Backing up data

I'm always paranoid about my computer's data. I have music, photos, documents, research, etc. on my hard drive.

That got me thinking... what are some good ways to backup your data? The most obvious way is to use removable media like CD-ROMS, tapes, DVDs, etc. But it's not very efficient given that we have enormous hard drives to backup nowadays. If you want to go this way, it's preferable to get an external hard drive and backup onto that. The fancy way to do this is to use a RAID array. I don't know much about it, just that it's the professional method of hard drive backup.

What if you're really paranoid? For instance, if your home catches on fire, the fact that you backed up your files on your external hard drive isn't going to do much good, if your external hard drive is sitting next to your home computer. One way is to backup onto a remote server. LiveVault provides this kind of service commercially. Personally, a more economical and practical way is to just back up onto a mobile hard drive and bring it somewhere else (like your office). Maybe the new LaCie rugged hard drive would be ideal.