I have never done much backing up, and I have never had any major failure of a critical drive. A good backup plan seems like a good thing for me to have. It seems as though I must be due for one.

Here is my plan, based on the advice found here.

A good backup plan must be redundant and automatic, therefore I am purchasing two hard drives, and two external enclosures. One 250gb which will back up my iMac’s internal drive, and one 500gb, which will back up my external media drive that holds my music and photo collection. I will do a SuperDuper backup each night of each drive, which will essentially mirror the drives. The idea being, that if my iMac’s drive fails on me, I can just add in the drive in the enclosure and pick up right where I left off.

This is in addition to backing up off site to Mozy and Time Machine.

Next month I will buy two more of the exact same two drives so I can do the exact same thing, only I will take them to work every month and switch. That way I always have a drive off site in case of a fire.

Again, this is addition to my off site backup to Mozy. Like I said, I am due for a major failure.

Update - Seems as though if you want to watch next gen DVDs on your PC you will have to purchase it from a large manufacturer due to a $15,000 license fee. Read more.

Seriously though, as if we weren’t already treated with enough contempt, we have to deal with one more thing in the move to HD. HDCP is yet another way to control how and where we watch content we purchase legally.

The fact that I won’t be able to watch my HD-DVD or Blu Ray disk on my PC without a new video card and maybe monitor really bugs me. Its not like I need it because playing back the video is very hardware intensive, its just so the movie studios can control it.

HD Beat has a better explanation