[simcop2387]

> Now, when it comes down to it, do you really need to backup the OS? or your installed software? if the machine and the backups fail, you're going to be reinstalling anyway (probably)

I'd counter this with what I do with my laptop. The OS is considerably smaller than the data I actually care about (<20gb), it takes almost no time to backup and so it leaves me with a very quick ability to restore the system to a known good state in the event of some kind of failure. I don't do constant backups of it, but maybe once a month i'll update the backup I have of the OS.

[jfoutz]

Yeah, I was trying to point out you don't really need 3 copies of everything, and really 1 is enough for some stuff that's easy to replace. But the stuff that matters, you should have lots of copies of that. 2 backup disks is another way to go, just swap them, say, weekly. Photos from a once in a lifetime trip? make a bunch of copies, local and remote.