Backing up

If you have 55 dollars a year I recommend Carbonite. It'll backup whatever you want online, and does it all automatically and in the background. It'll take about a week or so to get it backing up everything you want properly (it'll ignore .ini's from gamesave folders and such whch you'll need to tell it to grab) but after that your backup is pretty much bulletproof. I do that and have a 2TB HDD for my backups. I dont backup my system image online because it's huge, so I keep that on the hard drive. other than that, both backups should be identical.

The rule of thumb for solid backup is you need 3 copies of everything. The original, a local backup (the 2TB HDD in my case) and an offsite backup (Carbonite in my case). What I don't recommend is having an offsite HDD backup because then all of your data is on HDD's, it's like putting all of your eggs in 3 very similar basket. rather than 3 baskets all with different strengths and weaknesses. Carbonite has been around for along time and is a reliable company that isn't going anywhere so you don't have to worry about them shutting down next year and losing your online backup. If you can afford it I think it's the best way to go.

Sorry for the wall of text.

I'd recommend looking at a NAS like a D-Link DNS-323 (2 drives - RAID - 1) ... because even external hard drives fail...

link: D-Link 2-Bay Network Storage Enclosure

But the NAS uses external drives aswell.

jessejw,
Don't waste your money.
I suggest you consider the advice I gave earlier.
Use the inbuilt Windows backup & restore file/folder + imaging
AND Macrium Reflect free.
If the Windows imaging causes you problems then you have Macrium which is a robust product. Don't start solving imaginary problems - just download Macrium for now.

Also, make yourself a couple of "System Repair" DVDs by going to the "Backup & Restore Panel"

Gw2 said:

But the NAS uses external drives aswell.

yes my bad - i should have said 'single external drives can fail'

end objective being to have some form of external redundant storage (i gave the RAID 1 / mirror example that i've setup for some friends)

to me, that saves the entire hierarchical approach - and the NAS becomes a one-stop shop, backups, other data, etc.

I use Mozy, or I should say I used Mozy up to 18 days ago. It has stopped working and the suggested solutions don't seem to work. It's a multi-computer license. I have another computer on the home net with the same utilities and applications running (same versions), except the Vista computer is being backed-up and the Win 7 is not.
Have Spyware Doctor and McAfee running on both.