Hey guys,

Everytime I go out of town, I get that nervous feeling in my stomach. I know that that's the time I'm going to be out of town and someone is going to break into my house and steal my computer -- losing everything I've ever done and every note for every client. Ugh, I might vomit just thinking about it!

So, here's my question to you Mac gurus: What do you do for your back-up?

Here are a couple of things to consider for my case specifically: I'd really like to utilize both Time Machine and an online back-up service; hopefully working in conjunction.

Ideas? Thoughts? Advice?

Thanks!

I'm not a Mac user, but I utilize a home server. The server uses and older motherboard, CPU, and RAM, and has a 750GB Raid 1 hard drive array with two drives (for data redundancy). I keep everything important there - Sibelius scores, Sibelius sound sets, Word/Excel files, software installation files, all of my mp3s, my email, etc. All of my other computers have shared drives to the server, and my printer is also connected to the server. The sever also has a TV tuner and doubles as a small television in the computer room. The system sits in a cheap case with a old, ugly 17"; CRT monitor on top, making it an unlikely target for theft. Of course it's possible that it could get stolen, but I expect there are many other things around that would go first.

Of course, in a fire or other home-destroying event, everything is lost, which is a major benefit of online backup services. But I feel so much more comfortable knowing exactly where everything is, knowing I can get to it whenever I need it, etc. I also build computers as a hobby, so building a home server was fun.

Check into Mozy or Backjack as online solutions. I haven't used either, but I hear good things.

In addition to making bootable copies of my entire drive via SuperDuper, I've been doing off-site backups via CrashPlan because I maintain the machines/drives myself. Over the internet, CrashPlan is painfully slow, but after the initial backup, incrementals aren't so bad. Having an additional backup offsite brings some nice peace of mind. I've been doing these all via various Drobos which help protect from drive failure as well. It can seem a little overwhelming at first, but when you consider how much time you've put into creating your work, it's well worth the investment in my opinion. If you aren't backing up in multiple locations, one drive failure can literally mean years of work down the can. That's not something you want to learn the hard way.

Also very tempted to get into a PogoPlug then automating backups offsite with something like CarbonCopy Cloner. The PogoPlug seems like a little chunk of geek heaven.

mediafire.com has unlimited storage, but limits files to 100 MB in size.  I combine important files as a .zip and upload them.

Time Machine will not only save your files, but your entire system settings.  So if you install a bad update, you can go back.  You can get a 1 TB drive from NewEgg.com for cheap.