I've found a really simple system for protecting my data that's saved my rear end on numerous occasions including crashes, viruses, even OS upgrades that didn't go as planned. It's fast, easy, and affordable: 1) Insert a second hard drive in your system. Should be 2/3 to 3/4 the size of your current drive, minimum. Or get a larger drive and use DriveCopy to transfer your stuff to the new drive, then reformat the old. In any event, you need 2 hard drives. 2) Purchase NovaDisk from www.novastor.com and install it. 3) Set up NovaDisk to backup your system to the second drive every night and leave your computer on 24/7. Backups occur while you sleep. 4) DO NOT use the backup drive for ANYTHING else! Let NovaDisk simply do its job. 5) If you have a LAN, designate at least one hard drive on a different machine as a separate backup drive; NovaDisk will backup across a network and can even use drive mapping or UNC names. If your backup drive fails, no big deal; simply replace it and keep backing up. If your main drive fails: 1) Insert a new drive 2) Do a basic OS install 3) Install NovDisk 4) Recover your data 5) Reboot. Your system is back where it was the last time it was backed up except for a little tweaking. This means the registry, drivers, apps, data, everything.