backup software even if your not using tapes!
You can set copy jobs where it copies your entire HDD to another location(another drive).
You can set up disk images, copying, tape backups, optical libraries, tape libraries.

Say for example you get the external HDD: YOu could set Arcserve up to every 8 hours copy your HDD to the external one!(this doesnt need to be a complete copy. Say the first time you copy file a.txt and it's left unchanged it wont copy it again)
Or create an image of your HDD on it!

Not only will it do what you want it will leave room incase you want to expand to tape or something later on down the road!