I am wondering which is TRULY the most relible. Basically I am think of how good is a HD backup on the same controller, tower, etc if the computer is struck with a virus. Is that HD that my primary HD is ghosting to going to be at risk as well? If so, would it not simply be safer to back up via CD after a virus scan run? This is sort of a ramble cause I have a ton of variables going through my mind...HD failure also a possible problem. Any advice on the ideal method of critical data back up would be apreciated. Thanks

I use Norton Ghost to backup hard drive images. I use the “-split=700 –autoname” switches after the “ghost.exe” command to create images in 700MB chunks. I then burn the images to CDs.

Do both.I have 2 western digital hard drives (not raid).I have exact copys of my system on both drives.Not a ghost but an exact mirror image.If one dies all I have to do is chage the master slave oriantation and im right back where i was.On top of that I have an old 1.5 gig hard drive with win 95 and the drivers for video,modem,nd sound.If i was to losse both drives I could at least get right back on my pc and have the drivesw as slaves to try and repair the and hope fully recover data.As a final percaution I also regularly back up my most important data on 2 cd-rw's and test them for data errors regularly just incase of total melt down.So far i have been lucky and only had to fall back to my second hard drive but I belive I'm prepared for the worst and once you get into a regular back up rotine it isnt to bad.