If you want to start with just backing up your data, there are very good open source tools to get you going like: Revision control : - Subversion : http://subversion.tigris.org/ #easy and lots of support - darcs : http://darcs.net #incredibly neat tool File-synchronization : - Unison : www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/ Better safe than sorry. > > Anyone whose livelhood depends on what is on their computer really needs > to have some kind of backup strategy in place and adhere to it.