I doubt I qualify as an "expert", but I just spent some time looking into this for work and for home, so.... Yes, there are problems with most forms of backups, but, in the real world, if the hard drive on your computer, your on-site backup, and your off-site backup, all fail on the same day, then we have either just had a nuclear attack, or your luck is so bad that you can safely assume the gods do not like you and you are DOA, no matter what... So, rationally, you may want to consider an automatic on-site mirrored back up system such as Drobo http://www.drobo.com/ along with a portable or web based off-site backup. or, for the Macs running Leopard, a secondary hard drive attached to your machine with automatic backups using "time machine". (I know windows can do something similar, but I don't deal with them as much anymore, so...) If you use an external laptop hard drive (they are designed to take more abuse than the full size hard drives) for the automatic on-site backups, and if you buy two of them, you can switch them out once a week, and store the one you are not using off-site. This gives you redundancy and off-site storage. You can get the Western Digital "My Passport Essential" which is an external laptop hard drive, or you can buy a hard drive and enclosure separately from a place like Newegg, and put it together yourself, depending on how computer savvy you are feeling. You can do DVD's, but it seems to take a lot of them for one computer, and then you want to make sure you have two sets, in two different locations, and that you don't forget to backup specific files. In general, I like mirrored drives, such as the drobo, because then you are not as subject to changes in software, and you can switch out bigger drives as your needs increase. However, that does not do anything for off-site storage, and just using two external drives, alternating weeks, with timed backups, is a lot easier for the home user (like me). Jo