I have a second HD installed and i backup the whole partition every two weeks, and of course ,the patition with the os ,too. I use norton ghost and the whole thing lasts about half an hour.( And restoring everything about the same time). So if something serios happens, i have everything running about half an hour later ,again. The HD is in a special case so it can be removed from the computer and placed somewhere else without opening the computer once a month i burn all the things i dl on a cd.