Jill,

As soon as you get it up and running, buy a second hard drive with 2 - 3 times the space of you main hard drive. Then buy PowerQuest Drive Image. Use your second drive for a backup device. Remember, you won't make backups if your backup method is hard to use. The backup method I'm describing is EASY to use. I have tried them all and this is the best method I've come across to date. Once a week or so, just before going to bed, I run drive image and make an exact copy of my drive onto the backup drive. When I wake up the next morning it's all done. Drive Image will compress the data to half or less. I currently backup about 39 gb of data and it ends up taking up 16 - 17 gb of space. I am able to keep around 15 full backup sets on my 200gb backup drive. The next time this happens to you, and it will happen again, you will be ready.

Greg