"The only way to keep your data secure is to get involved, be consistent, be committed to the task, and backup to multiple media types on a regular basis."

Yup, dead right, but that's the whole point — few home PC users can be bothered to go through this kind of palaver.

A single-drive backup may not be ideal, but it's better than nothing and the amount of effort required to set-up the Replica (and the similar Time Machine) is so minimal is that if you're currently not doing any kind of backup (and yet still have data you *should* be backing up), then it's foolish not to use something like this.

As for the reliability of an external USB drive, well, I can't comment on that other than to say I've been using them for many years with no problems (there's no alternative with laptops). If the Replica does fail, then it's just a 2.5in SATA drive inside a case and there's nothing to stop you prising it apart and plugging the bare drive into something else to get at your data.

I've set up an airport extreme with a usb key and time machine at my mums house. Already saved them once and it took at most two minutes to set up.

Mac's had this for almost three years, why doesn't Windows 7 have this functionality built in?

um, this actually works almost the same way in that it backs up the whole system, except that the backup software has to be installed, but does boot from usb..http://www.hantechnology.com.sg/shop_online_home.php?user=1&categoryID=10

it supports vista now. their product page is not updated..

The only way to keep your data secure is to get involved, be consistent, be committed to the task, and backup to multiple media types on a regular basis. The job stinks but you got to do it. The proper tool to use is the one that you are most likely to use the most often. I back up to flash, DVD, second and third internal hard drive, USB hard drive and off site storage.

Being an old DOS programmer of sorts and having limited "mission critical" data now days, most of my backups use the copy and/or xcopy function in Windows; corporations have different problems. I do use NTBackup, but a true backup requires a true restore and that can be a royal PITA. A series of DOS copies (run from the Task Scheduler via batch files) are immediately usable by MS Office or whatever. Sometimes a bit slow, but then I'm asleep, or taking a break, so it doesn't matter. And oh yeah, he who puts all his data on a single Terabyte drive is simply planning for a disaster. He who has single drives of any sort for his source data and data backup is just fooling himself. And he who trusts technology alone to save his data is simply a fool.

Computers are like babies. You have to feed them the right stuff and on a regular basis you have to clean their smelly behinds.

These things are not new.

I've owned USB backup external drives from Western Digital, Ez, Diskgo, Seagate Freeagent, etc..

Guess what?

Every single one of the bloody blighters at some point when I least expected, failed beyond any recovery, reducing themselves to an impenatrable black box. ALL OF THEM.

Definitely NOT there when needed. And they failed on various PC's, desktops and laptops.

Do yourself a favor.

Buy an internal HDD (Veloceraptor, or like)

And save yourself the disappointment, denial, anger, anxiety, disillusionment, and rip-off.

I shall never buy, nor rely on another external USB HDD. And why keep shoving money down their stinkhole?