Stilly -

That's why we finally added a CD burner a few months ago. Now we have about 150 CDs of backup, and we're wondering how we're going to make an index so we can find anything on them.

(Of course, we do know how. It's really a matter of when.)

Actually, a CD will only hold about 6 months worth of email (our critical backup) when we've got active projects going on, so backing up about once a month doesn't produce a lot of duplication. The older stuff gets dropped out of the backups because it just won't fit.

The problem here has made me wonder if I should get some better "unerase" software on the machine "just in case," but I think that for now I'll continue to rely on dual hard drives and regular backup burns.

I've found the external (USB 2.1) hard drive I added recently gives me a great warm fuzzy feeling of security. It's the same size as the main drive in my PC, so I could set it up as a RAID mirror, but so far I haven't bothered. I keep all my working documents in ONE folder, and anything outside that folder is "reinstallable software."

A reasonably quick copy makes sure everything gets duplicated on the external, and the CDs are mostly for the stuff I want to archive before I clean it off the machine.

And I don't have to sort stuff and pick what I need to take along if I take off with the laptop. Just unhook the external and put it in the bag.

John