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Yeah dude. Check out that timeline. SB.com and J basically solved my problem in a matter of a few hours with no $$$ spent. Now everything is back up and running like a charm Thanks again J.

Good solution:
1. Go to newegg.com and buy an inexpensive external hard drive
2. Set-up Time Machine
3. Worry a lot less about the tragic loss of data.

Better solution:
1. Go to newegg.com and buy two inexpensive external drivess
2. Set-up Time Machine on one drive
3. Install Carbon Copy Cloner and set-up on the other drive
4. Let Time Machine run all the time.
5. Carbon Copy your hard drive once a week
6. Have nearly 100% confidence in the redundancy of your data.

Can I run Timemachine with Mac OS X?

As long as you're running leopard you have time machine already. Its easy to set up just open up the time machine preferences and enable it and choose which disk to back up to and you're set.

I have Tiger, not Leopard. Should I upgrade?

What do you guys think of off-site back-up? Seems like it would suck copying all my files over the network.

I've been a Mac user since the late 80s and I was always a late adopter of new OSs that Apple released. That changed when Leopard was released, as I purchased it within a few months of its unveiling. I have been very pleased with its performance and capabilities - - Time Machine being one of those capabilities.

As far as an off-site backup, I presume you're referring to backing your files up to a remote Web server or some such similar thing? Personally I feel having a copy of your files in two separate physical locations is a very good idea. If you have a fire, flood, robber, or other catastrophic situation in your home having two copies of your files will do you no good if they are both destroyed/stolen.

One method to reduce this risk is to occasionally make a clone of your harddrive and store it in a safe deposit box, at your office, at a relative or friends home - - someplace other than where your personal computer is stored. I backup my machine and keep a copy of the files at my office. Similarly I have a backup of my office network that I store at home as well.

I would definitely get Leopard, if for nothing else in your case for Time Machine. At first I didn't like Time Machine because of how often it actually backs up, but now I love it. Its super easy to recover files from as well and I've actually used a couple of times. There have been times where I have downloaded a large file and a couple of days later I deleted but then realized that I need it again and rather than have to download the file again I can just get it from time machine, very easy.

I don't know much about the off-site backup and how good/reliable they are, but some of them can be expensive and depending on how much you have to back-up and what your internet speed is it may take a while. I would just do what samh suggests and just clone your hard drive, whether it be your main drive or the time machine drive and store it somewhere else. I do the same thing although I still keep it at my house in a fireproof lockable safe. That way if my house burns down or if someone breaks in and steel mt hard drive I still have it somewhere else or if my time machine hard drive happens to fail.

There's lot of options you can do, its just what work best and easiest for you.

Thanks guys. Very helpful. Gonna upgrade to Leopard.

If you've already gotten an external drive for Carbon Copy Cloner, it might be worth cloning your drive *before* upgrading to Leopard. Then upgrade, and make sure all your apps still work and you aren't having any problems (if you're mostly just using the Apple apps, you shouldn't have a problem; this becomes more of an issue the more 3rd party apps you're using, particularly with apps that aren't updated very often... or if you have older versions that require a paid upgrade for Leopard support). Anyway, if you run into problems, you have a clone with your old OS that you can revert back to. I do this pretty much every time I upgrade to a new major OS release.