In case of M’s files, the email backup method works just hunkydorry for her since she has to email all her work back to the President anyway, all that are automatically saved in the Sent folder in the IMAP/SMTP server anyway. When she cc: herself, it actually wasted the server space. OTOH, her work for Alec could have been emailed to herself and that would work just fine also.

She should also, once a month or so, duplicates her old email folder in the server back to her local folders which is extremely simple to do. With just 2 generations in the local drive and Bob’s her uncle.

I would no longer be using the desktop anymore so that took away over 95% of data on that computer, and Alec could do his back up the same way or at least they are on a floopy for school as well anyway. Emailing is hardly more work for them, zero more work for me until the next meltdown. So maybe a Ghost every 6 months or so would do just fine. A Ghost only backup would do them no go in case of a fire as it wouldn’t be off-site – touch wood, the emails with the key-point of being off-site could safe the day though.

Ghost is good, but SuperDuper! for the Mac is better.

Say your HD dies. With Ghost, you install new HD, boot Ghost, restore from image on backup HD, and are back in business. It may take an hour. You still need to acquire and install new HD.

With SuperDuper!, if your main HD dies, you boot from the backup HD, and are back in business in no time. Finish work, install and clone onto new HD.

In any case, you still need to carry out the specific task of making a backup, which is intrusive.

Not all solutions work for everyone equally well. We each have our own better ways to do our own backups. In case of M’s single-file-in-a-few-days kind of data, the emailing idea is as easy as they come for her.

Oh, is there any synchronizing software that can do the job automatically everytime you plug-in the portable HD? I supposed so.