backup solutions, and infection concerns regarding a restore?

Double said:

...I tried Carbonite but couldn't swallow the pricetag...

Carbonite's only $60/year; that's only $5/month. Surely you have some kind of vice you can steal $5/month from.

Double said:

...Having multiple backups is a bit paranoid in my eyes, but I guess you can never be too safe!...

Keep in mind all media can (and usually will) fail. Having your data in only one place is just asking to lose it. The more copies you have and the farther apart it is kept, the less likely you will lose any. I've seen too many post from people saying their HDD died or they accidentally deleted their data and want to know how to recover it. The sad fact is the odds are against recovering any of their data, let alone all of it. Professional data recovery can cost hundreds to thousands of dollars, far more than proper backups cost. How much you spend for backing up your data should be determined by how valuable your data is is to you, how much it would cost to replace it, and/or if it can be replaced.

Double said:

...I use Dropbox and Google for storage; Youtube to store videos (in private), Google Drive to store documents, Google Music to store music, and Dropbox to store pictures

You kinda have the right idea by having multiple cloud sites to keep your data—it minimizes the amount of data any one site can lose—but, if you kept all, or, at least, more, of your data in each site, you would be much better protected. Of the sites you listed, Google scares me the most; they are notorious for discontinuing services, even popular ones.

Double said:

Any advice on these subjects would be appreciated :)

Here's my solution to making clean, infection-free system images.
I always restore my last image before making a new one.
Since I've been using the OS contained in that image for years, I know it's not infected.
Been 100% successful with that.