I have a computer organization method that I call "cross booting". My computer has an IDE disk drive and a SCSI disk drive. I do most of my work on the SCSI disk drive. I have a master boot record on both the IDE disk and on the SCSI disk. I also have complete operating systems on both the SCSI and IDE disks. I can change the active boot record by selecting it from BIOS control window. When I boot the SCSI operating system, it automatically mounts the IDE disk as a subsidiary disk. I have scripts on the SCSI operating system that automatically backup information to the IDE disks. If the IDE disk fails then its no big deal because I normally use the SCSI disk. If the SCSI disk fails then I immediately boot the computer from the IDE disk and all the information is there. Recovery time from a major disk or controller failure is about 5 minutes. Where this approach fails if the power suppy goes nuts and toasts both disks at the same time (that happened to a friend of mine). The possibility of this failure mode is why one should backup to a CD-RW at least once a month. One should also do full operating system backup about every 3 months to DVD-R. Windows is a really crapping operating system (I do 99% of my work on Linux and avoid Windows like the plague). The registry used by Windows slowly accumulates garbage and eventually becomes unusable (no doubt Microsoft intended this to force upgrades to new operating systems). I don't know how to cleanse the registry so eventually I'll have to reinstall my Windows operating system. When doing CD backups it's important to remember that system restoration my require replacing the restored files onto a newly installed operating system. Restoring a full operating system from a DVD-R backup might simply recreate a buggy registry near its end-of-life.

Gary