How do you guys backup personal video (recitals,soccer games etc). I'm worried that if the comp. crashes Id lose quite a bit. But the memory sticks are expensive. Does anyone use an online site or external memory? Just curious.
I use Acronis True-image and backup up the entire pc to external drives. Works like a charm and very easy to reinstall the entire pc if need by. I have several external drives and rotate the backups.
Yep any kind of drive imaging program like Ghost is a good option.
In addition to the rare buring to disc, I use an online backup called Carbonite. Once it's done the initial backup of everything, it's pretty unobtrusive - quietly backing up anything you change all day and all night if you let it. No more images and incrementals to deal with - love it!
About $50 / year, less if you pay for multiple years up front and, if you refer someone, then you get something like three free months.
It's all encrypted and, if you ever lose your PC for any reason, you can download everything to a new PC quickly. :)
Here's a bit of practice what you preach. Last night I had a meltdown on one of my servers, so I went back to the Acronis True Image backup from the night before and completely rebuilt the entire 400 gig of data and operating system in 4 hours just by booting the machine from CD and then clicking one button. Marvellous.